Lots of users are reporting issues with their accounts being shadowbanned on Twitter. With promises of fixes from Elon Musk, what is a ghost ban on Twitter and how can you check if you’ve been affected?
The term shadowbanned is particularly new, but lots of users are using ‘ghost ban’ instead. It comes after people on Twitter are finding their engagement has dropped and they cannot find their accounts. We explain what is a ghost ban on Twitter and how you know if you’ve been shadowbanned.
What Is A Ghost Ban On Twitter?
Having a ghost ban is the same as being shadowbanned, it’s just a slightly different phrasing. It means that your account and your content has a partial block, meaning anything you tweet will not be as accessible as usual. Sometimes it’s as big an issue as your content being completely unavailable to anyone apart from you.
Those who have a ghost ban will find that they will still be able to tweet, retweet, favourite and more — it just won’t be seen by any of your followers or even publicly.
Here is a definition provided by HiSubwayOnline:
“[Ghost ban] comprises a search ban while threads are completely ripped apart by hiding reply tweets of the affected user to others. Everything will look perfectly normal to the affected user but many others will not be able to see reply tweets of the affected user at all. Reasons for this ban include behavior like excessive tweeting or following. Again, this type of ban seems to be temporally limited for active accounts.”
On the Twitter blog, they define shadowbanning as “deliberately making someone’s content undiscoverable to everyone except the person who posted it, unbeknownst to the original poster.”
Crucially, reasons are often not given as to why a user has a ghost ban on Twitter. However, the blog does go on to say that Twitter does not shadowban its users.
However, new CEO Elon Musk clearly recognises that there are issues surrounding ghost bans on the social media site after tweeting the following last week (December 9).
There is no more information on when the software update with the feature will be available, but it will be a welcome relief for those in the dark about the status of their account.
How To Check If You Are Shadowbanned
With no official way yet of knowing if you have a ghost ban on Twitter or not, people have been asking ‘am I shadowbanned?’ in the hopes of finding an answer. However, there are a few ways you can check if you have a ghost ban on Twitter.
Firstly, if you have noticed your engagement drop dramatically then this is usually a sign of being shadowbanned. If when you search your username nothing comes up, then this is another typical sign.
You can also use tools such as HiSubwayOnline to check the status of your account. All you need to do is enter your username and it will check for you. It also specifies if you have a ghost ban or not, with users reporting that the site is telling them that their page is visible but that they still have a ghost ban.
There is always a chance that things like engagement from your followers have just dropped a little. Try not to immediately presume the worse. Give it some time before thinking that you have a ghost ban on Twitter. That being said, there does seem to big a. bigger issue, with lots of accounts reporting a ghost ban.
Hopefully, along with the new software update, Musk can try and put a stop to so many accounts being shadowbanned.
