Shadow bands can be extremely frustrating especially when X doesn't explain what causes them this guide will equip you with the knowledge to recognize fix and avoid them alt together let's start with how you recognize if you're Shadow band the first indicator is receiving a label this means some activity on your account was suspicious and your reach has temporarily been limited if you receive a label you have been shadowbanned another indicator is a sudden dip in Impressions if your post regularly get thousands of Impressions and then suddenly get less than 100 that is a red flag but does not automatically mean you are shadowbanned to confirm if you have been shadowbanned log into a separate X account that does not follow your primary account this is often referred to as an ALT or burn account if you don't have one of these already then create one after logging into to your alt account then search for your primary account if your account does not come up in the search results you have been search suggestion banned if your account does show up then click on it and go to the replies tab pick a reply and tap into the original post and then scroll until you find the reply if your reply shows up in the probable spam or under the Show additional replies label this means you are Shadow band if you scroll through all the replies and can't find yours this means you are ghost banned a ghost ban is a more severe type of Shadow ban that completely prevents your replies from showing under posts okay now you know if you are shadow band in order to fix it you first need to know what might have caused it 90% of Shadow bands are caused by something called tweep crit which is a social credit score built into the app that tracks who you interact with and adjusts your reach accordingly I'm going to let Alex Finn explain a little more about it so this one might be hard to see but this is directly from the algorithm code but basically it says tweep cred is a tool that calculates the influence of Twitter users based on their interactions with other users basically what this means is based on who interacts with you and who you interact with impacts your influence and therefore your Reach This is the score that's going to determine how many people see your content so if you feel like you're Shadow band this might be because you have a low tweet credit score let's get into how the score is calculated here's one way your Tweet cred score can be destroyed if your post is marked at as offensive so if it gets an offensive flag which might be from someone reporting you or just the AI determining you're using offensive language your tweep cred just straight up gets set to zero if it goes to zero no one's seeing your content here's another way if your followers compared to the number of following is bad you get a lower tweep credit as well so you actually need to have a good follower to following ratio to have a high tweep credit score which kind of makes sense if you think about it Bots usually Mass follow people just to get them to follow back so this one doesn't seem too bad to me so the question becomes what happens when you have a low tweep credit score well I found this in the code is well this is what determines what shows up on your feed and it basically uses a query that filters out results coming from users with a bad reputation meaning if you got a low twe cred score you're not showing up on people's feeds this is pretty serious stuff if you don't understand tweep cred you will find your account shadowban very quickly Alex mentioned offensive content and your following to follower ratio here are some other things that lower your Tweet credit and cause Shadow bands first replying to accounts in the probable spam and Show additional replies section these replies are hidden because the account has low tweet cred these labels should act as a warning to you not to interact something else that lowers twep cred is interacting with and posting sensitive content in fact if you post media with the sensitive content label you will automatically get search suggestion banned this goes for reposts as well if you repost sensitive content you will get search baned as well this next one can be tricky if you reply to an account that is later suspended that will lower your Tweet crit so it's important to regularly review your account and make sure you don't have replies to suspended accounts next using multiple hashtags or referencing multiple Trends in the same post this rule exists because people will add a bunch of hashtags or trending topics to the end of their Post in order to boost Impressions if you post or interact with content like this it's going to lower your Tweet cred another one accounts younger than 30 days old have lower tweep cred and as a result they're going to get Shadow banned more easily this next thing is not related to tweep cred but is one of the most common causes of Shadow bands and it's taking too many actions in a row repeatedly liking reposting or commenting on posts can lead to a shadow ban because X thinks you're a bot or are engaging in platform manipulation platform manipulation is any kind of coordinated engagement such as follow for follow or repost for repost do not interact with content like this and do not post it yourself now that you know what causes Shadow bands you are ready to fix yours when you notice that you are Shadow ban the first step is to immediately stop posting and interacting so that you don't make things worse then to fix the shadow ban you need to clean up your account by deleting posts and replies that may have caused it Shadow bands are usually caused by having low tweet cred which means you interacted with or posted lowquality content by cleaning up your account you will raise your Tweet cred score and remove the shadow band before I explain which posts and replies to start with I have to give a shout out to Alex Finn and monetization Coach this information comes from them and if you are a serious Creator on X you have to follow both of these accounts in order for this to work you need the correct settings to get the correct settings log into X from your browser and go to settings settings and privacy privacy and safety content you see and then make sure this box is not checked when the box is unchecked posts with sensitive content will have a warning label on them if the box is checked you will have no idea what content is sensitive once you have the box unchecked go through your applies and delete any two accounts in the probable spam or Show additional replies section sensitive content post containing words like follow for follow or other platform manipulation and suspended accounts be aware that if you are following an account their replies will not show up in probable spam so this might require more digging than just a casual glance next look through your regular posts and do the same thing delete any that contains sensitive content could be considered offensive contain deleted Media or mentioned words like follow for follow or I follow back I would also recommend deleting any adult content even even if it doesn't have the sensitive content label if you find a lot of posts that you need to delete resist the urge to do it all at once if you have more than about 10 that you need to delete I would recommend spreading it out over a few days otherwise you will make your issue worse it's also good practice to look through the accounts you're following and make sure they're all high quality so as you're going through your replies if you see accounts that you're following that are posting the content I mentioned previously then I would recommend unfollowing these accounts One giveaway that an account is doing platform manipulation is that they are following more accounts than follow them so if you see any of these accounts that you're following I would recommend unfollowing them same with deleting replies do not mass unfollow or you will make your issue worse after you clean up your account then wait for a day or so if your account is still shadowbanned after waiting this means there is still content on your account that is causing the shadow band go back through your replies and posts and delete more you may need to look deeper into your replies this time delete replies me to community noted and deleted posts maybe a reply you made to a post was clean but if you look around that there's actually s sensitive content somewhere else on that account and so you need to delete the reply also there's evidence that repeatedly sending the same reply can lead to Shadow bands so pay attention to any replies you've made that are exactly the same and delete the duplicates do a deeper investigation delete more posts and then wait again after doing this eventually Your Shadow ban should go away if your Shadow ban is still there after a week then contact me and I will help you this last part is extremely important after you fix your Shadow ban you have to stop doing the things that cause the shadow ban otherwise you'll end up Shadow banned again let's talk about how to avoid that remember tweet cred it's the social credit score that determines your reach based on which accounts you interact with anytime you make a post send a reply or otherwise engage on X your Tweet cred is affected in order to avoid getting shadowbanned you need to keep your Tweet cred High by not engaging with lowquality accounts first make sure you don't interact with sensitive content doing so will lower your tweep credit and cause Shadow bands posting sensitive content will get you Shadow Bann as well in many cases it will lead to an automatic search suggestion ban also make sure you don't interact with accounts in the probable spam and Show additional reply section engaging with these accounts will lower your tweep cred and cause a shadow ban one thing to note here for replies to your own posts there's no warning in your notifications so do not respond directly from notifications first click into the original post and then scroll to the reply to make sure it's okay and this applies to both sensitive content and probable spam also if you are following an account their replies will not show up in probable spam so to be extra safe you might want to check their replies from a burner before you interact with them next avoid replying to accounts engaging in platform manipulation the two biggest indicators of this is that they are following more accounts than follow them and then lots of posts that mention follow for follow or giving shout outs stuff like that don't post platform manipulation or otherwise engage in it yourself either coordinated engagement groups to boost Impressions do follow for follow and repost for repost are going to absolutely destroy your Tweet credit also don't repeatedly take the same action Mass following and unfollowing sending tons of replies in a row or even leaving multiple replies on the same post can get you shadowbanned finally avoid responding to trolls or toxic replies content that has offensive language or curse words is going to lower your Tweet cred so don't even bother interacting with it you are now fully equipped with the knowledge to recognize fix and avoid Shadow bands on X and now you can focus on the fun Parts one of those fun parts is monetization if you want to learn how to monetize your X account watch this video here