Shadow Banning 101: What It Is and How to Fix It
What Does It Mean to be Shadow Banned?
Being shadow banned on Instagram is when Instagram prevents anyone who is not following you from seeing your page or posts. If you scour Google for info on shadow banning, you will read SO much misinformation, so as a business owner that has been shadow banned four times (as of the time I’m writing this article), I thought it would be good to share my experiences with all of you and to present the facts and debunk the myths.
What Causes a Shadow Ban?
Other articles mention overusing hashtags, using bots, or being a Republican can cause you to be shadow banned…… but that isn’t my experience. Every single time I’ve been shadow banned (reminder: FOUR times) has been after a post of mine has been reported and deleted. If you stumbled upon this article and aren’t aware of what I do for a living, You know the dinosaur skeletons in museums? I build those….. but not with dinosaurs. You can see some examples of my work here if you’d like. Because I work with (naturally) dead animals, my Instagram account with just shy of 30,000 followers attracts quite a few people that don’t agree with/understand what I do (they often think I kill the animals- I don’t. We don’t have ligers and sloths running around Alabama.)
How to Tell if You're Shadow Banned
The easiest way is to check a personalized hashtag you use. When you’re shadow banned, none of your posts will show up on hashtags. The example I used was #AdventuresOfSlothBall (perhaps the cutest hashtag ever…. you should definitely go follow my little Sloth’s hashtag). When I was shadow banned, none of my posts showed up in the hashtag. The day I got unbanned, all of them popped back up.
Â
Another way is to hop onto a different account (that doesn’t follow the account you’re checking) and go to an account similar to yours. Click the little arrow button beside Follow and scroll through the “Suggestions for You” accounts. If you show up on there, you’re not shadow banned.
What Happens When You're Shadow Banned
Your posts/page will not be shown to anyone BESIDES your followers. You cannot blame your horrible engagement on a shadow ban, that’s not how shadow bans work. Your followers will still see your posts in their timelines if you’re shadow banned. Instagram algorithms do place “posts you’d like” near the top of the feed, though, so your followers are more likely to see your posts if they regularly like and comment on your posts.
Your stats in your “Insights” section will absolutely plummet due to a shadow ban. No one will see your posts on the explore page, no one will see your posts in hashtags, and no one will see your page in the “Suggested for You” section. This means the only way new people can find your account while you’re shadow banned is to physically type in your username or if one of your followers sends the post to them or tags them in your post. I’m including screenshots of my good friend @articulated_imagination’s stats and mine about 6 days after we were shadow banned. You can see how the interactions on our accounts dropped 73% and 86% respectively the day we were shadow banned.
Here’s a comparison of my Discovery (how many people see my posts in a week) during and before my shadow ban. Before my ban, there were 433,126 views on my posts that I posted that week. That decreased by 73% to 118,424 impressions during my shadow ban. Similarly, the number of accounts that saw my posts decreased by 92%!!! From 118,908 accounts to 15,191 accounts. Due to this, my follower growth came to a screeching halt when I was shadow banned.
Not surprisingly, the stats on your posts decrease too. I usually average 900-2500 likes on a post, with 25+ comments. I’m still working on figuring out exactly what kind of posts gain you a lot of followers, but that’ll be for another article. Here are the stats of a post during and after my shadow ban. I don’t care too much about likes, what I care about is the new followers gained. I have an absolutely amazing follower base, so even when I’m shadow banned I still get 1000+ likes on a post and a bunch of comments, but it’s the new followers that convert to new customers. When I was shadow banned my post was shown to 7,119 accounts, of which “less than 1% weren’t following me”, meaning there’s less than 1% chance to gain a new follower from the post (I gained ONE new follower). Compare this to my normal stats of 30,000-70,000 accounts being reached (of which 72% weren’t following me) and I gained 350 new followers from the post.Â
Its important to note that on the post from when I was not shadow banned it shows that 2,386 people saw the post from the Explore Page, compared to the 0 on the shadow banned post- further proving that your posts don’t show up on the explore page while you’re shadow banned.
Here’s more proof about your follower gains halting. The week before the shadow ban I gained 1,218 new followers. During one of the two weeks of my ban (more on that a little further down in this article), I actually LOST 25 followers in a week.
How Long Does a Shadow Ban Last?
Because my business is how I pay my bills (and possibly because I have mild OCD), I keep insane data on all of my records, and lucky for all of you wanting to learn about shadow bans, that data includes my growth on all of my social media platforms! Along with this, I record every time I get a post reported and taken down. This has happened 4 times now, marked by the yellow highlighted areas. The right column shows how many days it took me to gain 100 followers. Interestingly enough, If you look at the red areas (the 200 followers after a post got taken down), it almost always adds to 14 days (compared to the normal 1-3 days it normally takes me to gain 100 followers) . This tells us that a shadow ban on Instagram lasts for 2 weeks. I kept a close eye on it this past time, and sure enough, exactly 2 weeks after my post was taken down, my stats went back to normal and my posts started showing up on hashtags again.
You can also visibly see the 4 (especially the last 2) shadow bans on this graph of my follower growth. It’s more apparent on the last 2 because I was gaining more followers during that time. It completely plateaus during the ban, and then immediately raises again as soon as the ban is lifted.
Of course if you’ve read this far, you already know that I love statistics, so it shouldn’t surprise you that I track my average follower gain per day. For the entire month of January I was gaining an average of 115 followers per day. Because I only gained 100 followers in the TWO WEEKS of being shadow banned, it drastically pulled my average down to 83 followers per day. Of course that average will slowly go back up as the year goes on, but it puts it into perspective how much of a difference two weeks of “Instagram time-out” can affect your account.
Why Should I Worry About Shadow Banning?
If your Instagram doesn’t generate you income, maybe you shouldn’t worry. However, if you use Instagram for your business like I do, you very well might also notice a drop in views to your website like I did. It doesn’t take a genius to know that less website views leads to less sales.
How to Get Un-Shadow Banned
During my two weeks of time out, I tested out several methods to try to get unbanned, and here’s my findings:
1. Ads: I figured it wouldn’t hurt to bribe Instagram. They’re constantly trying to get me to pay for promoting my posts, so why not try it when my exposure is at a record low, right? Wrong! That was the worst ad performance I’ve ever seen. Spent $15 just to test it out and I had a total of EIGHT clicks to my profile. I’ve ran quite successful ads in the past, so you can’t blame it on a bad ad campaign. This ad didn’t gain me followers, and didn’t get me unbanned.
2. Take a Break: I read in other articles that if you didn’t use your account (no logging in, no liking pictures, posting, messaging- nothing) for a couple days that your shadow ban will be lifted- Wrong! Still shadow banned, and it only resulted in me having to spend several hours replying to all the messages that I missed during my absence.
3. Time: Ah! A solution that works! “Time heals all wounds”, well I don’t know about that…. but I know waiting 14 days will lift your shadow ban. So pout for two weeks like I did, and then have a fresh start. Your follower count will start raising again once your ban if lifted. Here is a screenshot of proof. Use it as good fortune. May the Instagram gods show mercy to us!
Â
The Real Issue
The censorship system put in place by Instagram is absolutely broken. The process to report posts is not straight forward (hence how my pictures of fully furred, naturally deceased sloths gets flagged as “Threats of graphic violence” and are taken down) and the fact that Instagram does not give you a warning nor a chance to appeal the post being taken down is ridiculous. At least on tumblr you can appeal a post that’s taken down, and an actual human will look at the post and put it back up if it doesn’t violate their guidelines (no porn, but sloths are allowed!) The other issue for accounts like mine, along with my friends with medical, veterinary, etc. accounts is that Instagram does not give us the option to censor our posts as “graphic”. If we could, WE WOULD. We know not everyone wants to see blood on their explore page, WE DIDN’T ASK FOR IT TO BE SHOWN THERE! The “Sensitive content. This photo contains sensitive content that some viewers may find offensive or disturbing” warning is only applied to posts that are reported PROPERLY. What is the proper path of reporting? I’m not even sure, but I know “Threats of Graphic Violence” is not it, and that is what I encounter my posts being taken down as. If we could set the post as “sensitive” and it be blurred, WE WOULD. On twitter you’re able to label your account as containing “mature content”, on Instagram you can’t. I guess you could set your page to private so people can’t stumble upon it and report your posts, but then your engagement is incredibly low because you won’t show up on the explore page nor on hashtags to non-followers. Instagram still says that shadow banning isn’t a real thing, so it’s up to us to educate ourselves and others about this shady practice of theirs. This topic doesn’t affect the general public, but if you run your business through Instagram like I do, it can drastically affect your income. Small businesses already have to try so so hard just to stay afloat, so it is very depressing that Instagram and other platforms censor our accounts without any warning or reason.
This is the longest article I’ve written on my Blog thus far. Can you tell that this topic makes my blood boil? If you read all the way to the end, I applaud your dedication. If you have experience with shadow banning that you’d like to tell me about so that I can update this article to help others, or if you just want to chat about statistics, feel free to Contact Me or reach out to me on our Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, or Twitter pages. Please share, like, and comment on this article if you found it helpful so that it will move up in the Google search results and replace all of the vague/incorrect articles on the topic of Shadow Banning!
Previous Post
Next Post
I hope it isn’t a malicious person or competitor reporting your posts. I’ve heard of that happening in other communities.
Thank you for sharing this. Yes, there’s a lot of theories out there about shadow banning, but this article is the most make sense to me 🙂
My question is, how do you know that your post has been reported or not?
When a post of yours is taken down you’ll get a notification when you open up Instagram
Thanks for replying. Okay, I never get that kind of report then
I am heavily suspecting I am shadow banned on the Fox website. I have used Fox for years, and have noticed in the last year more and more times I can tell no one is seeing my posts. It may be particular to a topic of the story, but I haven’t made that definite connection so I won’t speculate. But I am 95% sure they are shadow banning my comments.
Now, the natural question would be, what is your political persuasion, since Fox is supposed to have a right-leaning inclination, one would assume I am a liberal. I am not. I am a conservative, and I have long suspected Fox plays both sides of the fence. Now I feel certain they are suppressing my often conservative comments. It is infuriating to be censored. I’ve done this long enough to know I’m not imagining it.
We are living in very scary times. These corporations, media outlets, are huge. We can’t have them interfering with our First Amendment rights.
Hey Kathleen,
We don’t have any experience with Fox’s website so I’m not sure we can be of any help with your issue. It would be interesting to check if other’s posts who share a similar view to yours are being posted and if it’s against you personally, or the overall view. Though I’m not educated with Fox’s website policies, it’s possible that you may have unknowingly violated one of their guidelines and they thus has shadowbanned you, but like I said I’m not sure of that at all.
Sorry we can’t help more!
-Dalton from OddArticulations, LLC
I had been shadowbanned twice now. But my post didn’t get deleted, I didn’t use bots or misuse hashtags. I really dont know why. But the first time it went away in 2-3 days. Second time I’m not sure as it happened today.
So.. my page on Soundtrap will not let me post, comment, talk to people, invite people to collabs.. like literlly NOTHING. I try to ask the Soundtrap staff on there.. BUT, of course it did not work.. I am super limited.. at least I can change my profile stats.. if you could make a new article on this than that would be great.. I am just way too limited.. I do not even know if this IS a shadow bad. All I know is it’s really annoying so please help somehow!
I have noticed that instead of shadow banning , they are just shadowing your post with another link about voting or Coronavirus …this is happening on facebook and it is not all people it is just the ones that have stated they have been shadowbanned.
I have a feeling that Town Hall, the conservative site, has been shadow banning my comments for weeks now. I get no up-votes or responses, friendly or otherwise. Though I am a conservative, I have heterodox opinions, perhaps too much so for the content moderators (i.e., censors) at Town Hall. I don’t have this problem on other sites.
Is this a common problem on political blog sites as well as social media?
They are mad at me because I blocked them tracking me. It looks like NOBODY is seeing much of anything unless they are out of the country. I say what I think and that is not always soothing to the greed hogs. I challenge things, so I am a prime target. They never say much but where I used to get hundreds of responses, I do good to get 10!
I laugh at the absurdity that shadow banning does not exist. It certainly does. With the advent of political terminology as being owned by one political party or another or the belief that an issue is “done science” suddenly, it most certainly exists in both conservative and liberal websites. Politics is absolutely the main reason.