TikTok Shadowban & Reach Glossary
A TikTok shadowban is creator slang for fewer people seeing your videos; TikTok’s own written term is For You feed ineligibility. This glossary explains the words creators, marketers and TikTok use for this — and separates what TikTok has written down from what creators guess.
Updated September 28, 2026
Shadowban (creator term)
A creator word for when fewer people see your videos and nobody tells you why. TikTok has never officially used the word “shadowban” or described a secret, total ban. When creators say “shadowban,” they almost always mean For You feed ineligibility — a limit TikTok has written down, not a hidden ban of your account.
Reach limitation
When fewer people see your videos than usual for you. On TikTok, the form TikTok has written down is showing your videos less on the For You feed: your videos stay up and followers may still see them, but they stop reaching new people.
For You feed (FYF)
The main TikTok feed that picks videos for you, including videos from accounts you don’t follow. It is the main way videos reach people who don’t already follow you, which is why being left out of it feels like a “ban.”
For You feed eligibility
TikTok’s official, written rules for which videos can be shown on the For You feed. Videos that meet the rules are eligible; videos that don’t are “FYF Ineligible.”
FYF ineligibility
When a video stays up but TikTok stops showing it to new people on For You. When content falls under TikTok’s “FYF Ineligible” standards it, in TikTok’s words, “won’t be recommended in the FYF.” It stays on your profile and can still be found through search or by your followers — fewer people are shown it, but the video isn’t removed. This is the real thing behind what creators call a shadowban.
Reach cliff
A sudden, big drop in views. Your newest videos get far fewer views than your usual — a sharp step down, not a slow slide. A drop across several posts is a stronger warning sign than one quiet video, which can just be normal ups and downs.
Engagement-rate inversion
When views fall but the people who do see your videos still like them. Likes, comments and shares per view stay the same or go up while total views drop sharply. It suggests viewers still like your videos, but the For You feed has stopped showing them to new people — pointing to a problem with who gets shown your videos, not weak videos.
Baseline
Your usual numbers — the normal range of views worked out from your recent videos. A drop only matters if it’s a drop for you. Shadowban Checker uses the middle value of your videos (the median), so one unusual post doesn’t throw off the result.
Community Guidelines strike
A mark TikTok puts on your account for breaking a rule. TikTok adds one when it removes a video that breaks a Community Guideline. Per TikTok, “Strikes will expire from an account’s record after 90 days,” and getting too many strikes for one feature or policy — or one very serious rule break — can lead to a permanent ban. Strikes are separate from FYF ineligibility.
Feature restriction
When TikTok blocks one thing you can do, not your whole account — for example commenting or going LIVE. It’s one of the actions TikTok says it takes, different from removing a video and from FYF ineligibility.
Account status
A page in the TikTok app that shows whether your account is in trouble, including warnings, rule breaks and limits. It’s the most reliable check straight from TikTok for problems with your whole account — but on its own it doesn’t tell you whether each video is being shown on For You.
Algospeak
Swapped words and spellings creators use (e.g. “unalive,” “seggs”) because they believe certain words cut their views. It shows real worry about moderation, but TikTok does not publish a banned-word list, so treat claims about specific “forbidden words” as unproven.
Shadowban checker
A tool that tries to tell whether TikTok is showing an account’s videos to fewer people. Most only need a public username; some — like Shadowban Checker — connect to your own account through TikTok’s official login and read your real video stats. No checker can see TikTok’s inside decisions, so every result is an estimate — a best reading of the numbers, not a message from TikTok. See shadowban checkers compared.
Visibility-risk score
Shadowban Checker’s 0–100 score for how many warning signs show up in your own numbers (sudden view drops, views falling while fans still like and comment, drops vs your usual, risky hashtags). It’s an estimate of patterns, not an official TikTok status — TikTok never confirms a reach limit.
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Sources
- TikTok — For You feed Eligibility Standards (Community Guidelines)
- TikTok Newsroom — Supporting creators with an updated account enforcement system
- TikTok — Community Guidelines overview
Every factual claim above is drawn from these primary sources. Where TikTok has no official statement, the text says so and stays hedged.