Twitter Shadowban: What Is It and How to Remove It

Suddenly, you notice that none of your Twitter posts seem to be showing up at all: no likes, no retweets, no traffic, and no conversions from Twitter. You might be dealing with a Twitter shadowban. This term has been popping up very often in recent times, but you may have also heard it referred to as stealth or ghost banning. It’s unpleasant and unprofitable for business accounts.

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What Is Shadowbanning? 

Shadowbanning means that your posts or activity are blocked and don’t show up on a site, but you haven’t received any official ban or notification about it.

Twitter uses AI technology to censor and hide your posts from your subscribers and the whole Twitter community. If Twitter discovers that you’ve been spamming or breaking their policies, you may receive a shadowban. If you’ve been shadowbanned by Twitter, your posts will disappear from Twitter feeds and search results, making it impossible for users to engage with your tweets.

This is a way to prevent spammers from continuing to spam without anyone else in the community (or outside of it) noticing their posts. That way, other Twitter users don’t have to endure spam because they can’t see it. The spammer may not even realize they’ve been blocked, so they won’t immediately stop their work and start to find ways to bypass the ban.

Shadowbanning started in March of 2018 when Twitter began changing its policy to focus on “serving healthy conversations.” Their primary goal was to deal with the problem of “trolls” and their abuse of Twitter’s users, specifically cases that “distort and detract from the public conversation.” With that in mind, they implemented new policies.

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

1. Thread shadowbans, which limit the visibility of your replies or comments to specific tweets. Other users may not see your contributions to the conversation, but you can still see them.
2. Search suggestion shadowbans, which prevent your profile from appearing in the search results when other users look for specific keywords or hashtags. This can make it harder for new users to discover your account or content.
3. Search bans, which remove your tweets (or some of them) from the 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 looking for it.

How to understand if you are shadowbanned on Twitter

You might be wondering if you have a Twitter shadowban. Despite Twitter’s official stance that they don’t shadowban users, many people believe that it happens. If you notice a sudden drop in engagement or if your posts seem to have disappeared from Twitter feed and search results, it’s worth investigating further.

To test if you’re shadowbanned, you can use a tool like the Twitter shadowban check. Simply enter your username and click “check” to see the results. If the test shows that you’re not shadowbanned, you can continue tweeting as usual and look for other reasons why your engagement might be low. If you are shadowbanned, the tool can help you identify which type of ban you’re experiencing.

The tool also provides information on the different types of bans 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, which hide your replies to certain tweets.
• Ghost bans, which make it seem like your account is inactive or non-existent by hiding all traces of your activity.

If you prefer to test for a Twitter shadowban without using a tool, you can try logging out of your account and searching for your username on Twitter. Here’s how to do it:

1. Log out of your Twitter account or open an incognito tab in your web browser.
2. Go to the Twitter Explore page: www.twitter.com/explore
3. Navigate to the search box and type “from: username”. Replace “username” with your Twitter username.
4. If your tweets don’t appear on the feed or if you can’t see your recent posts, it’s possible that you’ve been shadowbanned.

Keep in mind that this method isn’t foolproof and may not always be accurate. Using a shadowban tool like the one mentioned earlier can provide more detailed and reliable results.

Ways to Avoid Getting Shadowbanned on Social Media

There are several mistakes you can make on social media that could lead to a shadowban. Here are some ways to avoid getting shadowbanned:

• Confirm your email address when setting up your account.
• Avoid creating new accounts too frequently, especially if you have been banned before.
• Upload a profile image to your account.
• Do not use the same text or images to reply to posts on multiple pages.
• Avoid using automation tools or services to leave identical comments on other tweets.
• Aim to have at least 500 followers on your account.
• Keep your Follower/Following ratio natural. Pages with a higher Followers/Following ratio tend to escape the ban.
• Avoid having an inverted Follower/Following ratio, i.e., following more accounts than the number of followers.
• Be mindful of who you follow, retweet, mute, block, or who follows, retweets, mutes, or blocks you.
• Avoid fast tweeting or spamming.
• Use relevant and specific hashtags in your tweets instead of highly generic ones, especially those that promote contests or giveaways. It’s better to create unique hashtags for your brand.
• Avoid using aggressive, confrontational, or demeaning language in your tweets. This is often the primary trigger for a shadowban, with other factors influencing the severity of the ban.

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

You should also avoid trolling, getting into online confrontations, or being too aggressive and emotional in your posts and comments. You can force people to mute or block you.

However, sometimes the reasons for being banned are not obvious and not listed in the table above. That’s why it’s better to think in advance and take some actions before disappearing from users’ feeds. My tip for avoiding a Twitter shadowban is to get verified on Twitter and receive a blue checkmark badge next to your name. Being Twitter verified means you are safe from shadowban penalties. Moreover, there are significant business/brand advantages to being Twitter verified, even if you are not famous.

Why get verified on Twitter?

1. You Can Filter Your Notifications Stream

As a verified account, you will be able to filter your notifications, including only replies, likes, or retweets from other verified users. You can use the same filters for your direct messages. 

2. You Gain Trust From Your Audience

Nothing shows “trustworthy” on Twitter more than a verified blue badge. Having the blue tick means you have passed some kind of test of reliability.

3. Prevents Twitter Identity Theft

If your Twitter profile is verified, the blue tick shows a mark of authenticity. It shows that your account is credible. 

4. Helps You Network with Influencers

If you want to launch a Twitter influencer campaign you want that influencers can recognize you and want to work with you. You, therefore, need to differentiate from others.

When an influencer sees a message from the verified profile, they are more likely to give it more attention and better offers.

5. Build Your Reputation as an Industry Authority

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

The process of verification is not rocket science, but requires some time and efforts:

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

• Complete: The profile must have a valid name and photo.
• Active: The account must have been active for the past six months.
• Secure: The account must have a verified email address or phone number.
• Publicity: the account should be a well-known person, brand, or company, with many mentions in the media (while advertising articles and posts are not considered as sources).

In case you don’t want to do this routine, look for reliable resources to publish the posts about you, check out this Twitter verification service.

How To Get Verified On Twitter 

They will save you time with their marketplace of flexible news websites that offer sponsored content placements. They will also share your PR materials with leading news publishers and influencers worldwide. You can save money by choosing the websites you want to work with and paying for posts on those selected websites only, with no monthly charges or hidden fees.

What to do if you are shadowbanned?

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

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

Once the ban is lifted, you can take steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Keep in mind that Twitter organizes users’ feeds with popular and relevant content. It wants to provide you with content that it thinks you’ll engage with the most and, conversely, to hide posts that it considers spammy, harmful, or violent.

Ways to Remove Shadowban:

It’s very important that once you are shadowbanned, you need to completely stop tweeting.

A few days later, naturally go about your feed, 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 spammy tweets from your account. Consider it as a “reset button” for your Twitter profile.

Also, you may be suspected because of your “wrong” interests for Twitter’s team, so try to remove all of them.

Click:

Settings and Privacy → Privacy and safety → See Twitter data → Interest and add data → Interests from Twitter → Interested in

Then Uncheck all the boxes, try to do this every week.

• Getting in touch with the Twitter support team is worth trying. Some people got unbanned reporting the problem. Some people got a response fairly quickly from Twitter. Some people said to support that they want to launch an ad campaign on Twitter 😉
• Get BlueCheckMark Immunity: I have never seen a BlueCheckMark account get Shadowbanned, it’s very likely they are immune to the Shadowban Penalty.

Conclusion. Twitter shadowban

A shadowban can be disappointing, especially if you don’t feel that it’s fair. You may disagree with the Twitter algorithm about what is or isn’t relevant, or maybe your constructive debate was confused by Twitter AI technology with trolling.

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

What other methods can help Twitter users in case they’ve been shadowbanned? Do you have experience with Twitter bans? Let me know in the comments.