Shadow Ban on TikTok: How to Detect and Recover

AFFHUB is here! Today we’re talking about TikTok shadow ban and how to tell if they’re the reason for your TikTok reach decline.

It often happens that a video doesn’t get any views. Then you start thinking about everything in the world. That you have a TikTok For You ban, and your videos will no longer appear in recommendations. That problems with TikTok visibility are a direct path to restoring your TikTok account and, so to speak, reviving it.

But does a drop in TikTok reach always mean a TikTok shadow ban? We’ll figure that out now.

Why isn’t your video getting views: TikTok For You ban or just a bad strategy?

There are several important factors that directly affect the promotion of your videos. A drop in TikTok engagement does not always indicate a shadow ban. If TikTok visibility issues are caused by the things we discuss below, then restoring your TikTok reach is possible.

Shooting quality

People like beautiful, high-quality images. They appreciate “delicious” images. Therefore, if you intend to promote your own brand, pay attention to the quality of your shooting.

Perhaps it is worth replacing your camera, learning new editors, lighting rules, etc.

If TikTok sees low-quality content, it will not promote it further.

No “hook” + drawn-out plot

Lose the hook, lose the viewer. No one needs a drawn-out introduction and a 15-second story about who you are and what your name is. You have the first 2-3 seconds to grab the user’s attention and motivate them to watch the video. Viewing time greatly affects how the algorithm will promote the video further. If many people saw the video, but almost all of them immediately scrolled past it in the first few seconds, the app will not promote you further because the content will immediately be marked as “uninteresting.”

Filming about everything and nothing

It is very important to understand right away what you are going to film about. If you have one video about recipes, the second about the best car wash products, the third about psychology, the fourth about clothing style, and the fifth about tarot cards, then you are unlikely to attract much attention. 

For example, someone saw your video about cooking an interesting dish in the recommendations. They go to your profile hoping to find a few more recipes, but see scattered content that is not related to each other. There is little chance that you will get a new subscriber. The user simply did not find what they were looking for.

These are the most common reasons for a drop in TikTok reach. If you want to recover your TikTok reach faster, focus on these points and make sure your content looks “cleaner.” Remember: strategy, quality, hook, specific theme, and consistency work wonders.

TikTok shadow ban: Tips for removing a shadow ban

A shadow ban is when your account is blocked, but you may not even realize it. You continue to use your profile, see other users’ videos, but when you post content yourself, everything is zero.

Overall, the statistics are very different from the previous ones. TikTok simply does not show your videos in recommendations and does not display them in the search feed or under hashtags. An unpleasant situation.

Getting shadowbanned isn’t that easy, but if you’ve gotten yourself into this mess, unfortunately, getting rid of it is also a tough task. If you don’t have a large number of followers, this process can take 1-2 months. That’s why many people give up on restoring their TikTok account and create a new one. 

Why does TikTok shadowban happen?

It is important to know why this problem occurs in order to protect yourself from it or to make it easier to restore your TikTok account and regain your TikTok reach.

Fake followers

Nowadays, cheating is no longer relevant. Everyone has long understood that quality significantly outweighs quantity. Therefore, if you have 100k bots subscribed to you, it will not bring any progress. The app’s algorithms easily recognize such tricks, so in this case, you are guaranteed to be shadowbanned.

Spam (especially in comments)

This is mass self-promotion under other people’s posts, as well as attempts to attract the attention of new subscribers with texts such as:

• “Follow me”
• “Follow for follow”
• “Follow for follow”
• And so on.

Age under 15 

TikTok’s policy states that people who have reached the age of 13 can use the app, but only if they have a private account. If you specify that you are under 15, you will most likely be banned and will not be promoted further.

Many complaints about your profile

If the audience’s attitude towards your content is so questionable that complaints start coming in, then you should think about whether you are really on the right track.

However, it may also be that your competitors have decided to complain about you en masse in order to 

get back at you in a certain way and remove you from the platform.

Deleting videos

This is a very interesting reason, which is a little difficult to understand. However, TikTok does not support video deletion. 

That is why they advise simply archiving them (i.e., making them private). This way, no one but you will see certain content.

18+ content

TikTok is not a platform for posting 18+ content. Therefore, adult content almost immediately falls into the shadows. 

The fact is that there is an 18+ feed here, but you need to unlock access to it. Not many people know about it, so there are significantly fewer users there. 

Accordingly, such videos end up there, which will worsen the metrics.

Any mention of 18+ topics in the text and voiceover can also be a reason for a ban.

Instead of conclusions

So is it possible to remove a shadow ban on TikTok?

Here we come to the most interesting part. There is a lot of information in the media about how to remove a shadow ban. These methods are like making soup in 50 steps when you don’t know if you’ll get the desired result.

So we’ll say right away — if you’ve reached a shadow ban, it’s best to start from scratch.

You can spend a lot of time and resources restoring a dead account, only to realize later that it was all for nothing.

So, to avoid getting into such a mess, it’s better to have a clear promotion strategy and understand what you’re doing.