Although being hit by shadow-ban is not desirable for any Instagram user, it still isn’t the end as it’s not impossible to recover from it. Shadow banning is referred to as blocking a user’s Instagram content in such a way that they are unaware that it is happening.
Shadow-banning can happen to virtually anyone. It makes your account invisible to everyone except your current followers. The user is not given any official ban or any notification that they have been banned.
It’s a way to let spammers continue to spam without anyone else (in the Instagram community or outside of it) seeing what they do, and the spammers think they are doing it right. But it’s quite worrisome that the innocent also get hit.
How To Tell If You Have Been Shadow-banned On Instagram
There’s no sure way to tell that you have been shadow-banned but there are a few things you notice that can make us assume you have been shadow-banned.
- Use an incognito browser and search Instagram.com@<your username>. If your account shows up in the search results, you are most likely not shadow-banned
- Another way to check if you have been shadow-banned or not is to look at your Instagram insights, especially overall reach. If your reach declined dramatically, you might have been hit by a shadowban.
Why Does Your Instagram Account Get Shadow-banned?
There are many reasons why your Instagram account got shadow-banned but few are mentioned below.
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Your account is continually being reported
When your account is being reported continually, it would be assumed that you are spamming or violating any of their terms of service which could lead to your shadowban or even disabling your account.
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You used banned hashtags
Occasionally, a popular tag becomes overrun with inappropriate content. When it happens, Instagram can remove the hashtag or limit its use. If you use a banned hashtag, it will prevent your other hashtags from ranking and could lead to a shadow-ban.
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You exceeded Instagram posting limits
Following or un-following not more than 60 people in an hour, placing no more than 30 hashtags in a single post, posting no more than 60 comments per hour on other user’s posts, liking no more than 150 posts in an hour.
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You used an Instagram Automation Service also known as an Instagram bot
If you aren’t growing your following yourself,you aren’t putting in the hard work. You could get hit by a ban as Instagram considers using bots as a spammy tactic and frowns at it.
Note that it is better to have a 100 followers that love your brand and buy from you than a 1000 followers who never purchase from you or interact with your content.
How To Get UnShadow-banned On Instagram?
You can’t unshadow-ban at all. It’s only for one or two weeks. But if you can’t wait, you may try the following steps below, it might help.
Avoid Posting For A Couple Of Days
Lay low, go cold turkey and hope it gets lifted. Some people stopped using Instagram for days after the shadow-banning and their ban was lifted. You can also do that and hope too.
Put your hashtags in the caption not in the comment section
If you had your hashtags in the comment section, you might get shadowbanned in less than 3 hours so it is advisable to let your hashtags stay in the caption.
It might make your caption look bulky but you can make it clean by using 6 or more full stops, bullet points or any other means to separate your caption from your hashtags.
Delete all hashtags from your recent posts
Some hashtags might be inappropriate. Some, banned. Some are being blocked by Instagram and others might be innocent buh are merely spammed by inappropriate photos.
Subsequently, removing the hashtags works quite a lot. Infact, it seems to be the fastest way to lift the shadow-ban.
Many have also reported that not using the same hashtags over and over helps as Instagram are mostly after users suspected to be a bot.
Contact Instagram
Getting in touch with Instagram is hard but you can still try. You can get un shadow-banned by reporting the problem.
Here is how to contact Instagram
- Open the Instagram page and shake your phone, that will activate the “Instagram Rage Shake” (not all phones have this feature) Report a problem” to Instagram through the app.
- A few people had been lucky and had their ban lifted after they reported the problem and you can try also .
- Report the problem everyday until it’s fixed.
- Go to Instagram settings.
- Select Report a problem.
- Select Something isn’t working.
You can try sending them a message on Facebook via their page also or you can simply send a email at support@instagram.com
However, you necessarily don’t have to tell them your account got shadow-banned. Infact, DON’T , you can just tell them: “I am not being shown in the hashtags I’ve used for my post”.
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Do not switch to a business profile
Remain in your personal profile but unlink your Instagram profile from your Facebook page. The two go hand in hand though logical as Facebook pages are the source of advertising revenue of Facebook and Instagram.
We can’t really guarantee that this trick will work but since you want to get un shadow-banned so badly, you can try every possible way.
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Don’t use too many hashtags
Delete hashtags from old posts,put recent ones in captions and use less than 30 hashtags.
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Deactivate and reactivate your Instagram account
Starting afresh might be an option, you can just deactivate and reactivate your Instagram account.
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Boost a post
Summary
Basically, the reason why Instagram shadowban is because they think you might be spamming. The deal is to actually make Instagram algorithm think you are not spamming, that you are just a regular person minding his/ her own business. You should protect yourself by being careful and not being against the terms and conditions of Instagram. Desist from inappropriate acts also, like spamming contents, starting fights , trolling other users and posting inappropriate photos.