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YouTube Shadowban
If you’ve noticed a decline in your account engagement and unsure why or how this happened, your account may have experienced a YouTube shadowban. What is this exactly? Let me explain.
A “shadowban” is described as the blocking or partial blocking of a user to the networks community, resulting in hidden content or not being able to participate in the platform at its fullest. Basically, if the network believes that you have violated any policies or terms, they can make your content invisible or less prominent to the public.
If you are a content creator, marketer or social media manager, this is a big deal and a nightmare you never want to come true. So, that’s why I’m going to share some advice on how to find out if your account has been shadowbanned, how to fix a shadowban and how to avoid it at all costs.
This isn’t just specific to YouTube and can happen across Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
How to find out if your YouTube account has been shadowbanned
If your engagement or reach has slowed significantly in the past few weeks, it could be due to a shadowban. The tricky part about shadowbans is that the network will not notify you that they placed this on your account, so you have to find out manually.
In order to see if your YouTube account has been shadowbanned, you must log out of your account and refresh the page. Then, if you are looking for a comment, sort by newest comment and if you don’t see your comment at all, this is a shadowban.
Reasons leading to a YouTube shadowban
If you are unsure of why your content was shadowbanned or you want to avoid it, here are some common social media mistakes that lead to a YouTube shadowban.
- Spamming
- Owning several channels on the same device or IP address
- Heavily promotional content
- Content with hate speech, abusive behavior or harassment
- Copyrighted content
- Posting about illegal activities or topics
Keywords are often detected from a bot on YouTube and then a shadowban is put into place. Therefore, if you want to avoid a shadowban, make sure there aren’t any suspicious keywords that could attract a shadowban.
Usually shadowbans don’t last longer than 24 hours, with some shadowbans extending to 48 hours. You can use this time to see if you truly have violated any policies and how you can change that.
While your account is shadowbanned, lay low and avoid posting content. The shadowban will most likely be removed automatically, where then you can resume posting and interacting with the network like normal. In order to avoid another YouTube shadowban, make sure to follow the network’s Community Guidelines.
If you feel that a shadowban has been wrongly placed on your account, reach out to YouTube’s support and make them aware of your issue.
Now that you know about the YouTube shadowban, you can apply these tips and avoid shadowbanning across the rest of your social accounts.
Not sure where to get started on YouTube? We will leave you everything you need to know and how to get your marketing strategy started on YouTube, so you can excel in your videos.