Table of Content
Someone believes in it, someone denies it. But what if your Instagram reach has decreased, and your audience isn’t growing? Let’s figure out how to check whether you’re being shadowbanned and if so, what you should do.
What is a shadowban?
Shadowban refers to the artificial limiting your content reach for violating the social network guidelines.
In the summer of 2021 Instagram head Adam Mosseri published an official statement related to shadowbans. He said:
“People often accuse us of “shadowbanning” or silencing them. It’s a broad term that people use to describe many different experiences they have on Instagram. We recognize that we haven’t always done enough to explain why we take down content when we do, what is recommendable and what isn’t, and how Instagram works more broadly. As a result, we understand people are inevitably going to come to their own conclusions about why something happened, and that those conclusions may leave people feeling confused or victimized”
The statement also says that Instagram can’t promise you that you’ll consistently reach the same amount of people when you post. The team is developing more transparent guidelines and in-app notifications, so people know in the moment why their post was taken down.
The difficulty lies in the fact that you are unlikely to receive a notification confirming that some rule has been violated. And although Instagram intends to fix this, so far the probability of losing reach for no apparent reason is high.
What should you do to get shadowbanned?
No one can certainly say how to avoid a shadowban. However, it’s pretty easy to get your account under it. Here are all the bad tips following which you won’t leave yourself a chance not to decrease your reach (maybe you wanted):
1. Don’t stick to the Community Guidelines. Rules are made to be broken, aren’t they? In fact, understanding the Terms of Use allows you to avoid mistakes:
Community Guidelines;
Terms of Use;
Meta Platform Terms.
If some points are unclear, contact the Instagram Help Center, and they will answer your questions.
Usually, Instagram doesn’t extend restrictions on the entire account because of one photo. However, if you regularly violate the Community Guidelines, your chances of getting shadowbanned are increased.
2. Try to cheat the Instagram Algorithm
The rules state that Instagram may impose restrictions on your profile for using third-party applications to improve metrics.
Giveaways, sweepstakes and suspicious activity – all of them Instagram may find inappropriate and shadowban your account if you’re not a brand or a famous person.
Banned hashtags are another opportunity to learn what a shadowban is. To find out whether it’s possible to use a particular hashtag, research it on Instagram – if it’s not there, most likely it’s banned. Instagram doesn’t like hashtags that are commonly associated with aggression, sexual content and racism. Also, you can be banned because of using anti-vaccine hashtags.
3. Encourage your audience to complain
If your post or account gets a lot of complaints, it’s a great reason for Instagram to shadowban you. And sometimes it’s difficult to understand who exactly is complaining – haters or ordinary followers. Anything that can hurt someone’s feelings becomes a potential target for numerous complaints.
How to check if you’re shadowbanned?
Sometimes it’s not an easy task to do. You won’t receive a letter informing that you’ve been shadowbanned and your reach is going to lower. Here are some tips for defining whether your profile is under a shadowban or not.
1. Review your Instagram insights data
If you have a business account, then everything’s easy: open statistics and compare it with the previous metrics. If you still post content regularly, know topics that resonate with your audience and make your publications interesting and appealing, you may suspect you’ve been shadowbanned. Usually, you’re experiencing a huge drop in metrics which is unusual for your Instagram statistics.
2. Use services to check your account
This is more of an additional method than the main one. There are several websites that allow users to add a link to a post or account and check whether it’s shadowbanned. However, one can only guess the reliability of information.
3. Enlist the help of friends
This method allows you to really understand whether you have problems. First, come up with an unusual tag that is rarely used or isn’t used at all (of course, it shouldn’t violate the Community Guidelines). Next, ask your friends to search your post by this tag and check if it appears. It’s better to ask more than 6 people. If only 2 out of 10 people see the post, you can be 100% sure that you are shadowbanned. However, if 6 out of 10 see your post, then Instagram algorithms aren’t the problem.
How to get a shadowban lifted?
If you’re absolutely sure that you’ve been shadowbanned, it’s time to take action.
To begin with, stop any activity on your account for several days. Yes, you’re not allowed to like posts and send direct messages. It’s also advisable to stop promotions, switch to a personal account and remove hashtags from all of your previous posts.
Try using only one device to log in, changing your profile picture and removing all the links from your bio. Also, it’s helpful not to use VPNs and proxy servers. Basically, you have to lie low and pretend that you have an ordinary page and do nothing wrong.
After all the measures, the first few posts should be made without any hashtags or location tags. Then check your account with a low-frequency tag again.
If you’ve taken all possible steps and your profile is still shadowbanned, contact Instagram support and confirm that you own this account. And wait. It can take both a couple of weeks and several months.
The shadowban exists, and even Instagram themselves recognizes the term. So if you don’t want problems with statistics, pay attention to this. If you realize that you’re shadowbanned, follow all our recommendations and wait. It’s better to avoid shadowbans at all: don’t try to cheat Instagram and focus on an organic growth strategy.
