Guide · 9 min read
How to tell if your X (Twitter) account is shadowbanned or just in a slump, simple checks you can run, common causes, and how to recover your reach.
"Shadowban" is the word people use when their posts suddenly get fewer views. Sometimes the account really is restricted. Much more often, the posts are reaching fewer people for ordinary reasons: recent posts got less early engagement, posting became irregular, the topic drifted, or the audience is less active that week.
X does not use the word shadowban. It does limit the visibility of some accounts and posts that break its rules or look like spam, and it can hide accounts from search suggestions or fold replies under "show more". The checks below help you tell which situation you are in.
What people usually mean by a shadowban on X:
Run these from a private browser window or with a friend's account, since your own view of your account is not reliable:
Third-party shadowban checkers exist, but they are not official and their results vary. Treat them as a hint, not proof.
X's systems look for behaviour that resembles spam or abuse. The usual triggers:
If the checks come back clean, the cause is almost always one of these:
For a real restriction:
For a normal reach drop:
Act like a person: write each reply yourself, or at least edit every draft before you post it. Do not use tools that post, like or follow for you. Grow your activity gradually on a new account. Keep tags and mentions to people who are part of the conversation.
This is why ReplyKit never posts for you: it drafts replies and inserts them into X's reply box, and you read, edit and press Post yourself, at your own pace.
X does not use the term, but it does limit the visibility of some accounts and posts, for example by excluding them from search suggestions or ranking their replies lower, usually for spam-like behaviour or rule violations.
X does not publish durations. Limits tied to spam-like behaviour often lift after a period of normal activity once the behaviour stops. Limits tied to a specific violation follow the notice X sends.
Writing drafts with AI is not against the rules, but posting many similar, generic replies looks like spam and can be downvoted or limited. Tools that post automatically break X's automation rules. Edit every draft and post it yourself.
X ranks replies by expected quality and relevance. Replies from accounts with no connection to the reader, replies that look generic, and replies from accounts with spam signals are more likely to be folded. Adding something specific and building a history of good replies helps.
Built by · One person
There is no company behind this, just one developer who reads every message. If ReplyKit does not fit how you work, a feature, a platform, a different style of reply, say so. Requests from users decide what ships next.
Prefer email? contact@replykit.eu