Twitter (X) Temporarily Restricted: What Each Message Means (2026)

When an X account is temporarily restricted, X shows one of a few messages. The main ones are "Your account has been locked", "We've temporarily limited some of your account features" and "We've added a temporary label to your account which may impact its reach". A read-only notice also exists. Each limits something different and lasts a different time.

This page gives the exact words, read on November 5, 2026 in X's Help Center and X's published code.

Only the label has a duration in X's code: 7 days, 30 days, or no end date. A lock waits for you to verify, and a limit shows a countdown.

Which X message means what?

The message names the action X took: a lock asks you to verify, a limit starts a countdown, read-only blocks posting, and a label hides posts from people who do not follow you.

Sources: the help page on locked or limited accounts, enforcement options, suspended accounts, and the ReadOnly label in X's code. The label row is explained below.

What does "Your account has been locked" mean?

"Your account has been locked" means X detected suspicious behavior and the account may have been compromised, so you must prove you are the owner. X's Help Center says you can verify by phone, email or recaptcha, and the lock ends when you do.

By phone, you enter a number and a code. By email, you select Send email and enter the code. For a recaptcha, you wait, then select Continue to X.

While a lock waits for a challenge such as a phone number, X's notices page says the account "is removed from follower counts, Reposts, and likes". If you cannot sign in, X says to contact support.

What does "We've temporarily limited some of your account features" mean?

"We've temporarily limited some of your account features" means X detected behavior that may break the X Rules or inhibit other people's ability to express themselves freely. X says this can mean "only your followers are able see your activity on X, including posts, likes, reposts".

The screen has a countdown. Selecting "Continue to X" starts it, and the length "varies based on the nature of the violation". Two options can appear: use X in a limited state for the time shown, or verify a phone number or email.

Choose with care. If you pick the limited state, X says you "won't see the option to restore your account by verification again". After repeated violations, you may not get the phone option at all.

During the limited state, your account and posts "may be filtered out of certain places on X, including from search results and notifications". For a limit caused by a violation, you can browse but not post, repost or like, and only followers see past posts.

A different message names a daily cap instead. X's limits page lists 50 original posts and 200 replies a day for unverified accounts, and says the error tells you which limit you hit.

What does "this account is temporarily restricted" mean for visitors?

When someone visits a restricted profile, they may see a warning and a request to confirm they want to view it. X's Help Center describes two cases. For a lock, visitors may be told the account "has displayed unusual activity". For a limit caused by a violation, they may be told it "may have violated the X Rules".

The page does not give the exact words of the warning, so we do not quote it. The cause is a lock or a limit, and the steps above apply.

What does "We've added a temporary label to your account" mean?

"We've added a temporary label to your account which may impact its reach" is a notice that X limited the reach of the whole account. It is not in X's Help Center: the pages we read on November 5, 2026 do not contain it. Affected users posted it with screenshots, for example @jamji_jamaramji on December 3, 2024.

Those screenshots show two explanations. The first reads: "We have found that your account may contain spam or be engaging in other types of platform manipulation." The second: "The reach of your account may be limited and its content may also be temporarily restricted, such as being excluded from trends, replies, and recommended notifications."

The screen ends with a Request Review button. The next screen reads: "We'll review your account to determine if it contains spam or is engaging in other types of platform manipulation. If we've made a mistake, we'll remove the label."

Another user, @curtdoolittle on December 29, 2023, wrote that a test also had to be passed to restore the account. The wording varies between posts: treat it as reported, not official.

How long does an X temporary label last?

In X's published code, the automatic spam labels on an account last 7 days or 30 days, and only one rule, for a spam campaign, sets no end date. These are the defaults in the code, not a promise: X can change them, and the rules file is a mirror last synced on October 20, 2026.

The rules sit in the abuse-enforcement-service folder, and the label they add is SpamHighRecall.

• 7 days: the rules spam_high_recall_7d and liveness_check_and_spam_high_recall_7d, and the rule for the score llm_slop_user (ttl_msec: 604800000).
• 30 days: the three "bounce" rules (bb1_post_spam_bot_bounce, bb1_reply_spam_bot_bounce, bb1_user_bounce) and SpamEmbeddingMajorityPoster (ttl_msec: 2592000000).
• No end date: one rule, anchor_campaign_user (a spam campaign), adds the label with no ttl_msec, and the code's Lifetime type has a permanent option.

Four of these rules also add a "liveness check" action. The code does not say what the account holder sees, and X's Help Center does not name it, so we do not link it to the recaptcha or phone screens. For posts, replies that the rules call spam get a post label for 30 days: our replies guide covers that.

The code does not state that the notice above is the SpamHighRecall label. It says this label means "Account detected by automated systems as likely to post spam", which matches the notice's wording.

What does a temporary label do to your posts?

In X's code, a label of this kind hides the account's posts from recommendations to non-followers. The official text for SpamHighRecall reads: "The account's posts are hidden from recommendations to non-followers." The label for a read-only account says the same.

Followers keep seeing your posts. X's README says a second set of rules applies only to a recommendation from an account the viewer does not follow, and that "the same post is allowed to a follower".

The notification rule sets also list SpamHighRecall, which is consistent with the notice's words about notifications. The published code has no rule about search, so the code does not show that a label causes a search ban.

Is a label or a limit the same as a shadowban?

No: a label or a limit is announced to you, and a shadowban is a hidden limit with no notice. A message from X is proof that X acted. Whether people can still find you today needs a check from the outside.

A label may change reach, but it does not say whether you also have a search suggestion ban, a search ban, a ghost ban or reply deboosting.

Our guide on how to tell if your account is restricted covers locked, limited and read-only accounts, and how long a shadowban lasts covers the hidden side. For posts missing from search, see why posts do not show in X search.

Where can you see the labels X applied to you?

X's Under the Hood report is the official place. Under the Hood is X's official report of the labels that can affect the visibility of your own posts and account in a past month, shown only to you.

Since October 30, 2026, it lists the posts that carry a label.

@XOpenSource wrote that day: "You'll see the specific posts listed when fewer than 5% of your posts during the report period have that label." The code also always lists up to 3 posts. These settings are off by default in the published code, so the list may not be open to you yet.

The report is a pilot. Its code requires an account at least 1 year old with 10 or more posts in the prior month, and it appears at least 10 days after the month ends.

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. Our page on X's Under the Hood explains what it shows.

The report also says how to appeal, for post labels. For some it reads: "If the post still has this label, you can appeal from the post." For the BOUNCE label: "Instructions provided in email notification at the time of enforcement."

What should you do when X restricts your account?

Read the message, then do what it asks, because each message has its own next step.

1. Locked: verify by phone, email or recaptcha. Do not try to work around the lock.
2. Limited: decide between the countdown and verification before you press anything. Verification disappears once you choose the limited state.
3. Read-only: remove the post X names, then appeal if you think it is a mistake.
4. Temporary label: press Request Review, and stop anything that looks automated, such as mass following or repeated identical replies.
5. Any message: appeal through X's support if you believe it is an error.

No tool, including Shadowban Radar, can lift a restriction X applied. See how to fix a shadowban on X. The sensitive content label is a different notice, with its own rule.

Wondering whether to keep posting? Read should you keep posting during a shadowban.

How do you know what other people see after X's message?

A message shows what X told you. It does not show what other people see now. Shadowban Radar runs a free Twitter (X) shadowban test on any public account, with no login or password: 4 checks (search suggestion ban, search ban, ghost ban, reply deboosting), a verdict, and a confidence level for each check.

Run it on your handle at shadowbanradar.com. It takes a few seconds, and a clean result means none of the 4 checks failed today.

Sources

Read on November 5, 2026, in the xai-org/x-algorithm repository at commit 021afa4, published November 5, 2026, in X's Help Center, and in public posts on X.

• enforcement_user.yaml: the rules that add SpamHighRecall for 7 or 30 days, and the liveness check.
• enforcement_post.yaml: the 30-day labels on posts and replies.
• action_control.rs: the lifetimes 7 days, 30 days and permanent.
• underTheHoodLabels.strato: the official text of the account labels ReadOnly and SpamHighRecall.
• underTheHoodLabels.strato: the appeal texts for post labels.
• underTheHoodReport.User.strato: account age, post count and delay of the report.
• params.strato: the settings for listing posts.
• levels.rs: the account labels dropped from recommendations of accounts the viewer does not follow.
• levels.rs: the account labels in the notification rule sets.
• README.md: the extra rules for recommendations, and followers.
• X Help Center, locked or limited accounts (updated September 28, 2026): locked, limited, countdown and visitor warning.
• X Help Center, notices on X: accounts locked pending a challenge.
• X Help Center, how we enforce our rules: read-only mode.
• X Help Center, about X limits: the daily caps.
• X Help Center, about suspended accounts: suspension.
• @XOpenSource, October 30, 2026: Under the Hood lists labeled posts.
• @jamji_jamaramji, December 3, 2024 and @curtdoolittle, December 29, 2023: the temporary label screens, posted by affected users.

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