Twitter search ban fix

Have you noticed a significant drop in Twitter follower engagement? Are you left scratching your head over why even your friends and family have stopped liking, retweeting, or commenting on your posts? You might be dealing with a Twitter shadowban.

This term has been cropping up more and more, but you may have heard it described as stealth banning or ghost banning. While Twitter initially denied the claims that they engage in the practice, since January 1, , their ToS has stated that they “… may also remove or refuse to distribute any Content on the Services, limit distribution or visibility of any Content on the service…”

But before we can dive into whether or not this is blatant evidence that they do, indeed, practice shadowbanning, we need to understand exactly what it is:

The Origins of Shadowbanning

In March of , Twitter began moving in the direction of “serving healthy conversations.” Essentially, they wanted to address the issue of “trolls” and their abuse of Twitter’s communal areas, specifically behaviors that “distort and detract from the public conversation.” With that in mind, they rolled out their new policies, which included the expertise of social and behavioral scientists, to key in on common signs of “unhealthy Twitter conversations.”

Some of the issues that might prompt a shadowban include:

• Simply having a new account. Accounts that are less than a year old are more likely to trigger a ban in combination with any of the other signals.
• Using the same text or images to reply to other tweets on multiple accounts.
• Using automation tools to post the same replies to other tweets.
• Having less than followers or having a low follower/following ratio.
• Rapid tweeting, or “spamming.”
• Implementing highly generic hashtags into your tweets, especially those that promote contests or giveaways. It’s a better idea to come up with something unique to your brand.
• Using language that is considered aggressive, confrontational, or demeaning. Often, this is the original trigger, with the other factors playing into how much of this aggressive language you can get away with before actually being banned.

So I’m Banned? What’s That Mean?

In a New York Times article, Monica Stephens, a professor at the University of New York at Buffalo who studies social media said, “Shadow banning is when you are algorithmically being kind of shut down, and that often has to do with, particularly, the content that you are posting. Maybe it doesn’t violate the terms of service, but they make it so other people can’t see that content.” So, you can continue tweeting, retweeting, and commenting as usual, but no one will be able to see any of the activity that you are posting until the shadowban is lifted.

Fortunately, lifting a shadowban doesn’t take long. In most cases, accounts are back to normal within hours. That being said, it’s best to leave your account alone until that point. There’s no way to appeal or end a shadowban once it’s started, and posting more activity during that time can lead to yet another ban once the initial one has ended. That means that it’s totally possible for you to trigger a new ban everyday, leaving your tweets invisible until you let your account have its cool down.

How Can I Tell Once I’ve Been Shadowbanned on Twitter?

If you aren’t aware that it’s happening, you may not even notice that something you’ve tweeted triggered the algorithm. Twitter doesn’t 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 logout of your Twitter account and search for your username or a hashtag that is associated with one of your recent tweets. If you don’t appear in the dropdown menu for your username or your tweet doesn’t appear in the hashtag feed, it’s a red flag. But, that doesn’t 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. This is how Twitter gets away with saying that they don’t participate in shadowbanning. Because technically your account is still searchable, despite them making it much more difficult to find, you haven’t fallen victim to a true shadowban… At least according to Twitter. But, your activity will continue to be completely unfindable until you’ve served your social media jail sentence.

If you’re still not sure whether or not you’ve truly been banned, you can use sites like Shadowban.eu to check your username. Once you navigate to the site, simply type in your username, and the tool will let you know if you’ve been banned from the search suggestions, tweet search, replying in threads, or if your replies have been “deboosted.”

Avoiding the Penalty

While it can be frustrating to deal with shadowbanning, or any perceived violation of your freedom of speech, there’s little that can be done about the social media practice of shadowbanning. The best solution is to leave your social media in the hands of the experts. At NATIV3, we’ve worked with clients to ensure that their tweets are seen, and that their accounts stay active. Give us a call, and let us walk you through what we can do to boost your social media and digital marketing strategy. By tapping into the power of digital marketing, you are accessing a nearly infinite set of tools, methods, and strategies that can help you be seen by the audiences you are most keen to get in front of. With our experience helping businesses just like yours make their breakthrough to digital, we will design and implement a marketing strategy that brings your brand to your customers on a silver platter.

Suddenly you notice that none of your social media activity seems to be showing up at all. It’s like you don’t even exist on the site… Weird!

Is it a bug? Every website suffers from them sometimes, and the interactive features can often be the first to go haywire. Server maintenance could also be the culprit.

But another possibility is that you might have been “shadowbanned” (previously called ghost banned).

Accounts that are shadowbanned are put into a kind of invisible mode. In other words, they become a “shadow” that no one can see.

In this post, we’ll talk more about what exactly shadowbanning is, and how you can tell if it happened to you.

What Is Shadowbanning?

Shadowbanning is when your posts or activity don’t show up on a site, but you haven’t received an official ban or notification.

It’s a way to let spammers continue to spam without anyone else in the community (or outside of it) seeing what they do.

That way, other social media users don’t suffer from spam because they can’t see it. The spammer won’t immediately start to look for ways to get around the ban, because they don’t even realize they’ve been banned.

Now, all of this might sound a little odd or shady. Since many websites and apps deny that they shadowban, there’s no way to know for sure that it’s happened.

If you suspect a shadowban, a change in the website’s search or newsfeed algorithm might actually be to blame. And since the algorithms are the property of social media companies, it’s not in their best interest to reveal everything about them publicly.

Regardless of whether you’ve been penalized deliberately or accidentally, the effect is still the same… no one can see your posts.

Sites That Shadowban

There’s no way of getting a full list of sites that shadowban people, since the practice isn’t entirely out in the open.

However, shadowbanning has been reported before under certain circumstances, on sites and apps like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, among others. 

Respondents to a survey called Posting Into the Void reported four general types of shadowbans:

• A username or hashtag not showing up in search suggestions
• A decrease in follower engagement
• Certain features (e.g. likes or replies) being blocked
• A temporary ban that then reverts back to normal later on

Here’s how to tell if you’ve been shadowbanned on some popular social media sites:

Twitter Shadowbanning

Does Twitter actually shadowban people? Well, yes and no.

In a blog post, Twitter claimed that they don’t “deliberately make people’s content undiscoverable to everyone except the person who posted it”, and they “certainly don’t shadowban based on political viewpoints or ideology.”

However, they did say they “rank tweets and search results” to “address bad-faith actors”. Basically, if Twitter thinks you’re a spammer or a troll, its algorithm will penalize your content.

How to Avoid Getting Shadowbanned by Twitter

Twitter lists these as some of the factors they use to tell if you’re a “bad-faith actor” or not:

• Whether or not you’ve confirmed your email address
• Whether you’ve uploaded a profile picture
• How recently your account was created
• Who you follow and retweet
• Who mutes, follows, retweets, and blocks you

To avoid getting shadowbanned on Twitter, you should confirm your email address and upload a profile picture.

Don’t spam people and don’t be overly promotional. If you’re trying to sell a product or service and are posting too much, other users might block your content, causing a shadowban on your account.

You should also try to avoid trolling, getting into online arguments, or being too confrontational in your posts and comments. This can lead people to mute or block you.

How to Tell If You’re Shadowbanned on Twitter

There’s no way to tell for sure if you’ve been shadowbanned on Twitter. However, you could try using the site Shadowban.eu, which claims to be able to detect a shadowban.

Instagram Shadowbanning

How frustrating is it to work hard at building up an Instagram following, only to see that your posts suddenly aren’t showing up?

Like with Twitter, Instagram’s CEO has publicly claimed that “shadowbanning is not a thing”, but as with Twitter, that’s not entirely true.

While you personally might not be being shadowbanned, the algorithm could still be hiding your posts.

Instagram’s algorithm is designed to remove certain content. Namely, the algorithm penalizes content that Instagram considers “inappropriate”, even if the content doesn’t go against the app’s Community Guidelines.  

Specifically, they mention sexually-suggestive content. According to their Community Guidelines, spammy content and content associated with illegal activity or violence is also a no-go.

Instagram prefers “photos or videos that are appropriate for a diverse audience”&#; so less family-friendly content may be at risk of a shadowban.  

How to Tell If You’re Shadowbanned on Instagram

There’s no surefire way to tell if you’ve been shadowbanned on Instagram, but there are sites that say they can test it. Triberr is one option.

Reddit Shadowbanning

Shadowbanning on Reddit is a bit different from shadowbanning on other social media sites. Up until , Reddit openly shadowbanned users who broke the site’s rules by hiding their posts.

Reddit then announced that the shadowbanning system had been replaced with an account suspension system. Basically, some Reddit staff thought that the shadowban tool had been useful for dealing with bots, but that banning real human users without telling them what they did wrong was unfair.

However, the site appears to still occasionally be using shadowbans, with the r/ShadowBan subreddit still active.

According to their official content policy, Reddit may enforce their rules by “removal of privileges from, or adding restrictions to, accounts”, and also by “removal of content”, among other methods.  

How to Avoid Getting Shadowbanned on Reddit

Of course, to avoid getting shadowbanned on Reddit, you’ll need to follow their rules. But one tricky thing about that is that the rules on Reddit actually depend on the subreddit you are submitting to.

You’ll want to read and comment a lot first before submitting your own links. Watch how people react to various types of submissions within a specific subreddit, and then act accordingly.

You can also check out this unofficial guide on how to avoid being shadowbanned. Some key points:

• Don’t spam or post too many links to your own content (if you post a lot of other things too, posting one or two links to your own work is OK)
• Don’t harass or constantly downvote another user
• Don’t dox others or encourage doxxing (posting someone’s personal information without their consent)
• Don’t post illegal or inappropriate content
• Don’t abuse moderators or admins

How to Tell if You’re Shadowbanned on Reddit

To find out if you’re shadowbanned on Reddit, make a post in the r/ShadowBan subreddit. A bot will respond to you, letting you know if you’re shadowbanned.

Even if you’re not, the bot will tell you which posts of yours have been removed recently (if any).  

You could also use a third-party tool, like Am I Shadowbanned?

TikTok Shadowbanning

TikTok is a popular social network for sharing short videos. Unfortunately, you can get shadowbanned there too (kind of).

While there’s no official mention of the term “shadowban” in TikTok’s Community Guidelines, like other social media networks, TikTok uses algorithms to privilege certain content. If you get on the wrong side of the algorithm, fewer people might see the content you post.

To have more people see your content and avoid penalties, try to follow best practices for TikTok’s recommendation algorithm, and always follow the Community Guidelines.

Stay away from illegal material, violence, hate speech, spam, and other similar topics.

To check if you’ve been shadowbanned on TikTok, look at your pageviews and “For You” page statistics. You can also use a hashtag and see if your post shows up under that hashtag.

Facebook Shadowbanning

Facebook calls its content moderation policy “remove, reduce, and inform.”

Basically, content that violates Facebook’s Community Standards will be removed from the site, while other undesirable content (like misleading information) may be less visible on Facebook or have a warning label placed on it.

If Facebook is consistently “reducing” your content, that could be considered a type of shadowban.

The main thing you can do to trigger a shadowban on Facebook is to share links to fake or misleading information. Content on the site is checked by independent fact-checking organizations.

Facebook also penalizes links from websites that its algorithm considers clickbait. Low-authority websites without a lot of inbound and outbound links that generate a lot of clicks on Facebook may be considered clickbait.

Facebook groups where a lot of misleading links and clickbait are frequently shared may be shadowbanned.

If you’re worried your personal page, business page, or group might have been shadowbanned on Facebook, check for a change in engagement levels on your recent posts.

LinkedIn Shadowbanning

While people don’t often think about getting shadowbanned on LinkedIn, it’s possible for your content’s reach to be throttled there.

Like other social media sites, LinkedIn has Community Policies that all members need to follow to avoid problems.

Since LinkedIn is a professional site, its content policies are even stricter than other platforms. Not only should your content be safe, legal, and appropriate, it has to be professional as well.

Although LinkedIn is obviously a place for career growth and self-promotion, spamming people is still a no-go.

You’ll need to respect others’ privacy and intellectual property. You should also avoid harassment or unwanted romantic advances towards other members.

If you violate LinkedIn’s policies, they may “limit the visibility of certain content, or remove it entirely.”

That said, the LinkedIn algorithm is pretty complicated. Even if your content is perfectly professional and high-quality, it might still not be getting the reach you want.

Engagement and relevance are the top two factors to keep in mind when creating content for LinkedIn.  

YouTube Shadowbanning

While it’s not exactly a social network, it’s definitely still a site where people go to learn and share content. Can you be shadowbanned from YouTube?

Well, YouTube shadowbanning has been in the news because of popular creator PewDiePie. According to his fans, the Swedish videogame YouTuber’s channel was penalized in YouTube search.

YouTube’s official response was that it doesn’t shadowban channels, but that some videos might be flagged and need to be reviewed before they show up in search.

In an interview with Polygon, they said they were “currently working on fixing the issue.” 

7 Ways to Avoid Getting Shadowbanned on Social Media

Different social networks have their own opinions on what type of violations merit a shadowban. However, we can definitely see some general trends that are worth noting.

Shadowban FAQs

Shadowbanning Conclusion

You may not have any idea you are being shadowbanned. At least not at first&#; though over time, you may begin to suspect it.

What you should do to protect yourself is to be careful that what you post isn’t against the terms and conditions of the site or app. Also, try to avoid spamming content, starting fights with and trolling other users, or posting things that might be considered inappropriate.

A shadowban can be frustrating, especially if you don’t feel like you deserve one. Maybe you don’t agree with the social media algorithm about what is or isn’t inappropriate, or maybe you think you were having a constructive debate while the algorithm thinks you were being a troll.

However, hopefully the tips in this guide can help you avoid being shadowbanned in the future, so your content can get better engagement.

What other ways can help people know if they’ve been shadowbanned? Let us know in the comments.

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In this article we&#;re going to take a look at Twitter&#;s Shadowban Penalty, what it is, what makes it work and what you can do to avoid getting caught in it. This article has 4 sections and its most useful if it&#;s read in its entirety, but if you have a short attention span feel free to jump ahead to the section that you&#;re most interested in.

Why The Shadowban Penalty Was Created

What Twitter wants to do is make it harder for you gain pleasure from what they consider "toxic conversations"

After the Presidential Election, Twitter started getting negative press for allowing a Toxic Environment to grow and fester . To address the complaints and try to fix the problem, Twitter began to promote the concept of Healthy Conversations they hired Sentiment Analysis Scientists to identify problematic conversations and prevent people from seeing them entirely, and the Shadowban Penalty was born.

How Do Twitter Accounts Get Shadowbanned

The most significant part of how the Shadowban Penalty gets activated, is your interaction with other accounts. Some of the most common ways people get caught in the Shadowban Penalty, are as follows:

• Language Use: Using language that is aggressive, combative, confrontational, or demeaning to tweet or to reply to other users, especially BlueCheckMark accounts.
• Identical Text: Using identical, or nearly identical language to reply to multiple other accounts in a short period of time.
• Identical Images: Using an identical or nearly identical image to reply to other accounts in a short period of time.
• Automation and Copy & Paste: Copy and pasting an identical or nearly identical reply to multiple other accounts in a short period of time.
• Rapid Tweeting: Tweeting, replying, or creating a chain of connected tweets in a short period of time.
• Following/Follower Ratio: Accounts with more followers will get away with a higher number aggressive tweets before getting Shadowbanned, accounts with less followers can trip up the Shadowban Penalty with far fewer aggressive tweets.
• Low Trust Accounts: Accounts with fewer than followers are the most likely to be affected by the Shadowban Penalty, aggressive tweets are all it takes for those accounts to get Shadowbanned for 48 hours.
• Engagements With Non-Followers: Having too many engagements with people that don&#;t follow you.
• New Accounts: Accounts less than one year old are much more likely to trip up the Shadowban Penalty with any of the above offenses.

How short is a short period of time? If you have less than followers, and you use the same reply three times in a thirty-minute period, you will probably activate the Shadowban Penalty. If you come on Twitter with the goal of trolling BlueCheckMark accounts, you’re only going to get a handful of tweets out, and then the Shadowban Penalty will kick in, dramatically reducing your visibility. The best way to check to see if you&#;ve been Shadowbanned, is to use the Shadowban Tool .

If your account has a red warning for [Thread Ban!] no one will see any of your replies. If your account has a red warning for [Search Suggestion Ban!] your profile wont be suggested if someone is searching for you. If your account has a red warning for [Search Ban!] your profile won&#;t show for Twitter Search Results even if it&#;s an exact match for your tweet or Hashtag. If your account has a red warning message for all four checks, CONGRATULATIONS you have been completely Shadowbanned and you are the only person who is seeing your tweets.

Shadowbanning targets the behavior of adversarial engagement, more commonly known as Trolling

Once your account has been Shadowbanned, the best thing you can do is to stop tweeting completely, and let it &#;cool down&#;. If you completely stop tweeting, the Shadowban Penalty will usually )disappear in 48 hours (this changed around January 15 ), but I have seen it take up to 5 days. If you keep tweeting aggressively, you will extend the length of time the Shadowban Penalty restricts the visibility of your tweets. It&#;s entirely possible for you to trip up the Shadowban Penalty every day, so that it&#;s never lifted, and no one will ever see a single one of your tweets. If you come on Twitter with the goal of adversarially engaging BlueCheckMark accounts, it&#;s extremely important that you use the Shadowban Tool to regularly check if you&#;ve been Shadowbanned. It&#;s also very important that once you are Shadowbanned, you need to completely stop Tweeting, as it&#;s the only way to stop extending the time period of the penalty. Having an alternate Twitter account you can switch to while your first account &#;cools down&#; is an effective strategy, see our How to Run Multiple Twitter Profiles article for tips on how to do this .(Return to Top)

How Twitter Does and Doesn&#;t Target Right Wing Accounts

It’s entirely possible for you to trip up the Shadowban Penalty every day, so that it’s never lifted

Shadowbanning doesn’t unfairly target Conservatives or Right Wing views points, but their policy of selectively enforcing the account ban rules on Right Wing Accounts completely weaponizes the Shadowban Penalty. First we need to take a look at Shadowbanning, and then we&#;ll look at how its effects are amplified against Right Wing Accounts.

Shadowbanning targets the behavior of adversarial engagement, more commonly known as Trolling, that many Right Wing users tend to favor. Twitter considers its verified BlueCheckMark accounts, especially celebrities and journalists, its most valuable assets, and the Shadowban Penalty exists to make Twitter a more pleasant and less adversarial place for those people. Twitter isn’t interested in elevating your visibility and giving you a platform to &#;own the libs&#; or to expose Main Stream Media&#;s fake news lies. Those may be your goals, but remember they aren&#;t Twitters goals.

Twitter isn’t interested in elevating your visibility and giving you a platform to own the libs

Twitter has an internal score for how &#;toxic&#; or adversarial an accounts tweets are based on the language they use and how frequently they use it (this is known as Sentiment Analysis ). They have a separate score for how &#;trusted&#; a users account is, this score determines how much &#;trusted&#; your profile can get away with before getting Shadowbanned. After testing multiple profiles over a two-month time period here&#;s what we observed:

• Old Accounts: Accounts that are older can get away with more than newer profiles.
• New Accounts: Accounts less than a year old are much more likely to get affected by the Shadowban Penalty.
• High Follower Count: Accounts with more followers get away with more than those with fewer followers.
• Low Follower Count: Accounts with less than followers are much more likely to get affected by the Shadowban Penalty.
• Follower/Following Ratio: Accounts with a higher Followers/Following ratio get away with more.
• Inverted Follower/Following Ratio:Accounts that are Following more than it&#;s Followers are much more likely to get affected by the Shadowban Penalty.
• BlueCheckMark Immunity: I have never seen a BlueCheckMark account get Shadowbanned, it&#;s very likely they are immune to the Shadowban Penalty.

Twitter’s selective and arbitrary enforcement of the rules and account suspensions, forces problematic users to respawn into new accounts

Why do things like account age, number of followers, and follower/following ratio matter, because it&#;s how Twitter's arbitrary enforcement and Suspension/Banning of Right Wing Accounts gets amplified in a very clever way. Hypothetically speaking, let&#;s say you had a 5 year old account, with 15K Followers, and were only Following other accounts. You could get away with a lot of adversarial engagement before you would ever get caught by the Shadowban Penalty. As time goes on let&#;s say this purely hypothetical account gets Permanently Banned for tweeting a % accurate per capita racial crime statistic with a citation link to the FBI website. This person says screw you Twitter, and then sets up a brand new Twitter account, and goes back to adversarially engaging BlueCheckMark Journalists the exact same way they were before getting banned. However, now because it&#;s brand a new account, with less followers and an Inverted Follower/Following Ratio, it&#;s going to trip up the Shadowban Penalty almost immediately, limiting the visibility of their spicy memes, and depriving them of that hit of dopamine that comes from &#;Owning the Libs&#;. Twitter&#;s selective and arbitrary enforcement of the rules and account suspensions, forces problematic users to respawn into new accounts, which are much more likely to get Shadowbanned, depriving those users of the pleasure they get from using Twitter, making it much more likely they voluntarily stop coming back. Once you understand how and why the Shadowban Penalty is used you can start to think about ways to avoid it.(Return to Top)

How To Avoid Getting Shadowbanned

you need to think of a less aggressive and less confrontational way to convey the same message, your vocabulary and tone really matter her

As we stated above Twitter uses Sentiment Analysis to look at the words in any given tweet and determine how &#;toxic&#; they are. Tweets and replies that are terse, confrontational, combative or are a direct challenge to another account are going to get a much higher &#;toxic&#; score, than tweets that are slightly vague and more sophisticated in their insults. For example this tweet is would be scored as &#;toxic&#;, and would definitely move your account one step closer to the Shadowban Penalty:

Hey moron that&#;s not what he said at all, why don&#;t you stop being a dumbass and read the article for a change.

Instead, you need to think of a less aggressive and less confrontational way to convey the same message, your vocabulary and tone really matter here.

You can experiment with this Online Sentiment Analysis Tool , if your score comes back as &#;positive&#; your language isn&#;t toxic, if your score comes back as &#;negative&#; it is toxic and is more like to activate the Shadowban Penalty.

I agree it&#;s a lot less fun tip-toeing around what you really want to say, but if you&#;re Shadowbanned no one else is seeing your spicy replies, what&#;s the point. My suggestion is to try to dial back the intensity of your tweets and use the Sentiment Analysis Tool before making a snappy reply, then use the Shadowban Tool after every tweet paying attention to what gets you Shadowbanned and what doesn&#;t. You&#;re going to have to do some experimenting and testing to find out what words work for your style of tweeting, but don&#;t get you Shadowbanned.

Do not get into a back-and-forth argument with Paid Shills

The next thing you need to do to avoid the Shadowban Penalty is realize when you are being engaged by Paid Shills and Attack Agents . Do not get into a back-and-forth argument with Paid Shills. Their goal is to intentionally say complete nonsense and try and piss you off. If you let them get under your skin, you&#;ll make an angry reply and they will have tricked you into Shadowbanning yourself. Your best strategy is to block them as soon as you see them. If you want to help out your friends, you can get their Twitter User ID and quote tweet their User ID with the hashtag below and I&#;ll add them to my Twitter Paid Shill Block List .

#advertiserblocklist

This article has more information about Paid Twitter Shills and Attack Agents .

Getting above the Follower threshold is a milestone you really need to focus on if you're going to do any hard core adversarial engagement

The number of people following you has a direct effect on how much you can get away with before you get Shadowbanned. If you have multiple accounts, you should follow most of the same people in both accounts, this way when one of your accounts gets banned for pointing out that, No a woman really can&#;t have a penis, you can quickly build your followers back up by letting people know about your new account. Be sure to read my guide on Running Multiple Twitter Accounts for maintaining good operational security and not crossing the streams.

Getting above the Follower threshold is a milestone you really need to focus on if you&#;re going to do any hard core adversarial engagement. If your back-channel network can&#;t get you to that level, you&#;re going to need to be open to different options. I would never suggest that anyone violate Twitter&#;s Terms of Service and use a paid service where you can buy social media followers, but I have a close personal friend who does, and he thinks getting above followers is REALLY THAT IMPORTANT. He suggests using Google for a search term like buy twitter followers . He also suggests buying followers from two different services, choosing US followers if you can, and expecting to pay about $$30 per . You should be aware that Twitter will probably kill most of them every months, to force you back into the high-risk part of the Shadowban Penalty, so you have to decide if you&#;re OK with that recurring expense or not.(Return to Top)

Conclusion

To wrap things up, understanding what Twitter&#;s goals are, and what activates the Shadowban Penalty really can help you learn to evade it. Twitter realizes they really can&#;t stop you from coming back on their platform if you want to come back. What Twitter wants to do is make it harder for you gain pleasure from what they consider &#;toxic conversations&#;. It&#;s up to you if you&#;re willing to adapt to their new rules and find a way to improvise, adapt, and overcome&#;(Return to Top)

Technical Notes

The conclusions reached in this article were reached through empirical testing of multiple accounts over a sixty day timespan. Multiple experts with decades of experience in Adversarial Information Retrieval participated in performing the research. Reverse engineering an algorithm yields fuzzy results, so you should use them more as guidelines than hard rules.(Return to Top)

Social media has become one of the very important tool for communication in today&#;s world. It has established its reach to the farthest corners of the world and has also empowered people by making the information available easily. The most important aspect of Social media that makes it better than the traditional media is that it is two way. One can consume the information as well as create and post information and views.

While there are various kinds of social media platform based on what type of information can be shared, micro blogging site Twitter is one of the most talked about and preferred platform for commoners as well as celebrities to share their thought and updates with the world. Many world leaders including heads of the largest democracies like India and United States use Twitter significantly to connect with the masses.

Growth and Controversies

After going through an amazing growth, some social media platforms have ran into some controversies. Sharing personal data of the users with other companies, theft of data by hackers are some of the examples. For quite some time now, there have been talks about the biased treatment of users by Twitter based on their political leanings. This article talks about some sting operations related to biased treatment or  in other terms, &#;Shadow Banning&#; on Twitter. Twitter leaders have also made some statements about the political leaning of its employees. These statements and revelation have led people to believe that the biased treatment or the Shadow Ban is real.

Here it is worth noting that Twitter has denied any claims made by users on the Shadow Banning.

While the biased treatment is certainly there, it is not clear if its a political issue or a technology issue. The unnecessary statements and controversial activities by Twitter leadership may have led people to believe that its more political.

What is Shadow Ban

In simple terms, Shadow Ban is a way through which Twitter controls the reach of certain users to new audience. We will take a very simple case. When a Twitter user (say X) posts a tweet, it goes to the timeline (TL) of all the users who are following X. When any of the followers of X retweets the tweet, it goes to the TL of his/her followers and so on. For X to reach new audience one of the ways is to tweet with popular hashtags. Including the hashtag in one&#;s tweet makes the tweet visible to any user who clicks that hashtag. Through Shadow Ban, this reach is restricted. If X is under Shadow Ban, the tweet will virtually be invisible in the list of tweets under a certain hashtag. Even when a follower of X (say Y) retweet X&#;s tweet, it will sometimes become invisible to Y&#;s followers and so on. So, the reach of X&#;s tweets to new audience is restricted.

As per some reports, users who are under Shadow Ban do not appear as suggestion in the Twitter search box and so their discovery by new users who don&#;t follow them, is restricted.

How is Shadow Ban Implemented

In this section, I am focusing only on how the reach of a user who is under Shadow Ban, is restricted. This explanation is based on my observations and some experiments.

Ranking the Content Based on User Profiling

Based on how the users are using Twitter and the content they are tweeting or retweeting, Twitter profiles users using AI. With this profiling, the content posted by users is ranked. The content (tweet) that is ranked low by the platform gets pushed down on the TLs and hashtag tweet lists. It gets pushed so down that many a times it becomes virtually invisible.

Based on the variety of the data used to train the AI algorithms, they sometimes show bias. This article explains one such case. It seems the Twitter algorithms are biased and rank the content posted by users having &#;right of center&#; political leaning, as low. There are many users who have been Shadow Banned because they support a certain political leader that Twitter algorithms do not like.

Pushing &#;Low Rated&#; Tweets Down

Twitter has a Content Quality preference setting. The setting says &#;Show the best Tweets first&#;. This setting is switched on by default for all the users and so the Tweets that Twitter algorithms decide to be best will be shown at the top on your TL and the ones that are ranked low by the algorithms will be pushed down. What is worth noting is that this setting breaks the traditional way of displaying the tweets in reverse chronological order.

A few weeks back, Twitter came out with the &#;Sparkle&#; button. This sparkle button is supposed to allow the users to turn off the effect of this Preference Setting. This article talks about the Sparkle button. But, this button is available only on iOS app of Twitter and nowhere else. The image below shows the Sparkle button highlighted using the red circle. Despite what was promised, the Sparkle button is not available on Android and Web App of Twitter. Also, it keeps going back to the &#;Best Tweets first&#; setting. The only good thing is that when it does, it puts up a notification for you to know and change it back if you want.

How to beat Shadow Ban

To beat the Shadow Ban completely, two pronged approach needs to be followed.

Be the Boss of your TL

The content preference setting mentioned above is making the Twitter algorithms boss of your TL. The content preference says that it will make sure that most useful and interesting tweets as per your interest stay on top of your TL. But, in my opinion, it is reducing the variety of content that you can see. If one is following a certain handle, that means one is interested in what that handle is saying. Don&#;t let Twitter algorithms make that decision for you. I think those algorithms haven&#;t matured enough to be of help. Switch the preference setting off to see the tweets from all the handles you follow in reverse chronological order. Here is how to switch off the setting,

1- Login to mobile.twitter.com (or you can do it directly on your mobile app) and go to Settings and Privacy.

2- Click Content Preference and You will see the setting under discussion to become the boss of your TL.

Tweak Profiling done by Twitter Algorithms

The profiling done by AI algorithms that rank the tweets posted by a user as higher quality or lower quality are based on inferring the interests of the user. While the profiling algorithms might be working OK, the result of this profiting is surreptitiously being used to restrict the reach of certain users by ranking their tweets as low quality tweets. While your followers can change that processing by switching off the content preference setting discussed above, you need to tweak the profile created by AI algorithms to make sure your tweets are not rated as low quality just because of those interests and you do not end up being Shadow Banned.

We understand that the processing algorithms do not like &#;Non Liberal&#; type of users. So, you need to make them believe that you are not &#;Non Liberal&#;. Here is how to do this. I am showing this using a sample twitter profile that was used in the experiment.

1- Login to mobile.twitter.com and go to Settings and Privacy.

2- Now go to Privacy and Safety.

3- On the &#;Privacy and Safety&#; page, click &#;Personalization and Data&#;.

4- On the &#;Personalization and Data&#; page, click &#;See your Twitter Data&#;.

5- On this page, click &#;Interest and ads data&#; and then &#;Inferred Interests from Twitter&#;.

6- Now you will see a list containing the interests that Twitter algorithms have inferred from your use of the platform. The list comes up with all the boxes checked. You need to find the ones that are &#;Non Liberal&#; kind of interests.

For this profile that was used in the experiment the &#;Non Liberal&#; kind of interests have been unchecked to tweak the profiling done by the algorithms. Actually this tweaking is trying to show that the user is not at all interested in anything but, the business and science etc.

All the interests that show this user as somebody who is interested in Politics or the Political Leaders and Elections etc have been unchecked. Narendra Modi appears four times in this user&#;s list as an interest, uncheck it. Uncheck all such interests. Convince the algorithms that you are as &#;Liberal&#; as they want you to be. 🙂

Keep Updating the Inferred Interests

The algorithms that infer interests run periodically and will reinstate (check the box for) all the inferred interests again in 24 hours. So, you need to repeat this removal of &#;Non Liberal&#; inferred interest every day at least once. May be somebody can use the Twitter APIs and write a small app to make this task easier.

Conclusion

As part of a week long experiment using this method, it was observed that the visibility of the tweets of the user under consideration improved significantly. The tweets with trending hashtags attracted new users and increased interaction. The impressions on tweets increased and most importantly, disappearance of followers reduced to around 10% of what it was earlier (attracting new followers at the same time).

While the experiment period for this possible fix was a short one week and the conclusions are debatable, there is no other major factor in sight to believe something else caused the change in the visibility of the Handle under consideration. Possibly more people trying this out will be able to confirm the findings.

Onkar Pandey

Experienced Technologist and Strategic Thinker.
Writer at Great Musings.

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Are you dealing with a Twitter Shadowban?

Cases of Twitter shadowbans can be annoying, especially if you can&#;t figure out how you can rectify the problem. Suddenly, you notice that your account is almost invisible. Less engagement, social activity, almost zero retweets, likes, and comments. This can be a stumbling block if you are a social media influencer.

With all these going on, it is normal to throw in the million-dollar question, &#;am I shadowbanned?” Has Twitter censored my account, limiting its visibility? You might find yourself going as far as trying to figure out if your account is under a cyber-attack.

It isn&#;t a time to be scared, there&#;s no cause for alarm. Many active users on Twitter at some point can have their account shadowbanned. I have also been there. But should you fold your arms and watch your Twitter account remain crippled?

Here is the good news! This article helps you to understand Twitter Shadowban and how you can fix it.

What Is Shadowbanning? 

Shadowbanning is the act of suppressing your posts on your social media handle. Preventing your posts to reach your target audience. Shadowbans don&#;t come with notice from the social media platform on why your posts are hidden or banned. When your posts are shadowbanned, they become invisible to everyone. You are the only person left to view your posts.

Most times, the victims of Twitter shadowban are unaware of their shadowban. For instance, on 25th July , a story from Vice made rounds on the media. This pulled waves that Twitter was shadowbanning certain leaders of the Republican Party. The alleged victims included the Party chairperson, Ronna McDaniel amongst others.

The story caused a great uproar on the news. It is important for people to understand why Twitter is limiting accounts. This system also determines the position of each profile on the drop-down search bar.

Twitter maintains a stand that shadowbans are not what the public thinks they are. They are deliberate actions of the algorithm to promote healthy conversations. This also includes limiting the reach of troll-like behaviors and updates. Twitter Shadowban helps curtail the spread of aggressive language and plagiarized texts.

To a reasonable extent,  aTwitter Shadowban reduces issues of spamming on the network. Twitter gets to limit other users from seeing your account. It also prevents users from seeing your profile in the search options. Including banning all your tweets from search results.

Shadowbanning is annoying for every Twitter user.

Am I Shadowbanned: How to check if you are shadowbanned on Twitter

With all that may be happening to your Twitter account, I believe you will be asking yourself; Am I shadowbanned?

The first step to getting out of shadowban is to run a Twitter Shadowban check on your account. With a Twitter Shadowban tester/checker, you&#;ll know the status of your Twitter account. If your Twitter account is shadowbanned or not.

Follow these 3 steps, to run a quick Twitter Shadowban check on your account.

1. Visit twitter using an incognito or private browser mode

Depending on which browser that you are using, you can visit Twitter using an incognito mode. Look for options that activate the incognito mode and surf the net like a ghost. This will help you visit Twitter without leaving your digital footprints.

2. Visit the Twitter Explore page

Twitter explore works like the Twitter Search box when you are logged in. Go to the Twitter explore page, via www.Twitter.com/explore. Or, you can easily type “Twitter Search” on your browser for quicker access.

3. Scroll down to the search box and run a check on your account using your username

Type your username into the search box and run a check. If you can see your posts and replies, then you are not shadowbanned. You are shadowbanned if you can&#;t see your account, posts, and replies.

Or, you can run a quick check using a Twitter Shadowban Tester tool. Visit https://shadowban.eu, input your username and click check.

This tool will run a quick check on your Twitter account. Results will be provided on the status of your Twitter account. These results come in the following forms;

1. If your account exists
2. Is on suspension, 
3. Has a ghost ban, 
4. Affected by reply deboosting,
5. Has a search ban,
6. A search suggestion ban.

If you have an all green signal on all categories, then your account is safe.

What to do if you are shadowbanned

What is the next thing to do after discovering that your Twitter account is shadowbanned?

You might become anxious upon learning your Twitter account is blocked this way. It is normal to start throwing questions like; how long does Twitter Shadowban last? What exactly did I do to deserve a shadowban?

Your behaviour during your shadowban period has a lot of roles to play. It will determine if the ban will be extended or lifted.

Twitter Shadowbans usually last for days. I suggest that you take a break from any social activity that may need your Twitter account. Leave your Twitter account alone. Petitions don&#;t help you lift the ban. Tweeting too frequently could worsen the situation. You could earn yourself an extra day of shadowban if you continue tweeting.

You must completely stop tweeting and start looking out for ways to lift the ban.

If your shadowban exceeds 72 hours, inform the Twitter support team. It&#;s not a bad idea to ask help.

You can also use your shadowban period to seek proactive ways to lift the ban.

How to Remove Shadowban 

Follow these simple steps to remove a shadowban from your Twitter account.

1. Don&#;t Tweet

Do not make the mistake of Tweeting during your shadowban period. Take a break and let your account be.

2. Clear all social activity that you feel might have caused the shadowban

This might be difficult to do as you are not informed of which post attracted the ban. Still, you can begin with stopping any bots or automated tweets you use for Traffic. Delete all spam comments, tweets, and links that you have dropped. Clearing your Twitter account of any implicating social activity is a good step to take.

Clear your Twitter of anything that might go against Twitter policies.

3. Check if you have picked the wrong interests

Your Twitter data is another area that can attract a shadowban. You should begin with going through the boxes that you ticked as your interest. Find out if there are any of your interests that are worthy of suspicion.

4. Contact the Twitter support team

They placed the ban; they can help you lift it.

The Twitter support team helps users rectify issues about their accounts. These include issues about account suspension down to shadowbanning. The Twitter support team can help you clear all restrictions on your account. This includes if you can give them reasons for doing so.

A twitter agent should help you lift the shadowban if it lasts longer than 72 hours.

What should you do when your shadowban is lifted?

You just have to stay clear of whatever might have earned you a shadowban.

· Avoid getting your account reported
· Don&#;t tweet like a bot
· Don’t spam other users with links and unwarranted replies
· Avoid trolls and online fights

Staying clear of a shadowban is a deliberate action. You can choose to stay clear of Twitter’s bans if you stick to obeying their terms of use.

How do you avoid getting shadowbanned?

There are a lot of factors that Twitter considers before serving as a shadowban. Always make sure you base yourself on Social media tips / best practices. Understanding some of these rules will help you figure out the safety of your account. If your account is standing close to a shadowban, and how you can avoid getting shadowbanned.

Verify that you are a human being

Your social activity will be limited if there is no identity verification. This happens if the Twitter algorithm suspects that your account is managed by a bot. You can begin by confirming your email address and uploading a profile picture. These little steps will limit your chances of getting shadowbanned.

Apply moderation in all you do

We understand that you are a digital marketer and you need to get more traffic for your website. Some need their Twitter account to drive traffic for digital marketing. Using Twitter to drive organic traffic or sell your products and services might be risky. You can earn a shadowban if done wrongly.

Keep your activities as simple and you can to avoid other Twitter users from blocking you. Many blocks or reports on your account could attract a shadowban.

Be smart, stay away from online confrontations

It is normal to fight for what you stand for; a club, a movement, your hobby. These actions might become too confrontational. You’ll have Twitter AI misinterpreting your plain actions as a troll.

Whatever you do on Twitter, make sure that your replies and tweets are gentle. Engage other users in mild conversational tones. The more polite you sound, the safer your account is.

So what is a shadowban and how to remove it?

Twitter shadowbanning can be frustrating for every Twitter user. It&#;s worse if you aren&#;t aware of what you did wrong.

Unfortunately, you can&#;t negotiate or reason with the Twitter AI. No platform will offer you an opportunity to explain that you were banned wrongly.

You can only decide to become more careful. Prevent your account from attracting a second shadowban by sticking to Twitter policies. You can go as far as studying the accounts of successful Twitter users. Observe the structure of their tweets and replicate the same pattern. Understand what Twitter AI shuns and avoid them. Twitter algorithms don&#;t like, you can easily avoid shadowbans.