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Instagram shadowbanned me for 3 weeks after I used the wrong hashtag once
I used #weightloss on a fitness video last month and my reach dropped from 15k to 200 overnight, took 21 days and 4 appeals to get it back, has anyone else dealt with a hashtag trigger like that?
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derek99428d agoMost Upvoted
The algorithm's got a hair trigger, that's for sure. I once posted a pic of my cat wearing a hat and typed #fashion by accident, my numbers tanked faster than my last attempt at a juice cleanse. Took two weeks and a lot of begging to get back to normal. At least your appeal worked after 21 days, I still think the hashtag police are watching me.
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Oh man, @derek994 nailed it with the hashtag police thing, I swear they're lurking in every corner of the app... I had almost the exact same thing happen with #fitness, my reach just died overnight and I was stuck for almost a month trying to figure out what I did wrong. It's crazy how one wrong tag can make the whole system treat you like a spammer or something, and the shadowban just makes you feel like you're shouting into a void. I had to send like 5 appeals before anyone even acknowledged it, and even then it took forever to get back to normal traffic. You're not alone in this mess, it's way too easy to trip a landmine with a hashtag these days.
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lucashart28d ago
Straight up, what finally broke through for me was deleting the whole post and making a new one the next day with totally different tags, no fitness or weight loss related ones at all. I used like #homeworkout and #morningroutine instead, stuff that's still relevant but not in the "potentially harmful" category the algorithm flags. Also turned off my account for 48 hours completely, logged out and everything, which felt dumb but my reach actually started creeping back after that. The whole shadowban thing is ridiculous but for me it was about avoiding any tag that could hint at weight or body stuff until the system forgot about me.
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