Shadowbans and Instagram

What is a shadowban?

Instagram can determine that an account is abusing hashtags and that account will be temporarily blocked from showing up on any hashtag feed. The industry calls this being “shadowbanned” because they ban you from showing up in the hashtag feeds without even telling you.

The reason why Instagram doesn’t want you to use banned hashtags is pretty simple. They want to keep their platform clear of things like explicit content, bullying and body image issues. If they see that you are putting out content that is against what they are trying to prevent, then they will take action to quiet your content.

It’s kind of hard to argue against this.

There are literally over a billion hashtags you could use.Do not use a banned hashtag.

For the betterment of the overall community and direction of Instagram, as well as your own benefit to not use these banned hashtags.

When it comes to shadowbanning someone for overusing the same hashtags, Instagram’s motivation is sort of an anti-spam measure that Instagram uses to make sure that you aren’t flooding a certain group of viewers.

Instagram wants you to vary your hashtag usage so they can classify your content better, and this helps push you in that direction.

Even if Instagram didn’t penalize you for using the same hashtags over and over again, you should be diversifying your hashtag selection with every post for your own good. No list of hashtags will be perfect for every post you make. For each post, mix a combination of hashtags that you know to work with new hashtags that are topical.

What do I do if I’ve been shadowbanned?

If you have stepped into dangerous territory and had your account shadowbanned, then you can be in big trouble for a bit. Everyone can be shadowbanned. The big account and the small. Everyone is susceptible to it.

Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do either.

You simply have to wait. Typically it takes around two weeks for your content to start showing up on hashtag feeds again. Therefore, it’s much better to avoid using banned hashtags altogether.

It’s another manual task that can be time-consuming during content planning but it pays to never be shadowbanned by Instagram. Hashtag tools help with making sure you don’t use the same hashtag too many times in a row. Or that you don’t use it too many times in your last ten posts. Aand they check for things like banned hashtags.

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