Page 50 - Payout Magazine Online Volume 8.1

Under the Shadow of

an Instagram Ban

By : Mallory Hall somewhat irrelevant. What matters is how Binge liking and Follow/
it impacts your account and what raises the Unfollow
n a recent industry seminar on social media flag in the first place. Business to Community
iengagement, someone posed the question: reported some theories. Liking an excessive amount of pictures and
What even is shadow banning? following and unfollowing a lot of accounts
in a short time period might cause Instagram
Instagram does not notify users that they
If you are an adult industry-related personality have been banned. According to the Business to classify you as a bot. Instagram limits
or brand looking to build and sustain a social the actions users can take on the platform,
to Community report, users impacted by a
media presence in 2018, you absolutely must including liking photos, leaving comments
shadow ban report a noticeable decline in
be aware of shadow banning. and following/unfollowing accounts. This is
overall engagement, with only their current
supposed to reduce spam.
followers engaging with their content. New
The (brief) History of Shadow follower growth will slows down.
Banning Fake Followers
According to Business to Community, the
It started to happen last year: All of a sudden, following may increase the likelihood of a Obviously, purchasing followers does not sit
mysterious hashtag errors were occurring on shadow ban: use of certain hashtags; binge well with Instagram. The social network is pretty
Instagram. This would mark the first stage of diligent in terms of monitoring and deleting
liking, following and unfollowing; fake
what would eventually come to be known as fake accounts. Purchasing fake followers on a
followers; and the use of automation tools.
as shadow banning, stealth banning or ghost large-scale basis will draw attention to one’s
Let’s break each one down.
banning. channel too, increasing the chances of shadow
banning and an overall ban of your account.
Shadow banning is the act of blocking a user Hashtag Use
or their content from an online community such Obviously, Instagram tries to ban explicit automation Tools
that the user does not realize that they have
content from the platform. This includes
been banned. By making a user’s contributions Automation tools that help grow a following
“violent, nude, partially nude, discriminatory,
invisible or less prominent to other members/ usually hit popular and frequently used
unlawful, infringing, hateful, pornographic or
users of the platform, the hope is that the hashtags. Shadow banning these hashtags
sexually suggestive photos or other content.”
banned user will become bored or frustrated in could well be Instagram’s way of fighting
the absence of engagement and reactions and Instagram, therefore, completely censors automation on the platform, since these clearly
leave the site. certain hashtags that obviously violate its violate Instagram’s terms of use.
terms of use like #horny, #booty or #porn.
In the early days of shadow banning, users Instagram, like most social media, is a
began to complain about hashtags not working. According to Business to Community, it’s double-edged sword. Invaluable, but also fickle
They reported adding popular hashtags to a surprising that inoffensive hashtags like and totally out of your control. Engaging social
picture. The photo was visible on the hashtag #elevator, #easter, #workflow and #kansas media like Instagram is essentially mandatory,
page for the user who posted it and also for appear on the list of restricted hashtags as as is engaging it with caution.
their followers, but unfortunately not for well. In fact at some point, #kansas, #workflow
users who did not follow the channel. This and #beautyblogger displayed no results on
is obviously a huge issue because the whole Instagram. Mallory Hall is from Central Texas. She has
point of hashtags is to place yourself and your worked in journalism since her university years
content in a larger conversation for new people Users have also reported that other highly and enjoys exploring unexpected occurrences
to discover. popular and frequently used hashtags have in ordinary places.
been shadow banned — tags that are used
How Shadow Banning impacts excessively and therefore oftentimes hit by Reprinted courtesy of YNot
Your account bots and fake accounts. Furthermore, some
users seem to have trouble when copy/pasting
Though no one can say precisely say why hashtags into their description instead of
shadow banning began, at this point it is typing them in manually.

50 PAYOUTMAGAZINE