I've been shadowbanned... now what? (Details inside)

Hello - I am going to lay out the details here to see if anyone can help me get my account working properly again.

The situation:
I have an account with 128k followers that gets top 9 posts in about a third of the hashtags I post in. Today I suddenly noticed that my likes weren’t flowing in as usual. I suspected a shadowban so I looked up several of the hashtags that I currently had posts in the top 9 on and looked them up on a private browser. They were not there. The posts clearly show up under the hashtags when I’m logged into my account, but not when I check on a private browser. Also, I usually get likes flowing in every minute but suddenly they stopped coming in.

Background:
Some details that I think may have caused the shadowban (I have no idea if any of these contributed but I will list them to provide any background that might help). I noticed this whole thing happen about 5 minutes after I sold a story shoutout on my page. Earlier that day I had messaged another niche account if they were interested in selling their page. Also want to note that I bought this account about a month ago and it was grown organically since like 2015. I have the original e-mail with it too.

About a week ago I noticed my engagement stopped dramatically (averaging 1.5k likes vs 5.5k historical average), so I stopped posting for 3 days and then started up again. When I began posting after the break my engagement went way back up to normal/even higher (average around 8k on last 3 posts).

My most recent post before the shadowban occurred, the only strange thing I can think of was that I used some pet hashtags which have never been used on the account before (it’s a portrait photography account, but I posted a portrait that had animals in it so i threw in some pet hashtags). I checked triberr and I am not using any banned hashtags in that post or any other post.

Another thing that may have caused it possibly? is that I recently began automating a seperate account in Jarvee (safe settings). This was using my laptop and home internet as the proxy, but I have also logged into my affected account onto that same laptop, so I think IG would be able to track an association there.

Does anyone know what could have possibly caused this in my case? And more importantly, please let me know any information you can share that could help me lift this shadowban. Also, I am curious if an account can ever fully recover after a shadowban.

P.S. for any non-believers in shadowbans, they certainly do exist. It would be very easy for me to show this with my account.

6 Likes

Are you usually posting only human portraits? And on how many post you had decreased reach? just on the pet post?

Have not had this but read several time that it take a couple weeks for it to lift. Try using a hashtag that is unique then check it from an account that has never interacted with the account in question.

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Shadowban is a myth, limited exposure on the other hand is real!

It’s hard to tell which actions may trigger the algorithm to limit your exposure.

Just post as usual and see how Instagram behaves in a week or two.

Hi - About 1 out of 10 posts will have a pet in it, so this was not out of the ordinary. The pet post did not have decreased reach on it, it was about a week ago when i had roughly 5 posts with decreased reach.

@instadog @damian24 I am 100% positive my account is not showing up on hashtags, no need to check with unique hashtags.

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Update:

So I posted again this morning, my usual content, usual time and the usual hashtags. What’s really odd now is that my new post is not being “shadowblocked” or whatever you want to call it from hashtag results. BUT, my old posts still are… lol wtf is going on.

For example, if I search the hashtag under my own account or another account I have that is following that account I can see two of the posts in the top 9 (the new on from today and one from a few days ago). However, if I search the hashtag on a private browser I can only see the new post in the hashtag result. I am super confused as to what is happening. Not sure what or if anything will fix this but I think I will just presume posting as per usual unless someone can recommend a better option. Thanks everyone

A little bit more info…

I just checked my e-mail on the IG account and I received an e-mail from IG just a couple hours after I noticed the shadowban saying that there was a login from a device that’s usually not me.

It gave me the location of the login which was about 40 miles away from me in another city. Maybe this had something to do with it. Anyway, I updated my password, and I’m just going to wait it out I guess. I read elsewhere that a typical shadowban lasts 14 days. There’s no consensus as to whether you should continue normal activities or completely log and stay out of your account during that time. I think i’m going to try the latter.

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Unusual account behavior can flag your account and hit you with limited exposure. My account got hacked a while ago and I got the same e-mail as you did. My account was crippled for one full week. Just wait it out my man.

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Thanks bud, I will do that. During the wait it out period, do you recommend completely being logged out of the app or were you still logged in and doing light activity such as DMing and liking photos?

I’m having the same problems with my page @melzmoods. It used to grow 300-600+ everyday but just today it grew only 9 followers? Wtf?? Do you believe this has to do with the “shadowbanned”? I’m very concerned at the moment.

From my experience, the best way to get rid of a shadowban is not to past anything (also no storys), for 7-10 days, then when you comeback and test is the shadowban is gone, start slow with the posts, max 1 a day for some time. It is very dificult to tell why the shadowban was produced, so the best way is to test (yes it sucks).

After 25 days shadowban is down!

I stopped to use hashtag (I was using only 1 hashtag about profile #profilename)
Account was in PV mode: I follow that step (thanks to @BruceSilduk)

  • delete cookies and leave account pending
  • I waiting for to STOP PV
  • After 5 days from stop PV, I can start with warm up!

After that, I didn’t use hashtags as I said, and now I have reach about hashtag,

2 Likes

Shadowban is limited exposure haha or I miss something ? :smirk:

Shadowban means your posts doesn’t appear under hashtags.