What Is YouTube Shadowban & How To Remove It?

Maybe you are currently wondering why your videos and comments are getting fewer likes and engagements than you have always expected. If you are experiencing this situation, you are most likely getting YouTube shadowbanned.

However, what exactly is YouTube shadow banning? Is it similar to shadow bans on other social media platforms? Sit back and relax as this post will answer your questions.

We will guide you to the basic yet extensive information about the YouTube shadowban, providing you with reasons why you can experience it and how you can solve it.

Stay on this page and keep on reading to know more!

What Is A YouTube Shadowban?

A YouTube shadowban, also known as ghost banning, stealth banning, or comment banning, is a circumstance where the platform restricts and limits a YouTube account’s overall reach. It partially or fully blocks users or their content from some areas in the online community, making them not readily visible and apparent to other users. They will become hidden, even if the account still exists on the platform. 

Shadowbanned posts and comments will be more challenging to find on YouTube, even if you search them manually. Since they will not be visible to others, it will lead to a massive decrease in engagement across the platform. You will barely get any views and likes, provided that your subscribers will not open and check your account directly.

Moreover, even if your followers have turned on their notifications on your YouTube channel, they will still not get any notifications that you have posted a new video or post.

Experiencing a YouTube shadowban is something that everyone wants to avoid because it is awful. What makes it worse is that you will not get any warning or notification that you got shadowbanned. You will not know it until you perform different ways of identifying it.

Reasons Why Your Channel Got The YouTube Shadowban

Getting shadowbanned will never be a good thing for a YouTube channel. It reduces your chances of becoming popular on this social media platform. However, what causes content to lose views and engagements?

Here are the reasons why your channel seems shadowbanned:

1. Useless Content

Sometimes, getting few to almost no views is not a result of shadowbanning. You will need to reflect on yourself and think if your content is worth watching. If you post uninteresting videos, you will likely fail to become viral and known.

2. Lack Of Content Innovation

If you also try to upload the same topics and content over time, people will get bored and incurious on your YouTube channel. In this case, it is advisable that you change, improve, or innovate your videos so that viewers can feel that your posts are new and fresh.

3. Sudden Content Change

It is better to change content than stick with a standard and similar one. However, if you change your video topics abruptly, you will also experience a massive drop in views. Uploading YouTube posts that are significantly unrelated to your previous ones will require you to grind by posting more content until the algorithm finds a new audience.

4. Removal Of Videos Containing Large Amounts Of Views

Your YouTube channel will most likely suffer from sudden death in YouTube’s recommendations once you delete numerous videos containing a big chunk of your watch time. If you remove one from your channel, its views will also get deleted.

Remember that the more watch time and views your channel heaps, the more authority it will have. Moreover, it will also affect your recommendation levels.  So, don’t forget to follow your channel statistics.

5. Owning Several Channels On The Same Device Or IP Address

Your YouTube channel will also experience a shadow ban or a massive drop in views if you run too many channels on the same IP address, AdSense, or device. The system will consider this activity a shadowban or hidden views threshold limitation to protect the platform from many money spammers who try to climb with low effort.

Nowadays, many people are greedy, so they try to scale to high levels by spamming similar or duplicate content using multiple channels to increase their revenue. Consequently, YouTube’s system will flag you for spamming if you manage too many channels on the same IP address, AdSense, or device.

6. Spamming

YouTube’s system will also detect if you use any content or method to spam the platform. Trying to harm or negatively affect the user experience on YouTube in any way possible can be a malicious activity for them. It will shadowban your channel, making you lose your views and engagements.

7. Posting Controversial Content

If you upload disputable videos and content that can cause disagreements, your viewers will likely go away from your channel. It will not be advisable to post things that can lead to issues and conflicted points of view.

8. Too Much Saturation And Spam

YouTube can also flag specific spam niches or trends manually. They can also limit a channel’s reach once it has become too saturated. For this reason, your content will have a drop in views or, most likely, a shadowban.

9. Death Of A Trend

If you post videos based on trends or things that currently pique the viewers’ interests, you can expect they will lose their curiosity and enjoyment once the fad disappears. The algorithm can detect and identify this phenomenon based on collected data. It will then look for new content to recommend to the users.

Accordingly, the algorithm will also stop recommending old videos people got uninterested in since most viewers will not click on them anymore due to a loss of interest. You can opt to upload new content based on more recent trends to keep riding these so-called “trend waves.”

10. Copyright

You will also need to be aware and cautious of getting copyrighted because it can also lead to a crash in views (the background music became a very common issue here). Copyright strikes can cause a loss of engagements that can last for approximately three months or more. It can be a form of hidden punishment by YouTube for channels trying to abuse its system.

11. Taking Long Breaks

If you are a frequent content poster, taking such long breaks from posting can cause the algorithm to punish your channel. However, it will still depend on your channel’s schedule and the frequency of your posting activity. It may also depend on the content’s P-score and quality levels that the algorithm usually identifies.

Still and all, some channels can post videos once or twice every year and still receive many views and engagements compared to the others that spam daily.

12. Reaching The Global Recommendations On Their Highest Peak

Coming to the highest point of global recommendations for any available viewers per niche can lead to a crash in views and engagement. This circumstance can be a consequence of either swapping the channel, restarting a new recommendation cycle, or making excessive improvements to your channel.

People usually commit this mistake so that the algorithm can refresh the recommendation cycle from scratch to the same available YouTube viewers within that niche.

13. Sandboxing

The sandbox is a feature hidden in YouTube that protects the platform from several hacks, spam, and abuses. It applies most to old or inactive channels and newly made accounts.

Once you undergo sandboxing, your channel, features, recommendations, and reach will become limited. It will take around one week to a month before you can even start to appear in the search and suggestions sections.

However, active channels that run well and are getting suggested to other viewers must not feel too relaxed because sandbox can still apply to them. A sudden change of device, IP address, and channel ownership can be some reasons to trigger sandboxing.

If such sandboxing happens to your channel, you will need to wait for the mentioned time frame earlier until Google regains trust in your account.

14. Algorithm Cycles

You will not need to worry about this because algorithm cycles are usual in most YouTube channels. They can experience spikes and drops in views on random days in their entire lifetime. For example, you can get a million views today and receive a hundred thousand a week later.

15. Views Threshold Theory

The channel size or authority also affects view counts. They are directly proportional, provided that you do not use promoting sites and services to advertise your content.

In this theory, you will need to reach a specific views threshold before you can have YouTube recommend you to other viewers. Since there are only limited YouTube users, global populations, global advertisers’ budgets, and payouts, YouTube’s algorithm gives a fair chance to all creators to get many views. Not to mention that content creators have been increasing lately.

In this case, you can expect that your view counts will not increase steadily. It may rise and go down to give chances to other creators.

Tips On How To Remove Shadow Ban On YouTube

1. Report The Problem To The YouTube Support Team

Go to your YouTube application and open the YouTube help. Go to the bottom of the page and click on Send feedback about our Help Center. Then select General Help Center Experience.

To do that, send a personal message and attach a screenshot of the issue. It is also better to write a clear description of the conflict you are experiencing. Once you have submitted the feedback, wait for an email from YouTube.

2. Promote Or Advertise

You can upload simple stories, posts, or pictures about your new videos and content. It will be best if you have many followers on your other social media accounts, such as Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. You can also do cross-promoting if you have other YouTube channels.

3. Improve Your Content

You can spend some time reflecting and re-watching your old videos. Look for the possible reason you have been shadowbanned. Have you violated YouTube’s community guidelines? That is for you to know.

You can also ask your friends about their honest reviews of your channel. Gain insights and research for creative content that people may look for in the platform.

After that, try improving your ideas to create more appealing videos.

4. Follow Guidelines

Many people are using YouTube nowadays. Consequently, YouTube created community guidelines to protect the interests of all people who use, watch, and produce content. These community guidelines are rules regarding harmful or dangerous content prevention, child safety, copyright, and similar risks.

You will need to follow these rules to ensure that your usage is free from malicious acts. It also safeguards you from online scammers and dangerous people. Once you have encountered these situations, you can be prone to drop in views or shadow banning.

5. Upload Videos Frequently

You can experience a loss of views when under a shadowban. However, that must not stop you from uploading your videos regularly. This technique can help you let the platform and viewers eventually accept the content, lifting your shadowban.

Aside from the given tips, you can also consider these suggestions:

• Avoid posting links or copy-pasted content repeatedly
• Do not share content if you are unsure if it is appropriate or not
• Do not use malicious and banned hashtags and keywords
• Treat others respectfully and politely
• Follow and watch other power users in your category to see what and how they share

FAQs

YouTube Shadowbanned

YouTube shadowbanning disables your account from getting discovered by other users and creators. It hides everything you post or comment on the platform. Using banned words, posting unpleasant content, taking long breaks, and algorithm cycles can be some reasons for experiencing this situation.

Nonetheless, you can still remove your shadowban by creating better content, following guidelines, and the likes. It may take some time to recover, but you can still upload videos despite the problem.

Since you have read this extensive guide to the YouTube shadowban, you can now overcome such situations if they happen in the future.