How To Check If You Are Shadowbanned On Twitter And What It Means

Getrude Mathayo

4 years ago

Shadowbanning is Twitter’s way of intentionally making an account’s post undiscoverable to everyone except for them, without them knowing about it.

This happens when the app detects suspicious activity from a user. When Twitter finds you have been spamming or violating their policies, you get shadowbanned. If you have been shadow-banned by Twitter, your content will disappear from Twitter conversations and search results.

Many social media platforms keep their algorithm criteria off the record. However, Twitter has been open about what it is willing to do to keep Twitter a positive experience for its community.

Being shadow-banned takes away your chance to reach your customers and potential customers on Twitter. You become less relevant. Your digital marketing strategy takes a massive hit when you’re no longer front and center on user’s feeds.

There are three kinds of shadow banning on Twitter:

With the so-called Thread shadow bans, Twitter limits other users from seeing your comments to tweets.
Under Search Suggestion shadow bans Twitter blocks others from seeing your profile in the search results.
Under Search ban, Twitter bans all your tweets (or just the recent ones) from the search results, even if it includes the exact search words used

With a shadowban you may experience the following:

Your profile doesn’t show in a people’s search or as a search suggestion.
Your tweets are not seen by your followers on their main feed or in their list of followers.
Your actions are not showing up in people’s notifications. For example, if you follow someone, they won’t be notified.
Your replies are not displayed beneath the corresponding tweets.

If you are not aware that it is happening, you may not even notice that something you have tweeted triggered the algorithm. Twitter does not alert you, but there are a few signs you can look out for if you think something is fishy

The best way to check is to log out of your Twitter account and search for your username or a hashtag that is associated with one of your recent tweets.

If you do not appear in the dropdown menu for your username or your tweet doesn’t appear in the hashtag feed, it is a red flag. But that does not mean that your account is completely invisible.

While Twitter does remove your username from the highly visible drop-down bar, you can still be found in a full search by connections you have been determined to have a strong tie to, such as those that you mutually interact with often.