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AM I SHADOWBANNED?

Is Instagram hiding your posts? Read your own numbers

Paste your profile link. We read your recent posts' public engagement pattern and give you a straight answer about whether it looks like suppression. Then the part guessing tools skip: Instagram publishes exactly what disqualifies content and whole accounts from recommendations — this page maps that list, the official Account Status check, and the appeal path.

Reads only public data. 3 free checks a day without an account; nothing stored, the account isn't notified.
01

Paste your profile link

The analyzer reads public post data. Instagram doesn't publish view counts for most posts, so the pattern is read on likes — a cliff or an interleave shows the same way. Nothing is stored, no login.

02

Read the verdict and evidence

Whether your recent posts fell off a cliff against your own baseline or vary post-to-post like every healthy account, with each evidence line citing your numbers.

03

Confirm in Account Status

Settings → Account → Account Status is Instagram's own verdict: four sections covering violations, feature restrictions, recommendation eligibility, and monetization. Green means eligible — no external tool outranks it.

What Instagram officially says

Instagram's head Adam Mosseri has said "shadowbanning is not a thing" — while Instagram simultaneously publishes Recommendation Guidelines and a Recommendations section in Account Status. The accurate reading: the word is denied, the mechanism is documented. Content can be allowed on Instagram yet excluded from Explore, Reels, and feed recommendations because recommendations reach people who never chose to follow you, so the bar is deliberately higher than the Community Guidelines.

Instagram's published exclusion list — content

Straight from the official Recommendation Guidelines, three groups of content stay up but don't get recommended:

Sensitive or safety-adjacent

Self-harm or eating-disorder discussion, depicted violence, sexually suggestive content (see-through clothing counts), promotion of regulated goods — tobacco, vapes, adult products, prescription drugs — and promotion of weight-loss products or cosmetic procedures.

Low quality — including unoriginal reposts

Officially listed: 'unoriginal content largely reworked from another source with only minor, insubstantial edits.' Repost accounts aren't shadowbanned — they're excluded by published policy. Also listed: irrelevant long captions and organized engagement pods.

Misleading

Content rated false or altered by third-party fact-checkers.

The list most people miss — whole-account exclusions

Instagram also publishes what disqualifies an entire account from recommendations, and two entries surprise almost everyone:

Your bio and profile photo count

Accounts that 'repeatedly share non-recommendable content in their name, bio, or profile photo' are excluded account-wide. People audit their posts and never their bio.

Bought engagement

Purchased likes or followers put the whole account on the exclusion list — as does being banned from running ads, recent guideline violations, and repeated fact-check failures.

How to get back into recommendations

In order: open Account Status and clear everything it flags — including your bio and profile photo. Appeal mistakes via Request Review and track them under Support Requests. Disconnect third-party automation apps; bought engagement is on the published list. Community-reported recovery windows run 3–14 days once flags are cleared — that figure is creator experience, not published policy.

NEXT STEP

Eligible again? Now win the recommendation contest.

Eligibility gets you into the pool; what earns the recommendation is the next post. Kabo's Trend Radar is a preview, not a live weekly tracker yet — it shows the planned workflow for finding what wins attention in your niche.

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Frequently asked questions

How do I check if I'm shadowbanned on Instagram?

Officially: Settings → Account → Account Status — four sections show violations, restricted features, recommendation eligibility (professional accounts), and monetization. Pattern check: paste your profile above and we read whether your recent engagement cliffs against your own baseline. Only Account Status is definitive.

How long does an Instagram shadowban last?

Creator-community reports cluster at 3–14 days once the triggering content or behavior is cleared. Instagram publishes no duration — what it publishes is the exclusion list, so clearing flags matters more than waiting.

Do hashtags cause shadowbans?

The published mechanics are about content and account eligibility, not hashtag counts. Where hashtags genuinely hurt: spam patterns (identical hashtag blocks pasted everywhere) and restricted tags. The '30 hashtags = ban' rule circulating in guides appears nowhere in Instagram's published guidelines.

Why did my reach drop if Account Status is all green?

Then it isn't enforcement. Recommendations are a contest recalculated per post — packaging, topic fatigue, and posting gaps move reach far more often than penalties do. Run the pattern analysis above: interleaved highs and lows within days is distribution variance, not a ban.

Does reposting other people's content limit my account?

Yes, by published policy rather than secret penalty: 'unoriginal content with only minor edits' is on Instagram's exclusion list, and accounts that repeatedly share it can be excluded account-wide. Adding substantial original value is the fix, not waiting out a ban.

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