A few weeks ago, I decided to sell something on Threads for my side income.
I actually didn’t think that my first listing post would blow up because my initial thought was, I will just try to post and not expect too much out of it, but lo and behold, after I woke up and checked my phone, I had received a lot of comments and DMs from the people who saw what I was selling.
For the context, I’m selling leads for a salesperson or freelancer.
The leads contain the owner’s name, business name, email, phone number, social media, etc.
After that virality, I was hooked and decided to post at least 1 or 2 every single day.
Days have passed. I noticed that my traction got low, and I felt a little bit anxious, sad, and paranoid to the point that I kept checking my phone and refreshing my feed every 30 seconds (more or less).
Then I’ve tried different angles of posting, advice from the guru on YouTube, and hashtags.
Nothing seems to work.
When I put away my phone and sat down in the corner of our house, I remembered the word that I often heard from my partner, and the term was “shadowban,” which is commonly used by TikTok affiliates.
What is a shadowban?
It’s a state of your account where most of your posts don’t reach the right audience even if:
- You produce a quality content
- You use a proper keyword
- Someone is already a follower
But the question is, is there such a thing as a shadowban on Threads?
Upon checking on Google, this is what the AI overview has said:
Screenshot from Reddit that raises concerns about their experience on Threads.
My realization of what just happened and of what I have discovered is that if the platform decided to shadowban you. You have nothing you can do about it. They own the product and can do whatever they want. Yes, you can pivot to get rid of the shadowban, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen again, even if you’re careful.