ProovenAm I shadowbanned? A 4-step check with real benchmarks
A shadowban is when a platform quietly limits who sees your posts without telling you. Your account still works, but your videos stop reaching people who don't follow you. As of October 2026, Instagram and TikTok both show these limits inside the app. Without an official flag, a drop in views proves nothing: of 35 videos under 100K views from established accounts, half reached less than 26% of the account's followers.
- No platform rulebook uses the word "shadowban." Instagram says content is "not eligible to be recommended." TikTok says a video is "ineligible for the For You feed." Both tell you in the app.
- Nearly 1 in 10 US social media users believe they've been shadowbanned, according to a 2022 Center for Democracy and Technology survey.
- Same account, same week: Victoria Boumajdi got 53,152 views on March 5, 2026, 1.3 million on March 7, then 53,753 on March 9. A shadowban doesn't behave like that.
- Videos that stall get 2.9 likes per 100 views, against 4.3 for videos past 1 million. That benchmark helps you decide where to work. It can't prove a shadowban on its own.
What a shadowban means, and what platforms call it
A shadowban is a penalty you can't see. You keep posting, nothing warns you, and your reach falls off a cliff. On Instagram or TikTok, it means one specific thing in practice: your videos stop leaving your follower bubble, while your followers can still see them.
Plenty of people think it has happened to them. In 2022, the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) surveyed more than 1,000 US social media users, and nearly one in ten believed they had been shadowbanned. Most blamed their political views (39%). Platforms never use the word. They talk about recommendations. Instagram's creator guide says content that isn't recommendable can still be shown to your followers as usual. That is exactly what creators call a shadowban, with one difference: Instagram shows it to you.
Where the platform tells you if you're limited
Instagram and TikTok each have a screen that answers the question directly. If that screen is clear, the platform hasn't recorded the restriction you suspect. TikTok says so in its September 2026 Community Guidelines: a video that gets few views hasn't necessarily broken a rule.
| Platform | Official term | Where to check | What you can do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Content or account not eligible to be recommended | Settings, then Account, then Account Status (professional accounts) | Edit or delete the content, or request a review | |
| TikTok (one video) | Ineligible for the For You feed | A notice in the video's analytics | Appeal |
| TikTok (whole account) | Account ineligible for the For You feed | A notification, plus the Account Check tool (your last 30 posts) | Appeal from the notification |
| Any platform, EU users | Restriction of visibility, including demotion | A written statement of reasons | Internal complaint, then out-of-court dispute settlement |
Sources: Instagram for Creators (August 2022, updated April 2023); TikTok Community Guidelines effective September 24, 2026; TikTok Newsroom, April 2024; EU Digital Services Act, Article 17, in force for all platforms since February 17, 2024.
The last row only applies if you post from the EU. Under the Digital Services Act, a platform that demotes your content for breaking its terms has to tell you what it did, which rule it used, and how to challenge it. In the US, the in-app screen is your main official source.
Getting fewer views than followers is normal
Every account has videos that reach only a slice of its followers, including accounts that pull millions. I pulled the 35 videos under 100K views in our data where I know the account size. They come from 16 established accounts, between 30,000 and 1.1 million followers. Every single one got fewer views than the account had followers. Half reached less than 26% of them.
Take Hrabren Lindfors, a social media marketing account with 640,209 followers. His June 2023 Reel hit 2.6 million views. His March 17, 2026 Reel got 18,525, or 3% of his followers. My data can't tell whether he was restricted that day. It does show that gaps this wide are routine for accounts that work.
Same account, same week: 53K, then 1.3 million views
A shadowban hits an account. Views move video by video. Victoria Boumajdi has 168,629 followers and posts self-improvement monologues to camera. In March 2026, she put out five Reels in a little over three weeks.
Between March 5 and March 9, her account went from 53,152 views to 1.3 million and back to 53,753. If Instagram had limited her on the 5th, the Reel from the 7th would never have reached 1.3 million people. The video changed. The March 7 Reel is a single provocative line that lasts 7 seconds. The two around it run 34 and 47 seconds.
Her 1.3 million view Reel got fewer likes per view (3.2 per 100) than the two 53K Reels next to it (6.0 and 8.3 per 100). Fewer people hit like, and it still traveled 25 times further.
The pattern shows up elsewhere. An account called Betty, with 99,272 followers, got 81,221 and then 55,367 views in early September 2025, then 6.0 million on September 30. Seven accounts in our data have both a video under 100K views and one over a million.
The 4-step shadowban check
The check starts with the only real proof, the official screen, then uses your own numbers to show you where to work. It takes about 15 minutes.
- Open the official screen first. On Instagram, go to Account Status and look at the recommendations line. On TikTok, open the video's analytics, then run Account Check. If something is flagged, you have your answer and your appeal path.
- Look at your last 10 videos, not your last one. One drop in a row of normal videos is about that video. A drop across every video, starting on a specific date, is worth digging into: write down what you posted or changed that day.
- Check your non-follower share. Instagram insights split reach between followers and non-followers. On TikTok, the For You traffic source shows views from strangers. If it sits near zero on every video for two weeks, your content isn't being recommended.
- Compare your likes and shares per view to the benchmarks for your niche in the table below. If you're under the low end, fix the video before you blame the algorithm.
For step 4, divide likes by views and multiply by 100. Do the same with shares, multiplied by 1,000. If you want one number to compare your own videos, the engagement rate calculator does it for you.
Benchmarks by niche for step 4
A video past 1 million views typically gets 4.3 likes per 100 views and 13.5 shares per 1,000 views. Niches differ a lot: self-improvement reaches 5.5 likes, business sits at 3.2.
| Niche | Likes per 100 views (low / typical) | Shares per 1,000 views (low / typical) |
|---|---|---|
| Self-improvement | 4.1 / 5.5 | 7.9 / 15.1 |
| Health and wellness | 1.8 / 4.2 | 7.6 / 13.9 |
| Lifestyle and entertainment | 2.6 / 4.1 | 7.7 / 19.4 |
| Business and finance | 2.1 / 3.2 | 6.8 / 13.1 |
| Tech (19 videos) | 2.8 / 3.6 | 3.7 / 9.6 |
| All videos over 1 million views | 2.6 / 4.3 | 6.5 / 13.5 |
| All videos under 100K views | 1.8 / 2.9 | 3.7 / 7.9 |
Units: likes per 100 views, shares per 1,000 views. "Low": three videos out of four do better. "Typical": half do better. Source: nearly 290 videos over 1 million views and 38 videos under 100K views, broken down one by one by Prooven (2023 to July 2026, mostly Instagram Reels).
These two ratios aren't random picks. In January 2025, Instagram head Adam Mosseri named the three signals that matter most for ranking: watch time, likes per reach and sends per reach. Watch time only shows up in your own insights. I don't have it for other people's videos, and it's probably what explains Victoria Boumajdi's 7-second hit.
The sign a video stayed with your followers
A video seen mostly by your followers gets far more comments per view. Videos under 100K views get 2.5 comments per 1,000 views. Videos over 1 million get 0.4, six times fewer. Followers know you and talk back. Strangers watch, sometimes like, and scroll on.
Use this to read your own video. Lots of comments and few views means your followers saw it and strangers didn't. That profile fits a shadowban and an unpushed video equally well, which is why step 1 comes first. If the official screen is clear, the video didn't pass its first test with strangers. I break down what the videos that do pass have in common in the guide on how to go viral on TikTok.
What actually triggers a restriction
Real restrictions follow written rules, and those rules target specific content. Instagram's creator guide tells you to avoid visibly recycled content and Reels with watermarks, and says a whole account can become ineligible for recommendations. TikTok lists its cases in the For You feed standards, and its rules also cover fake engagement such as bought views or followers.
A TikTok video stuck at exactly 0 views is its own case: it can be under review, the account can be private, or the creator can be under 16. The six causes and fixes are in why your TikTok has 0 views. If you want to know what view count counts as normal for your account size, the thresholds are in how many views is viral.
My take
The silent shadowban has become the most comfortable explanation for a video that flopped, and the least useful one. In 2026, Instagram and TikTok show you their restrictions. My data shows accounts that pull millions also post videos that reach 3% of their followers, then bounce back two days later. So do step 1 before anything else. If the screen is clear, stop hunting for a culprit and change the hook and the length of your next video. The limit: I don't have watch time for these videos, or each account's full history. I can't rule out that one of these accounts was restricted at some point.
Common questions
How long does a shadowban last?
Neither Instagram nor TikTok publishes a duration. A restriction tied to one video usually goes away with that video, once you edit it, delete it, or win your appeal. Check the official screen again after each step.
Do shadowban checker websites work?
They can't see your account's recommendation status. Only the platform shows that, inside your app. The only reliable check is the official screen in step 1. Never give one of those sites your password.
Should I stop posting for a few days?
No official Instagram or TikTok page recommends a break. If the official screen flags something, fix it. If not, your next video is the best test you have: it tells you whether your reach comes back.
- Instagram for Creators, What Creators Need To Know About Instagram Recommendations (August 30, 2022, updated April 25, 2023)
- TikTok Community Guidelines, For You feed Eligibility Standards (effective September 24, 2026)
- TikTok Newsroom, More updates to help the TikTok community create and share safely (April 17, 2024)
- Tech Policy Press, Gabriel Nicholas (CDT), Shadowbanning: Sorting Fact from Fiction (July 13, 2022)
- Social Media Today, Instagram Shares Algorithm Insights To Inform Strategy (January 22, 2025)
- Regulation (EU) 2022/2065, Digital Services Act, Article 17 (October 19, 2022, in force since February 17, 2024)
How this article was made. The benchmarks come from nearly 500 videos broken down one by one by Prooven (posted from 2023 to July 2026, mostly Instagram Reels), nearly 390 of them matched with the account's follower count, recorded after posting; missing stats were excluded, never counted as zero. Platform rules come from Instagram's and TikTok's official pages and the text of the Digital Services Act, read in October 2026. Written with AI assistance, numbers checked and article reviewed by Antonin Girardeau.
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