Have your posts on Instagram gotten fewer engagements than you’re used to? Are you convinced you’re experiencing an ever-feared shadow ban? Instagram will now let you know if your posts aren’t being recommended to other users, Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced on Wednesday (Dec. 7).
Creators and businesses are able to see if their posts are being blocked from appearing in recommendations on the app, like at the end of Feed or Explore or in other places Instagram surfaces photos and videos from people you don’t follow.
“Today we’re announcing new transparency tools so you can see whether or not your photos and videos are recommended in places like explore,” Mosseri said in a video posted to Twitter. “Now, we know reach can be volatile. You can see how many people you reach go up and down over time, and one of the reasons that happens is sometimes your account can end up in a state where it’s not eligible for your photos and videos in what we call recommendations.”
To find out if your account’s posts are blocked from being recommended, click your settings menu and navigate to account settings under “account.” There, you can see if any of your posts are banned from being recommended.
There are a variety of reasons your posts might be blocked — perhaps you’re not following the community guidelines, or your posts have been flagged too many times. This will likely be seen as a transparent tool for creators but, truthfully, the transparency I’m still begging to see from Instagram is the intimate details of who (if anyone) has me blocked. I suspect I will never know.
