First of all, I work in social media marketing. I use posting tools, like Buffer and Sprout Social, and lots of hashtags and have a better-than-average understanding of how Facebook Pages work and how to reach people on social media. It’s one of the reasons I loved fundraising for the Alzheimer’s Association last year on their integrated Facebook page fundraising platform.
Second, I only learned about “shadowbanning” on the internet in May of this year. I’ve never had to worry about it before. I read that shadowbanning mostly affects people who post political negativity or hate speech, people who spam or otherwise post abusive things. It is also known as “ghosting” and “hellbanning”. Essentially shadowbanning someone means their content is blocked in such a way so that the user does not readily realize their content is being blocked or held back from others.
I am not posting anything negative, unless you count my sometimes sad and honest Alzheimer’s posts as negative, so the shadowban came as a big surprise to me. My guess as to why I was shadowbanned is that I used the words “fundraising”, “donation”, and “donate” in a lot of my posts, the Facebook Page algorithm put my entire profile in a black hole of sorts where no one sees my posts unless I actually tag the people who are in the photos. Those people see my posts. The only other way someone can see my posts, including me, is to go directly to the fundraising page on Facebook or to my profile timeline. The posts are there, they just don’t show up in anyone’s news feed.
My Facebook account was shadowbanned sometime in late April or early May. I noticed that the number of people who liked or commented on my posts drastically decreased and at first I thought no one cared or that they were ignoring my posts, but when I mentioned it to friends and family they said they never saw my posts. They searched them out directly on Facebook and had to find them that way and even I couldn’t see my own posts in the news feed. I would post and it would instantly disappear and the only way I could see it was to go directly to the Facebook page or to my personal profile. I could see my own posts on my own timeline page, so I thought, “OK, it’s there. I don’t have to worry.”
After I finished the fundraiser for my Walk to End Alzheimer’s I went back over my posts and put together the timeline. So here we go.
I set up my Walk to End Alzheimer’s fundraiser officially in February of this year (2019). I activated my Facebook Page fundraiser via my hosted fundraising page on the Alzheimer’s Association website on March 25. I updated my fundraiser page and posted a new photo and all was well. Here is a screen capture of that post.
As a good start, I got 11 likes and 2 comments and 2 shares. I also got about $400 in donations off that first post. I have roughly 300+ friends on Facebook, so I know that my posts are only going to be seen by my online friends who are active and who I’m interacting with. I was just happy that I got some donations, because that is the entire point of a fundraising page.
My next post on my Facebook fundraiser Page was one of our family dinner photos. It may be because I tagged quite a few people in it or it may just be that my Page was visible on Facebook, but the post received 24 likes and 1 comment and I raised some more money.
I continued fundraising and posting and was also mixing in personal posts on my regular Facebook profile. This is a post about my mom that I put on my Facebook profile and it got 38 likes, 23 comments and 2 shares. I really tried to keep the balance between just posting about Alzheimer’s and posting about regular life stuff.
A few days later, I posted on my fundraiser Page. We take my mom to dinner every Wednesday and I always take a photo when I see her, so this is a picture of that. It was a good day because my mom hadn’t been able to go out at all the few days before this dinner. This photo below received 29 likes and 5 comments and it was posted on April 8, 2019.
The last post on my Facebook fundraising Page that was seen without being shadow banned was on April 28, 2019. As you can see in this photo, I write about my mom, something that happened and I make an appeal for donations or sharing my page at the bottom, same as I’ve always done. This post received 34 likes and 12 comments and was seen by some friends of my mom’s who had no idea she had Alzheimer’s, so it was reaching new people.
And then the shadowban started and I have no idea why. Just a week or so later, in early May, I shared a post from the Oregon & SW Washington Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association to my Facebook fundraising Page. I wrote about my mom and how I felt. I’m not even sure I asked for donations in this post, but you can see that one person liked it and that person was my husband. I told him about it the day after I posted it and that not a single person had clicked on it and he went in and did that for me.
Initially, I thought this post was just random. I thought maybe Facebook didn’t like that I’d shared something or that maybe it was that the article I was sharing was not shareable or whatever. At this point I had no idea I was shadowbanned and I accepted that this particular post was not going to be seen and moved on.
But here’s where it gets interesting. I posted some regular things in May, some travel photos, and some life stuff. And as a way around my Facebook fundraising not being seen, I posted my next post about my fundraiser on my personal profile. I thought if I did that and mentioned my fundraiser and didn’t post a link or anything, that it would get more likes than my last post, but that didn’t work either and I realized that something was not only going on with my Facebook fundraising Page, but my personal profile was, as well. This post on my personal profile received 2 likes and one of them is, again, my husband. Still at this point, the idea of a “shadowban” was not even something I knew about, I just thought Facebook didn’t like my posts.
Because of this, I took a break from posting anything on my Facebook fundraiser Page. I thought maybe if I let some time pass and I just went back to interacting with my friends on Facebook and posting some personal things, that my Page would be reset. So on June 21, almost a full month later, I posted on The Longest Day, an Alzheimer’s Association fundraising day. Here is the post. I put in a general message, asked for donations, thanked the people who’d already donated and posted this on my Facebook fundraiser page.
It got 3 likes and one of them is my son, mainly because I called and asked him if he’d seen the post. He had to physically go to my Facebook Fundraiser to see it there, it did not show up in his news feed.
This was about the time my other son mentioned “shadowbanning” to me and said that Facebook accounts get “ghosted” for posting inflammatory, negative, politically nasty things. Ghosting on the internet generally refers to dating, when you go out with someone and then on social media they stop interacting with you and you don’t hear from them anymore. In my case, Facebook ghosted me. My posts, on both my fundraising page and my personal profile, looked like they were posted after I published them, but when I click on the Home button to go back to the news feed, my post was gone, unless you looked at my personal timeline. Somehow my account was flagged by Facebook and if my post had ANYTHING to do with fundraising at all, no one saw it. I didn’t post anything inflammatory, mean, politically charged, etc., but being shadowbanned for fundraising was the only thing that made any sense to me. I’d asked too much, done too much fundraising or something like that. I was too focused on raising money for the Alzheimer’s Association.
I Googled shadowbanning and what I decided to do was post on my personal profile a message that I thought my posts were falling into a black hole. I wanted to see if anyone at all was seeing my posts. Surprise, surprise!
Not only did people see this post, but a record number of people liked it and it got 30 comments! What the hell? So what did I decide to do next? Now that I knew people were seeing my posts, about 4 hours later the same day, June 28, 2019, I posted on my Facebook profile (not my fundraiser page) about my fundraiser and I put in my link to my web page hosted by the Alzheimer’s Association. I thought that if the Facebook Fundraiser page wasn’t working, then I’d try doing it old school and asking for donations on my personal post. I mean 67 people just saw my most recent post, so there’s no better time to post, right?
Mostly, wrong. It got 8 likes, 1 comment and 1 share. A far cry from my 67 likes of just a few hours ago. Better than my posts in the last month, but still, not a lot of interaction. So I concluded that it had to be the fundraising that was triggering my posts to be shadowbanned. It had to be. I decided again to stay away for a while from posting on my Facebook fundraiser page. What I tried was once a week posting on my personal profile about my Walk to End Alzheimer’s fundraiser and in this post I even asked that people message me on Messenger for the link to donate. I didn’t post a link or a photo, but I did use the word “donate”. Maybe that is the trigger? I posted this on my personal profile on July 5, 2019. One like and one share, by the same person.
But here is the truly crazy part. That SAME day, I posted a completely personal post about going camping in the Gifford Pinchot forest. I posted a photo, too. No one saw my Alzheimer’s fundraising post, but this post about camping and Bigfoot gets 30 likes and 2 comments. Seriously? I mean, I love my friends, I was glad my regular posts weren’t being shadowbanned, but I cannot tell you how frustrated I was.
It was disheartening. I essentially had to let go of worry about whether or not Facebook was shadowbanning my account, hiding my fundraiser from people and just move on. I decided to go back to posting normal stuff and let go of likes and comments, especially on my fundraiser. On July 14, 2019, we had a birthday party for my mom. I posted this video. No mention of donations, Alzheimer’s or anything.
My mom’s birthday video received 35 likes and 8 comments. I was happy people saw it and a lot of my mom’s friends and family wished her happy birthday and I showed her the comments. As the summer continued, I stopped posting on my Facebook fundraiser page and stopped posting about Alzheimer’s and posted photos on my profile instead. Here’s a travel photo from Cannon Beach, Oregon.
It received 25 likes and some comments. I felt like my personal profile, at least, was back to normal. What was the most frustrating was that the forward momentum of my fundraiser died away. I would go weeks without a donation or even a view on my fundraiser page. I mean, what is the point of Facebook allowing you to make a fundraiser for any reason, if they are going to pick and choose who they shadowban for doing it TOO MUCH? It’s aggravating.
As you can see from the date on this post below, I let at least a month go in between posts on my Facebook fundraiser page. I posted things about my mom and I posted about my life, but I didn’t see the logic in putting thought and effort into posting and asking for donations if no one was going to see my posts. I pretty much moved to Instagram with my fundraising. I posted this post on August 13, 2019. I didn’t ask for donations, but I did use the word “donate”. I also used a Giphy instead of a picture of me and my mom.
This post got 6 likes and I share. My sister was one of the likes and shares and, again, my husband liked this post. I told both of them about it and they had to go and find it on my fundraiser page. Even after a month, my shadowban by Facebook was still active.
Just by way of reference during the same few days, I posted about our new dog on my personal profile. No mention of fundraising or anything, just a fun personal post.
This post about our new dog received 46 likes and 12 comments and I heard from friends on Facebook that I haven’t heard from in a long, long time.
One week later, August 22, 2019, two days before the Walk to End Alzheimer’s, I posted on my Facebook fundraiser page. I thanked everyone and I asked people who were on the fence about donating if they would consider it. At this point, I knew hardly anyone would see the post, but I did what I felt I should do.
This post received 3 likes and 3 shares. My sister was one of the people who liked and shared and she told me that when she pushed the share button on Facebook it looked like everything worked just fine, but when she went back to her home news feed, her share post was not there. She had to go to her timeline to see it. So the shadowban continued.
The next day, August 23, 2019, I shared my Facebook fundraiser post on my personal profile. I even put in the text “I posted this yesterday…but I’m sharing it here hoping more people will see it.” What I discovered is that my assumption was correct. Anything that has to do with donating, donations, fundraising, etc., that I post regardless of whether it’s personal or on the fundraising page, those posts are being shadowbanned by Facebook. Why? I have no idea.
One person liked this post on my personal page. One. And the comment is me, posting about how sad it is that my fundraising posts aren’t being seen. The share was my sister, who again, shared it, it looked fine, but when she went back to her Facebook news feed it was gone. She commented on her shared post “I tried, but this post disappeared, too.”
The day after the Walk to End Alzheimer’s, I posted on my personal profile. I didn’t ask for donations or use any of the words I think Facebook has flagged in my account. I just posted photos. Here is that post.
It received 33 likes and a comment from my aunt. As far as I know, my account is still shadowbanned with regards to fundraising. I didn’t post a thank you in my Fundraiser page because I knew no one would see it. I also specifically didn’t use the words donate, donation or fundraiser in my personal thank you post.
As sad as this is to say, overall, my message is once you notice you’re being shadowbanned by Facebook, there is nothing you can really do about it. I even found this article that Facebook has won a patent on the practice of shadowbanning. It’s quite scary that we put so much out there on Facebook and they have ultimate power to hid, ban, stealth ban, ghost or otherwise stop our posts from being seen online for ANY reason and even something as arbitrary as fundraising for a non-profit. I also learned from a lot of research that Facebook is not alone in this practice. Twitter shadowbans people, Reddit does it, a lot of online forum boards do it, Craigslist does it to advertisements, WeChat shadowbans people, and even Instagram does. You are not safe to post anything … anywhere.
I am grateful to those who donated to my Walk to End Alzheimer’s fundraiser. Despite the shadowban, I was able to raise more money than ever before. My fundraiser totals are here:
I have some ideas for next year. I will do some more local things, like bake cookies, bread, etc. I will also NOT be creating a Facebook fundraising page via the Alzheimer’s Association. It was just too sad and a little stressful. I’ll do all my fundraising on Instagram and my personal Facebook profile. I might also branch out to apps like Tik Tok. I’m also going to share this post with my local Alzheimer’s Association chapter and see if they have had anyone else comment about being shadowbanned. I’ll keep you posted on what I hear. Until then, post wisely, fund raise smart and pay attention to the power of social media, both the power you have and the power social media has over you and what you care about.