Twitter Shadowban: What it is and how to remove it

Suddenly, you noticed that not a single of your Twitter posts are getting noticed at all, no likes, retweets, traffic, or converting from Twitter. This may be a Twitter shadowban. This term has been popping up quite often lately, but you may have also heard it referred to as stealth or ghost banning. It’s unpleasant and unprofitable for business accounts. If you suspect this is happening to you, try a Twitter shadowban test to check your account status and take action to restore your reach.

What is Shadowbanning?

Shadowbanning means that your posts or activity are blocked from appearing on a site, but you haven’t received any official bans or notifications about it.

Twitter uses AI technology to censor and hide your posts from your subscribers and the entire Twitter community. If Twitter finds out that you’ve been spamming or violating its policies, you may be shadowbanned. If Twitter shadowbans you, your posts will disappear from Twitter feeds and search results, making it impossible for users to interact with your tweets.

By doing this, spammers can stop posting without anyone else in the community (or outside of it) seeing them. Because they can’t see the spam, other Twitter users won’t have to put up with it. Instead of immediately stopping their work and looking for ways to get around the ban, the spammer might not even be aware that they have been blocked.

When Twitter began modifying its guidelines to emphasize “serving healthy conversations,” shadowbanning got underway in March 2018. Their main objective was to address the issue of “trolls” and how they mistreat Twitter users, specifically instances that “distort and detract from the public conversation.” With that in mind, they put new policies in place.

Twitter employs different types of shadowbanning , which affect how other users can interact with your content on the platform. These include:

• Even if your tweets contains exactly the same search terms you used, they may still be eliminated from search results due to the search bans. Even if users are continually searching for your content, this may make it more difficult for them to find it.

• Search suggestion bans, which prevent your profile from appearing in search results when other users search for specific keywords or hashtags. This can make it more hard for the new users to find your content or account.
• Search bans, which remove your tweets (or some of them) from search results, even if they contain the exact search terms used. This can make it difficult for users to find your content, even if they are actively searching for it.

How to know if you have been blocked on Twitter

You may be thinking if you have been shadowbanned from Twitter. Regardless of Twitter’s official statement that it does not shadowban users, many people consider this is the case. If you notice an unexpected decline in engagement or your posts appear to have went missing from the Twitter feed and search results, it’s worth exploring into further.

You can use a tool like Twitter Shadowban Check to see if you’ve been blocked. Simply click “check” after entering your username to view the results. You can carry on tweeting normally and search for additional explanations for your low engagement if the test indicates that you are not blocked. The tool can assist you in determining the kind of block you’re experiencing if you are blocked.

The tool also provides information on the different types of blocks that can occur on Twitter. These include:

• Search and search suggestion bans, which prevent your profile from appearing in search results or suggestions.
• Reply bans conceal your responses to specific tweets.
• Phantom bans, which make it appear as if your account is inactive or non-existent by hiding all traces of your activity.

You can search for your Twitter username after logging out of your account if you’d prefer to look for a hidden ban without the use of a tool. Here’s the method:

• Sign out of your Twitter account or open an incognito tab in your web browser.
• Go to the Twitter Explore page: www.twitter.com/explore
• Look for “from:username” in the search box. Enter your Twitter username in place of “username.”
• You might have been shadow-blocked if you are unable to view your recent posts or if your tweets are not appearing in your feed.

Please note that this method is not foolproof and may not always be accurate. Using a shadow blocking tool such as the one mentioned above may provide more detailed and reliable results.

How to avoid being banned on social media

There are several mistakes you can make on social media that can lead to a covert ban. Here are the following methods to avoid getting banned from Twitter:

• When creating your account, please make sure that your email address is correct.
• Refrain from making new accounts too often, particularly if you have previously been banned.
• Upload a profile picture to your account.
• Don’t use the same text or images to reply to messages on multiple pages.
• Refrain from leaving identical comments on other tweets using automation tools or services.
• Try to have at least 500 followers on your account.
• Maintain a natural ratio of followers to following. Pages with a higher followers/following ratio tend to escape banning.
• Stay out of an inverted followers/following ratio, which occurs when you follow more accounts than you have followers.
• Keep an eye on who follows, retweets, mutes, or blocks you, as well as who does the same.
• Avoid quick tweets or spam.
• When tweeting, use specific and relevant hashtags rather than ones that are too general, especially when promoting giveaways or contests. Creating hashtags that are specific to your brand is preferable.
• Stay out of insulting, combative, or violent language when tweeting. This is often the main trigger for a shadowban, although there are other factors that influence the severity of the block.

Don’t spam or promote too much. When you try to sell a product or service and talk about it excessively in your tweets, other users may block your content, which triggers a shadowban on your account.

Additionally, you should refrain from trolling, engaging in online disputes, and posting and commenting in an aggressive or emotional manner. You can force other users to mute or block you.

However, sometimes the reasons for being banned are not obvious and are not listed in the table above. That’s why it’s best to think ahead and take some steps before you disappear from users’ feeds. My advice to avoid a Twitter shadowban is to get verified on Twitter and receive a blue badge with a check mark next to your name. Being verified on Twitter means you are safe from shadowban penalties. Plus, being verified on Twitter has significant advantages for your business/brand, even if you’re not famous.

Why get verified on Twitter?

1. You can filter your notification stream

As a verified account, you’ll be able to filter your notifications, including only replies, likes, or retweets from other verified users. The same filters can be applied to your direct messages.

2. You will gain the trust of your audience

Nothing shows “trust” on Twitter more than a blue verified badge. Having the blue tick means you’ve passed some sort of trustworthiness test.

3. Avoid identity theft on Twitter

The blue checkmark indicates authenticity if your Twitter profile has been validated.

4. It helps you connect with influencers

If you want to launch an influencer campaign on Twitter, you want influencers to be able to recognize you and want to work with you. Therefore, you need to differentiate yourself from the rest.

When an influencer sees a message from a verified profile, they are more likely to pay more attention to you and make better offers.

5. Build your reputation as an industry authority

You can use this brand to your advantage outside of the Twitter community to reinforce your authority in your industry as well.

The verification process is not rocket science, but it does require some time and effort:

To earn a blue Twitter badge, an account must be:

• Complete: A real name and photo are required for the profile.
• Active: The account must have been active for the last six months.
• Secure: A validated phone number or email address is required for the account.
• Advertising: The account must be from a well-known person, brand or company, with many mentions in the media (although advertising articles and posts are not considered sources).

In case you don’t want to go through this routine, find reliable resources to publish posts about you, check out this Twitter verification service .

They will save you time with their flexible news website marketplace that offers sponsored content placement. They will also share your PR materials with top news publishers and influencers around the world. You can save money by choosing the websites you want to work with and paying only for posts on those selected websites – no monthly charges or hidden fees.

What to do if you get blocked?

Fortunately, lifting a shadow block doesn’t take long. In most cases, your Twitter account will become invisible within 48-72 hours. Based on experience, it’s best to leave your account alone during that period. There’s no way to request or stop an invisible block once you’ve received one, and tweeting more during that time can lead to another block once the initial one has ended. That means you could be hit with a new block every day, leaving your posts invisible for a longer period.

However, if your profile remains locked for longer than that period, you can contact Twitter to see if their support team can help you.

Once the block is lifted, you can take steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Keep in mind that Twitter curates users’ feeds with popular and relevant content. It wants to serve you the content it thinks you’ll be most interested in, and to hide posts it deems spammy, harmful, or violent.

Ways to remove Shadowban:

It is very important that once you have been blocked, you stop tweeting completely.

After a few days, continue to follow your feed naturally, meaning don’t repeat tweets or use bots and apps to increase your followers, retweets or likes.

Stop all automated posts and remove spam links or tweets from your account. Think of it as a “reset button” for your Twitter profile.

Also, Twitter may suspect you of having “wrong” interests, so try to delete them all.

Click on:

Settings & Privacy → Privacy & Security → View Twitter Data → Interests & Add Data → Twitter Interests → Interested in.

After unchecking all the boxes, try to do it every week.

• Contact Twitter support, it’s worth a try. Some people got unbanned by reporting the problem. Some people got a pretty quick response from Twitter. Some people told support they wanted to run a Twitter ad campaign.
• Getting BlueCheckMark Immunity : I have never seen a BlueCheckMark account get Shadowbanned, it is very likely that they are immune to the Shadowban penalty.

Conclusion: The Covert Blocking of Twitter

A shadowban can be disappointing, especially if it doesn’t feel fair to you. You may disagree with Twitter’s algorithm on what is and isn’t relevant, or your constructive debate may have been mistaken for trolling by Twitter’s AI technology.

However, I hope the tips in this post will help you avoid being shadowbanned in the future, so that your post can get more engagement and growth.