What is Shadow Banning (and How to Fix It) – Neil Patel

Suddenly you notice that none of your social media activity seems to be showing up at all. Its like you dont even exist on the site Weird!

Is it a bug? Every website suffers from them sometimes, and the interactive features can often be the first to go haywire. Server maintenance could also be the culprit.

But another possibility is that you might have been shadowbanned (previously called ghost banned).

Accounts that are shadowbanned are put into a kind of invisible mode. In other words, they become a shadow that no one can see.

In this post, well talk more about what exactly shadowbanning is, and how you can tell if it happened to you.

Shadowbanning is when your posts or activity dont show up on a site, but you havent received an official ban or notification.

Its a way to let spammers continue to spam without anyone else in the community (or outside of it) seeing what they do.

That way, other social media users dont suffer from spam because they cant see it. The spammer wont immediately start to look for ways to get around the ban, because they dont even realize theyve been banned.

Now, all of this might sound a little odd or shady. Since many websites and apps deny that they shadowban, theres no way to know for sure that its happened.

If you suspect a shadowban, a change in the websites search or newsfeed algorithm might actually be to blame. And since the algorithms are the property of social media companies, its not in their best interest to reveal everything about them publicly.

Regardless of whether youve been penalized deliberately or accidentally, the effect is still the same no one can see your posts.

Theres no way of getting a full list of sites that shadowban people, since the practice isnt entirely out in the open.

However, shadowbanninghas been reported beforeunder certain circumstances, on sites and apps likeFacebook, Instagram, andTikTok, among others.

Respondents to a survey called Posting Into the Voidreported four general types of shadowbans:

Heres how to tell if youve been shadowbanned on some popular social media sites:

Does Twitter actually shadowban people? Well, yes and no.

In a blog post, Twitter claimed that they dont deliberately make peoples content undiscoverable to everyone except the person who posted it, and they certainly dont shadowban based on political viewpoints or ideology.

However, they did say they rank tweets and search results to address bad-faith actors. Basically, if Twitter thinks youre a spammer or a troll, its algorithm will penalize your content.

Twitter lists these as some of the factors they use to tell if youre a bad-faith actor or not:

To avoid getting shadowbanned on Twitter, you should confirm your email address and upload a profile picture.

Dont spam people and dont be overly promotional. If youre trying to sell a product or service and are posting too much, other users might block your content, causing a shadowban on your account.

You should also try to avoid trolling, getting into online arguments, or being too confrontational in your posts and comments. This can lead people to mute or block you.

Theres no way to tell for sure if youve been shadowbanned on Twitter. However, you could try using the site Shadowban.eu, which claims to be able to detect a shadowban.

How frustrating is it to work hard atbuilding up an Instagram following, only to see that your posts suddenly arent showing up?

Like with Twitter, Instagrams CEO has publicly claimed thatshadowbanning is not a thing, but aswith Twitter, thats not entirely true.

While youpersonally might not be being shadowbanned, the algorithm could still be hiding your posts.

Instagrams algorithm is designed to remove certain content. Namely, the algorithmpenalizes content that Instagram considers inappropriate, even if the content doesnt go against the appsCommunity Guidelines.

Specifically, they mention sexually-suggestive content. According to their Community Guidelines, spammy content and content associated with illegal activity or violence is also a no-go.

Instagram prefers photos or videos that are appropriate for a diverse audience so less family-friendly content may be at risk of a shadowban.

Theres no surefire way to tell if youve been shadowbanned on Instagram, but there are sites that say they can test it. Triberris one option.

Shadowbanning onRedditis a bit different from shadowbanning on other social media sites. Up until 2015, Reddit openly shadowbanned users who broke the sites rules by hiding their posts.

Reddit then announcedthat the shadowbanning system had been replaced with an account suspension system. Basically,some Reddit staff thoughtthat the shadowban tool had been useful for dealing with bots, but that banning real human users without telling them what they did wrong was unfair.

However, the site appears to still occasionally be using shadowbans, with ther/ShadowBan subredditstill active.

According to theirofficial content policy, Reddit may enforce their rules by removal of privileges from, or adding restrictions to, accounts, and also by removal of content, among other methods.

Of course, to avoid getting shadowbanned on Reddit, youll need to follow their rules. But one tricky thing about that is that the rules on Reddit actually depend on the subreddit you are submitting to.

Youll want to read and comment a lot first before submitting your own links. Watch how people react to various types of submissions within a specific subreddit, and then act accordingly.

You can also check out thisunofficial guide on how to avoid being shadowbanned. Some key points:

To find out if youre shadowbanned on Reddit, make a post in the r/ShadowBan subreddit. A bot will respond to you, letting you know if youre shadowbanned.

Even if youre not, the bot will tell you which posts of yours have been removed recently (if any).

You could also use a third-party tool, likeAm I Shadowbanned?

TikTok is a popular social network for sharing short videos. Unfortunately, you can get shadowbanned there too (kind of).

While theres no official mention of the term shadowban in TikToks Community Guidelines, like other social media networks, TikTok uses algorithms to privilege certain content. If you get on the wrong side of the algorithm, fewer people might see the content you post.

To have more people see your content and avoid penalties, try to follow best practices for TikToks recommendation algorithm, and always follow the Community Guidelines.

Stay away from illegal material, violence, hate speech, spam, and other similar topics.

To check if youve been shadowbannedon TikTok, look at your pageviews and For You page statistics. You can also use a hashtag and see if your post shows up under that hashtag.

Facebook calls its content moderation policy remove, reduce, and inform.

Basically, content that violates Facebooks Community Standardswill be removed from the site, while other undesirable content (like misleading information) may be less visible on Facebook or have a warning label placed on it.

If Facebook is consistently reducing your content, that could be considered a type of shadowban.

The main thing you can do to trigger a shadowban on Facebook is to share links to fake or misleading information. Content on the site is checked by independent fact-checkingorganizations.

Facebook also penalizes links from websitesthat its algorithm considers clickbait. Low-authority websiteswithout a lot of inbound and outbound links that generate a lot of clicks on Facebook may be considered clickbait.

Facebook groups where a lot of misleading links and clickbait are frequently shared may be shadowbanned.

If youre worried your personal page, business page, or group might have been shadowbanned on Facebook, check for a change in engagement levels on your recent posts.

While people dont often think about getting shadowbanned on LinkedIn, its possible for your contents reach to be throttled there.

Like other social media sites, LinkedIn has Community Policiesthat all members need to follow to avoid problems.

Since LinkedIn is a professional site, its content policies are even stricter than other platforms. Not only should your content be safe, legal, and appropriate, it has to be professional as well.

Although LinkedIn is obviously a place for career growth and self-promotion, spamming people is still a no-go.

Youll need to respect others privacy and intellectual property. You should also avoid harassment or unwanted romantic advances towards other members.

If you violate LinkedIns policies, they may limit the visibility of certain content, or remove it entirely.

That said, the LinkedIn algorithm is pretty complicated. Even if your content is perfectly professional and high-quality, it might still not be getting the reach you want.

Engagement and relevanceare the top two factors to keep in mind when creating content for LinkedIn.

While its not exactly a social network, its definitely still a site where people go to learn and share content. Can you be shadowbanned from YouTube?

Well, YouTube shadowbanninghas been in the newsbecause of popular creator PewDiePie. According to his fans, the Swedish videogame YouTubers channel was penalized in YouTube search.

YouTubes official response was thatit doesnt shadowban channels, but that some videos might be flagged and need to be reviewed before they show up in search.

Inan interview with Polygon, they said they were currently working on fixing the issue.

Different social networks have their own opinions on what type of violations merit a shadowban. However, we can definitely see some general trends that are worth noting.

How to not get shadowbanned

Shadowbanning is when your posts or activity dont show up, but you havent received an official ban or notification.

Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube, and others.

Follow the sites terms of service, dont post spam or links that arent allowed, dont post illegal content, and always treat others with kindness.

This depends on each site. For some, its just a period of time you have to wait, while with others you have to ask customer service. Some users get permanently shadowbanned as well.

You may not have any idea you are being shadowbanned. At least not at first though over time, you may begin to suspect it.

What you should do to protect yourself is to be careful that what you post isnt against the terms and conditions of the site or app. Also, try to avoidspamming content, starting fights with and trolling other users, or posting things that might be considered inappropriate.

A shadowban can be frustrating, especially if you dont feel like you deserve one. Maybe you dont agree with the social media algorithm about what is or isnt inappropriate, or maybe you think you werehaving a constructive debatewhile the algorithm thinks you were being a troll.

However, hopefully the tips in this guide can help you avoid being shadowbanned in the future, so your content can get better engagement.

What other ways can help people know if theyve been shadowbanned? Let us know in the comments.

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What is Shadow Banning (and How to Fix It) - Neil Patel