Am I shadowbanned on Twitter (X)?

How do I know if X shadowbanned me?

X does not notify you of every visibility restriction or change. Three symptoms are worth a check:

• your view counts drop sharply;
• your replies receive no reactions;
• people you mention do not answer.

None of these proves a restriction on its own. Check the account from outside your own session, and keep a record of each result.

Should I use X's Under the Hood or a live check?

X's Under the Hood shows the labels X applied to your own account and posts in a past month; Shadowban Radar shows what anyone can see of any public X account today, for free and with no login.

• Under the Hood: X's official report, only for the logged-in owner of an account at least 1 year old with at least 10 posts that month. It comes out about 10 days after that month ends.
• Shadowban Radar: any public account, of any age, with no login. It runs the 4 checks (search suggestion ban, search ban, ghost ban, reply deboosting) on what X serves today, with a confidence level for each check.

If Under the Hood looks clean and a checker finds a restriction, both can be right: Under the Hood covers a month that has already ended, the check covers today. For today's answer on any account, run Shadowban Radar's free check; for the labels X applied in a past month, open Under the Hood if your account qualifies.

See what Under the Hood shows and what it does not for the detail.

Can Grok tell me if I'm shadowbanned on X?

Partly. Grok can search X's public posts for your handle, which tests for a search ban, but in its public replies it says it cannot access private account data or labels. Shadowban Radar runs all 4 checks on any public handle, free and with no login, including the 3 that a search of public posts does not cover: search suggestion ban, ghost ban and reply deboosting.

The 4 restrictions to test

X can limit an account in 4 distinct ways. You can have one without the others, so testing only one proves nothing about the rest.

• Search suggestion ban: your account is hidden from the search dropdown when people type your name.
• Search ban: your posts are removed from search results entirely.
• Ghost ban: your replies are detached from the conversations they belong to.
• Reply deboosting: your replies are pushed out of the sort order everyone reads.

How do I test for a shadowban on X manually?

Use a second account that does not follow you. X personalizes what each viewer sees, so your own session is not a reliable comparison. A private window does not help much: many logged-out pages only show a login prompt.

1. Type your exact handle in the X search box: no dropdown suggestion while your profile opens fine means a suggestion ban.
2. Search from:yourhandle in the Latest tab: zero results while the account has recent public posts means a search ban.
3. Open a conversation you replied to recently and look for your reply in both the default sort and Latest: absent in both means a ghost ban.
4. Still in the default sort, check where your replies rank: consistently last or hidden behind Show more replies means deboosting.

What is NOT a shadowban?

Three things often look like a shadowban and are not:

• A drop in likes and impressions alone. Engagement varies for many reasons, and the algorithm needs no ban to show your posts less.
• A brand-new account missing from search suggestions. New accounts are often not suggested until they build activity.
• A limit message from X. When you hit a daily limit on posts, follows or messages, X shows an error message that names the limit: it is a usage limit, not a shadowban.

X shows notices for some restrictions, but search or reply visibility can change without a message. Repeating the same checks tells you what changed in the surfaces tested.

What each check measures

Shadowban Radar measures instead of estimating: every verdict comes from X's own public data, read on X through a specialized data provider, from the same search results and conversation threads X serves to anyone. Nothing is inferred from view counts or engagement, no login or password is ever needed, each verdict states its confidence level, and every result shows when X's data was read.

Each of the 4 checks reads one specific, public signal, and nothing beyond it:

• Search suggestion ban: checks whether X suggests the account when someone types its handle. The account either comes back or it does not, a direct yes-or-no read.
• Search ban: checks whether recent posts from the account come back when they are searched on X. It sees whether a post appears at all, never how high or low it ranks.
• Ghost ban: reads recent replies from the account inside the conversations they belong to, as X serves them to readers. It calls a reply missing only once the absence is proven.
• Reply deboosting: reads those same replies, the same way, and only concludes once the conversation has been read in full.

None of the 4 checks can see X's internal moderation score, a reason code, or the ranking each viewer gets. A check without enough evidence returns Untestable rather than a guessed verdict. The full breakdown is on the methodology page.

How long does a shadowban usually last?

X publishes no universal duration. Some of X's own published label code carries a fixed timer of 7, 14 or 30 days depending on the path. Other paths carry none, and a timer resets if the same trigger fires again.

For the breakdown by restriction and what triggers each timer, see how long each restriction tends to last. For the share of checked accounts that lift within 7 and within 14 days, updated daily, see the live shadowban statistics.

Can a shadowban happen on Instagram or TikTok too?

Not by this name, and not measured here. Every check on this page and on this site reads X only: nothing here applies to Instagram, TikTok, or any other platform.

Rather than guess from view counts, run the free X shadowban test and read the 4 verdicts side by side.

The 4 restrictions, in detail

• Search suggestion ban
• Search ban
• Ghost ban
• Reply deboosting