TikTok
TikTok growth, answered honestly
Ten questions creators actually ask about TikTok reach, answered in the platform's own published vocabulary — plus exactly what PodSwap has built for TikTok and why none of it is open.
The questions creators actually ask
Answered using TikTok's own published vocabulary, because knowing the platform's name for what happened to you is the difference between appealing it and waiting it out.
Why your TikTok views dropped suddenly
A sudden drop has five common causes: a platform-wide decline that has nothing to do with you, a maturity rating that quietly shrank your audience, a per-video recommendation label, an accou...
Am I shadowbanned on TikTok?
TikTok has never used the word "shadowban" and never will. It does document five separate states that produce what creators mean by it — content that stays live while reaching almost nobody....
Ineligible for the For You feed
"Ineligible for the For You feed" is TikTok's own name for content that does not break a rule badly enough to be removed, but is not suitable to push to a broad audience. It stays live on yo...
Not eligible for recommendation
This is the per-video form of For You feed ineligibility, and the only one of these states TikTok actively tells you about. The label appears on the video itself, carries a reason, and carri...
How to check your TikTok account status
TikTok has one authoritative source: the account status page inside the app, which reports strikes and account-level restrictions directly. It is the first thing to check and it will not ans...
How long TikTok restrictions last
There is no single answer, because there is no single restriction. Strikes expire 90 days after they are applied. A per-video label is permanent for that video unless an appeal overturns it....
New TikTok account, no views
A new account posting to nobody is the normal case, not a restricted one. The recommendation system works from history — what your previous videos did, who watched them, what they did next —...
Was your reach cut, or was it the content?
Compare engagement rate — likes, comments, shares and saves divided by views — for your recent videos against your own baseline. If it held while views fell, distribution was cut. If it fell...
TikTok traffic sources, and what they tell you
Traffic sources tell you where a video's views came from: the For You feed, the Following feed, search, your profile, or a sound or hashtag page. The mix is more diagnostic than the total, b...
The wrong audience is worse than none
Volume-based groups fail for a duller reason than most people expect. Attention from people with no interest in your subject does not usually get you penalised; it gets your video correctly...
TikTok never says "shadowban"
It documents five separate states that produce what creators mean by the word. Only one of them notifies you, and only one of them can be appealed.
Ineligible for the For You feed
Your content stays live and stays on your profile. It is excluded from recommendation, so it reaches almost nobody new. People can still find it through search or by going to your account.
Governed by the For You feed Eligibility Standards, published 14 August 2025 and effective 13 September 2025.
Not eligible for recommendation
The same thing, applied to one video and labelled on that video, with a reason and an appeal button.
This is the per-video form and the only one of these states TikTok actively tells you about.
Account restriction for deceptive behaviour
TikTok's own wording is that it may limit your ability to post new content, to appear in top search results, or to appear in the For You feed.
Account-level rather than per-video, and the state most creators mean when they say the word shadowban.
Strikes
A removal plus a mark against the account. Thresholds scale with severity, and there are separate thresholds for comments and for LIVE.
Strikes expire after 90 days, which is why an account can recover without doing anything in particular.
Content levels and age-restriction
A maturity score gates your content away from 13–17 year olds, shrinking the audience it can be shown to.
No violation, no strike, and no notification. This is the state most often mistaken for a shadowban, because nothing anywhere tells you it happened.
What PodSwap built for TikTok
Four exchanges, written and tested, none of them open. The pages below describe the software exactly as it stands, including the nine things that were deliberately not built.
How TikTok matching works
Matching weighs follower bracket first and subject second — the same order as the Instagram side, for the same reason. Two accounts of wildly different sizes cannot help each other: the smal...
Rooms and the headcount thresholds
Rooms are closed by default and open two ways: on a headcount, or at an announced time. In a room of N creators each person can engage a given video once, so N − 1 is the ceiling — but the g...
Every safety rail, with its config key
Coordinated attention is detectable by its shape, not by any single action: forty identical actions in four minutes, saves arriving with no watch time, the same two accounts trading every da...
Verification, and what is read
Ownership is proved by putting a short code in your TikTok bio and having the system read it back from your public profile. No password is ever requested. No OAuth token is held. Nothing is...
Points, and what each action costs
You earn points by engaging and spend them to receive. Actions are priced by the attention they cost the person performing them rather than by how many taps they take — a deep dive is three...
What was deliberately not built
A feature list read backwards. Nine mechanisms that exist on the Instagram side, or that any competitor would ship, are absent from the TikTok side — each for a stated reason. The shape of w...
Everything on the Instagram side works today
Instagram is the platform PodSwap runs on. The exchanges are open, the tools are free, and the Instagram index lists all of it in one place.