Are You Shadowbanned on Twitter/X? Here's Why....

Have you been wondering why your Twitter/X Analytics isn't working properly? Wondering why you haven't been approved for monetization yet? Well, wonder no more....

Earlier today, I tried to write to Twitter to ask why I was shadowbanned. Here’s what happened….

In order for my post to be seen at all, I have to keep retweeting it so that people will see it, even incrementally.

I received a response to this tweet stating that more people are saying they’ve been shadowbanned than ever before.

Well, that’s peculiar - this is on a platform that has supposedly undergone reforms for practices like shadowbanning and cancelling users because the platform disagrees with their messaging.

It was then that I noticed something else that was particularly peculiar.

It looks like they may have been fudging their view counts.

They show a number of how many people have seen a tweet.

And then it goes down and climbs back up again.

Wait… what?!

You can't UNSEE something.

That particular metric should only ever go UP, not DOWN.

I've watched it go up and down and up and down right in front of me.

This was not a one-off glitch. It is continuously doing it, regardless of post.

So, coming from a digital marketing background, I ran an ad to test paid reach.

My ad is awesome. It’s a 3D video from a company called Breakout Clips.

Their ads caught my eye, and I’m a filmmaker by training, so I figured these ads would catch eyes across the board.

My ad checks all the boxes… it is eye-catching, my target audience is correct, and my ad should have converted like crazy even without a large spend - I mean, the damn thing shoots lightning out from inside of it….

Watch….

Neat, huh?

This ad on Twitter/X had 43,312 impressions.

How is that even possible when this ad only captured a measly 79 clicks.

Sorry, but it simply ISN’T….

To prove it, I did a side by side on Facebook, just to see.

Same ad. Lightning and all.

Sure enough, on Facebook, my same ad received 4,688 impressions and 125 clicks. I have a niche market, so this seemed to be about correct to me and these numbers matched the daily traffic I was seeing from the ad.

Hmmm…. Something is rotten in Denmark.

It was then that I noticed that people have been complaining that their analytics accounts that are tied to the back ends of their Twitter/X accounts have not been working.

Thinking back to the last time I’d looked at mine, I remembered I had been getting 5M+ impressions per month before the account had been shadowbanned.

Pictured here is my view count from January 2023, after my account was reinstated:

If you recall, Twitter/X recently opened a subscription service. You can apply, but it’s not “open to everyone,” as has been claimed.

Within the original criteria, I qualified on all fronts - I am a Twitter Blue subscriber with more than 500 followers and I am over the age of 18.

When I asked why I hadn’t been approved yet, I received this message:

Notice that the date on this is June 15, 2023.

To this day, despite having applied the first week monetization was offered, I have still not received approval.

Since then, you’ll notice that the qualifications have changed.

This was issued August 5:

Even here, Elon Musk claims, “The program is open to everyone.”

However, the part circled in red above was never a part of the original qualifications.

And while, with 90K+ followers, I easily would have qualified for this before, especially given the kind of traffic I was seeing, now that I am shadowbanned, I would not qualify for monetization anymore.

I can’t be the only one. Not with everyone I see complaining that they too have been shadowbanned. It’s simply not possible.

Was this intentional?

It seems that Twitter/X may not be not acting in good faith. With the recent run on shadowbanning, it appears that the company could be gatekeeping messages and reach, and might not be making good on its promises. Even the paid ad reach compared to clickthrough looks mighty suspicious.

Instead of coming out with these qualifications from the start and then adhering to them, they seem to have changed the qualifications midstream, “broken” the analytics reporting, and shadowbanned certain people to decrease their reach.

Then, perhaps, they may have planned to say, “Oh… sorry… you do not meet our criteria…” after changing the game by altering the qualifications and tying our hands after the criteria had already been set. No wonder approval is taking so long. No one who is shadowbanned will qualify according to the new doctored criteria after three months have passed.

So, if you’re wondering why your reach has suddenly plummeted, it could very well be because Twitter/X might not want to approve you for monetization or pay you out.

So much for Freedom of Speech and transparency. Thanks, Elon.

UPDATE: And to add insult to injury, CEO Linda Yaccarino just admitted to the shadowbanning: