A shadowban is a reach restriction applied without telling you: your account works, your followers mostly still see you, but discovery surfaces stop carrying your content and reach falls off a cliff. No platform uses the word officially, which is exactly why the folk term exists.
Platforms deny blanket shadowbans and, in the same breath, confirm the machinery under different names: content can be marked "non-recommendable" and quietly excluded from Explore, hashtag pages and suggestion feeds.
Between a full ban and full distribution there's a wide dimmer switch. The shadowban is the folk name for its lower settings: everything works, nothing spreads.
Correlated causes: repeated policy friction, spam-like behaviour patterns, borderline content, and automation tools on your login. The current, evidenced picture for Instagram is in the shadowban guide.
On the specific fear that buying followers triggers shadowbans: the evidence is much thinner than the folklore, and that question has its own honest write-up. Deliveries arrive AT your account; the behaviours platforms punish are things accounts DO.
The cure is boring: stop the triggering behaviour, post normally, wait. Recovery typically follows in days to weeks. Panic-deleting and posting "am I shadowbanned" tests mostly add noise.
Most "shadowbans" are ordinary reach drops: a format change, colder audiences, weaker content, seasonal dips. Check the non-follower reach line first: a real restriction pattern flatlines it while follower reach survives.
If it IS the pattern: audit recent behaviour against the community guidelines, drop any tool that logs in as you, and give it two calm weeks before concluding anything.
Open your analytics: if non-follower reach flatlined while follower reach looks normal, you match the pattern. Hashtag-page checks from a logged-out browser add evidence.
Typical reports run days to a few weeks once the triggering behaviour stops. Nothing official exists, because nothing official is admitted.
The folklore says yes loudly; the evidence says it's about what accounts DO, not what arrives at them. The full walk-through: can buying followers get you shadowbanned.
Related terms
Every definition lives in the full glossary, and the services behind the vocabulary are on the services page.