Instagram (extreme) shadowban - Case study

instadog

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This thread will monitor my attempts to resolve most extreme and strange shadowban I ever get.

I have 3 Instagram accounts from same niche (fashion).
Account 1 have 162k followers and is almost 4 years old.
Account 2 - 64k - 3 years old.
Account 3 - 42k - 8 months old.

Average daily stats of accounts before shadowban:
  1. : 200-300 new followers, 2500-3000 likes per post, 50-70 comments per post.
  2. : 100-200 new followers, 1000-1500 likes per post, 30-50 comments per post.
  3. : 100-200 new followers, 1000-2000 likes per post, 30-50 comments per post.

From december 2018 to february 2019 I was absolutely dominating all hashtags in my niche. Every third post on all my accounts was getting 5000-10000 likes and around 100-150 comments and I was gaining 1000 new followers a day on account 1, 200 on acc. 2 and about 500 on acc 3.

Then it sudenly dropped from day to day to my actual numbers which are:
  1. : -35 followers/day, 2000-2500 likes, 20-30 comments.
  2. : -15/day, 800-1000 likes, 5-15 comments.
  3. : +50-100/day, 800-1000 likes, 10-20 comments.

What is strange for me is that number of likes (my engagement) doesnt dropped that much and i think its because my followers still like my content so they are engaging but on the other hand on acc. 1 and 2 I am losing them.

How i know i am shadow banned: I tested it on multiple devices with multiple other profiles on VPN and any of my 3 profiles wasnt showing under my hashtags even when they was number one on that hashtags before. Total 0 for all 3 profiles.

Why I call it "extreme" shadowban in my title: I noticed that when I try to type name of my profiles in IG search bar it doesnt show my profile even when 9 out of 10 characters are written, it just isnt in results. But when i write my full profile name there, my profile is even then down on last place of search.

  • Example: My profile name is: "blackhat". When I write "blackhat" in search it shows results as: 1.whitehat 2.red_hat 3.blacktshirt.. bla bla bla.. and then on last palce my profile.

This never happened to me when i was shadowbanned before (2 times) I always was on 1. place of search, only # wasnt working then. Now it looks like they are totally blocking people from all access to my profiles.

Possible causes:
  1. I was doing followliker automation (only likes and follows) on accounts num. 1 and 2,started about 3 month after they was created, untill november 2018. From that time I doesnt touched them with any automation. Account 3 was never touched by automation.
  2. I was manually reposting about 70% of my posts. Authors/photographers was always properly credited and tagged. Other 30% of posts was photos from girls which wanted to be shared.
  3. There wasnt any nudity or sexual photos in my posts but you know how IG girls sometimes pose so I am writing it here. But they was all normaly dressed I did not even add bikini photos because of this rule.
  4. I found out one of my hashtags i used from beggining was recently added on Temporarily
    Banned Hashtags list.
  5. I was doing daily cross shoutouts for my pages (photo tags, caption mentions, stories tags) this way I grew account 3 without using automation.
  6. all 3 accounts have link of my eshop in bio. (its https, normal link, no url shortener used) This link is there from march 2019 and its legit shop.
What i tryed:
  1. As many people adviced me here i stopped posting for 2 weeks. In this 2 weeks i only posted 2 storeis without hashtags (i read here that its good to post stories). After first week i noticed that i stopped losing followers and even gained about 100 new but after few days i was losing again..
  2. Deleting that blocked hashtag from circa 150 last posts. (i cant delete all because there is more than 2000 of posts on accounts 1 and 2)
  3. Deleting all hashtags from some posts (i done about 50 maybe)

Now its 2 weeks after and i started posting first posts without hashtags but i am still banned from search and any of my old posts isnt on hashtags again so it didnt helped me at all. And i am still losing same amount of followers.

Please share your experiences and methods here. Also tell me what yout think about that strange search block.

I will update this thread after 2 weeks i am going to totally stop all activity.
 
Hey you described exactly what happened to a girl i know. Ahah
 
Followed. Do you get temporary bans which prompt you to reset the password?
 
Followed. Do you get temporary bans which prompt you to reset the password?
No, never get any kind of ban on those accounts, they just suddenly ultra-shadowbaned me from existencion...
 
IMHO Account is fried. You lost it. Start new
but all of them at once? If it was one then ok but all? And second thing, why? I stopped using FL months before this happened, i even had better result after i stopped using FL...
 
Followed. I'm interested in this case too. Losing such massive accounts isn't good.
 
Naaa no shadow ban lasts forever! I have been on an extreme shadowban (2 months) and i managed to get out of it...
Every Bots leave a print so now they gonna put your account in trouble especially the oldest like followliker... you need to take some days pose,
Get back to business account (if you’ve switched to creator) delete hashtags from posts (i deleted hashtags from 100 posts) and of course no automation... no fuelgram (not safe at all) and wait... just wait :)
 
Naaa no shadow ban lasts forever! I have been on an extreme shadowban (2 months) and i managed to get out of it...
Every Bots leave a print so now they gonna put your account in trouble especially the oldest like followliker... you need to take some days pose,
Get back to business account (if you’ve switched to creator) delete hashtags from posts (i deleted hashtags from 100 posts) and of course no automation... no fuelgram (not safe at all) and wait... just wait :)

Someone on the forum said that there are bots, not publicly available, that can't be traced.

But I don't believe it. I think Instagram doesn't trace bots, but their work. What do you say?
 
instagram machine learning track ip address. That’s why you should only run 2 or 3 accounts from one ip and not at the same time... then if you use a bot from one ip and you follow, you must not use that account from mobile phone... if you do it then you’re two ips are wrote and you can potentially be banned. After you are banned from an ip one time (for example you are not allowed to follow for one day) then you’re ip is on the radar and if you don’t stop automation at least for one month you’ll be shut down again and again... and it will always last more.
 
There are some bots that insta can't actually detect, but the metthod of trust (of which all bot activities decrease) allows them to catch people who are too flagrant, and some who are more conservative ( just by bad luck :/ )
 
2 Weeks Update!

In last 2 weeks i didnt touched that accounts at all.

Today I checked all hashtags I was dominating and non of them had my posts reapeared.
I also checked if I am still shadowbaned from search. I am on all 3 accounts. Its the same, i type 4 out of 5 characters of my name and my accounts isnt showing. When i type full name, there is a bunch of totally different account names and then down at bottom is my account.

What will I try next:
  • Posting without hashtags for one week
  • Delete hashtags on as many posts as I can
  • After one week without hashtags I plan to try totally different set of hashtags which i never used and see what happened
  • Change my account from "normal" to business
  • Opening and liking ads. I heard it can increase your "IG score" because they like accounts which are making them money :)
I am still loosing followers as before but my engagement is still good. I added first post and it get 500 likes in first 10 minutes. I dont get this...
 
i would start posting again consistently you have to gain IG trust again
 
Currently dealing with the same thing on my 185k account. Started on April 5th. I removed hashtags from all my posts about 3 weeks ago and it didnt change anything.
 
Currently dealing with the same thing on my 185k account. Started on April 5th. I removed hashtags from all my posts about 3 weeks ago and it didnt change anything.
For me it looks the same i didnt removed all # but about 250-300 of them but id didnt changed anything at all. It looks like nothing helped for now. I started to psot with hashtags again.
 
I am in the same boat right now! Same issue. I have no idea what to do. I do not use any automation. I don't use any bots. I post only from my phone. My account was created by me on my phone 4 years ago. Never bans or warnings etc.

I tried deleting the hashtags, nothing. Not a clue what to do. This just happened to me in the past 2 weeks or so.

I am even followed by big accounts that have reposted me on their stories unsolicited. Still do nothing!
 
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