How to Tell If Your Content Is Being "Shadow Banned" on …

What is shadowbanning?

When someone is shadowbanned, their posts on that platform are virtually invisible to everyone but themselves. Their presence on that platform is limited, and their voice effectively suppressed. If were being technical, the patents complete abstract reads:

Users of social networking system are provided with user interface elements permitting the user to post comments on pages within the social networking system. Pages may be provided for any non-user entity, including for example, pages for businesses, products, concepts, etc. Embodiments provided herein permit page moderators to ban certain content from being displayed on a page. For example, the social networking system may receive a list of proscribed content and block comments containing the proscribed content by reducing the distribution of those comments to other viewing users. However, the social networking system may display the blocked content to the commenting user such that the commenting user is not made aware that his or her comment was blocked, thereby providing fewer incentives to the commenting user to spam the page or attempt to circumvent the social networking system filters.

The primary message that their patent is sending is that Facebook reserves the right to moderate what content people see. Proscribed means prohibited or forbidden by law. So, if Facebook sees proscribed content, it may limit the visibility of such content. This content is displayed only to the sharing user, and in many cases, they wont be aware that theyve been shadowbanned. Facebook does this to prevent the user from spamming the page and finding loopholes in the filtering system.

The main purpose of shadowbanning is supposedly to keep feeds clean and social media users happy. Facebook does not want people spreading content that comes off as spammy, or worse, offensive.

Because Facebook does not inform you of this shadowban, you wont really know if youre experiencing it. You could go about your day, routinely posting and sharing content, and you could not notice anything wrong. However, the telltale symptom of a shadowban is a dip in engagements. Youll see that your posts or comments arent getting as many reactions or replies as they usually would. Whereas your posts would normally reach 1,000 interactions, you find that youre struggling to reach 50.

Another way to tell if youve been shadowbanned is to use another friends account to see if your posts show up on their feed. Shadowbans will typically hide these posts from other people, and youll have to visit the banned persons profile to view these posts.

Anyone. No matter who you are or how many friends and followers you have, you can receive the Facebook shadowban. Legit accounts following rules could be just as much at risk as a malicious account abusing the platform. Shadowbanning is still a work in progress, so you can expect to have some outliers here and there. Facebook apparently uses this to enhance the overall customer experience, so you shouldnt take it personally. In some cases, the platform may have committed a simple mistake in banning you even when youve done nothing wrong.

A shadowban can be detrimental for businesses relying on Facebook as their primary platform for conducting transactions. But for personal accounts, this may not be as severe. There are a few things you can do to remedy this situation.

If you suspect youve been shadowbanned by Facebook, there are some things you can do to smooth this problem over.

Here are some things you can practice to reduce your odds of receiving a Facebook shadowban:

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How to Tell If Your Content Is Being "Shadow Banned" on ...