Have you ever experienced that none of your social media activity seems to be showing up at all? We understand how this feels. This can be because your account has been “shadowbanned” by Twitter itself. As a brand that values social media marketing, organic reach is essential to your strategies to achieve desirable results. Twitter is well aware of this, and they will intervene if they notice an account does not abide by their rules.
In this blog, we will discuss the reasons for getting shadowban on Twitter and how can it be prevented in the future.
Twitter Shadowbanning
Shadowbanning, also known as stealth banning, ghost banning, or commented ghosting, is the act of blocking or partially blocking a user from a platform without it being apparent to that user. It is deliberately making the user’s tweets, retweets on Twitter undiscoverable to everyone except the person who posted it. As a result, there will be no engagement or traffic your account will receive from Twitter.
Does Twitter shadowban people? Yes and No. In a Twitter blog post from 2018, they deliberately set the record they do not make people’s content undiscoverable to everyone except the person who posted it. However, Twitter made a new approach to improving the health of public conversations happening on the platform. The purpose of it is to address troll-like behaviors that violate the policies of Twitter without waiting for people who use Twitter to report potential issues.
Reasons You May Get Shadowbanned on Twitter
Here are important factors that might lead an account to get shadowban by Twitter:
- If an account has not confirmed an email address
- No profile picture is available
- The same person signs up for multiple accounts simultaneously
- Using the same replies or images to reply to multiple pages
- Accounts that repeatedly Tweet and mention accounts that do not follow them
- Using automated service to leave comments
- Fast tweeting or spamming
- Having less than 500 followers
- Unnatural Follower and Following ratio
- Any behavior that indicates a coordinated attack
To avoid getting shadowbanned on Twitter, always confirm your email address and upload a decent brand profile picture. Avoid trolling, getting into online arguments, or being too confrontational in your posts and comments. This can lead people to mute or block you. Don’t spam people and don’t promote too much. If you’re overwhelmingly posting, users might block your content causing a shadowban on your account.
Different Types of Shadowbanning on Twitter
- Thread Ban
Bans others from seeing your replies to tweets. - Search Suggestion Ban
Bans others from seeing your profile in their search results. - Search Ban
Bans your tweets from the search results, even if it matches the exact search results the search words used. - The Reply Barrier Ban
If Twitter signals determine that an account might engage in harmful behavior, Twitter will hide their replies behind a barrier and only load them when “Show More Replies” is clicked. This behavior is personalized, which means that Twitter will not hide the tweets of accounts that you follow.
Ways to Remove Shadowban
Lifting a shadowban does not take long, whereas it mostly takes 48 to 72 hrs only until your account gets visible again. The best practice is to leave your account until that point, and there is no need to petition or tweet more during that time since it might lead to another shadowban once the initial one has ended. However, if you are shadowbanned longer than the regular period, you can send a report to Twitter Support Team to help you with your concern.
Once the ban is removed, here are action plans that you need to do and even prepare in advance so your account will not get shadowbanned in the future.
- It is important that once you are Shadowbanned, the first step is to completely stop Tweeting.
- Do not repeat tweets or use bots to increase followers, retweets or likes.
- Stop all automated posts and remove spam links or spammy Tweets from your account.
- Also, you may be suspected because of your “wrong” interests in the topic. Go ahead and change “Interest From Twitter” on your Settings and Privacy option.
Conclusion
To put it simply, follow the policies of Twitter in using the platform. You may not have any idea you are being shadowbanned. Shadowbans can be frustrating, especially if you’re using the platform to reach and interact with your audience. Have you experienced getting shadowbanned by Twitter? Let us know other methods you did in the comments.
