With the past month and a half, my blog was shadowbanned, terminated, and finally reinstated. It wasn't exactly a fun experience, so I wanted to put together what I learned to help others figure out next steps.
What is "shadowbanning"?
What we refer to as "shadowbanning" is actually a spam mitigation tool. If you're shadowbanned, you won't be able to:
DM anyone (in fact the DM tab will disappear from your app and will not load in a browser)
Reply to anything (even your own posts)
Send asks (tumblr will tell you they went through, but they won't arrive until the shadowban is resolved)
View your posts in the tags or in search
See your reblogs and likes in the notes
Notifications for these actions will also be suppressed. The person that you reblogged or liked from will get a ghost notification instead. The number goes up but then there's no new notification when you check.
And this makes sense! None of us want spam accounts clogging up the notes or the tags with malicious links. However, it can happen to real people. And when it does, it's most often caused by glitches.
You will not receive any notice or warning that this has happened. The only way you'll know is by these functions either disappearing and/or consistently giving you errors. The only thing you can do is put in a ticket via Support Form and wait. Reports over on reddit indicate a 6 month average wait to hear back on shadowbans prior to the layoffs. It seems likely longer now, but you still have access to your blog and followers can still see you from their dashboards. (If you were using a VPN and got shadowbanned, you'll probably want to stop. More on that at the end.)
Termination
Most of the recent reports from people who've had their blogs terminated (myself included) received no warning beforehand and no email notice after. This is because it was an automated action.
If your account has been terminated, you'll get a seemingly random log-in error message. If you attempt to log in, you'll be immediately prompted to change your password. Once you finally get logged in, you'll get an ominous screen with the old shade of tumblr blue telling you that your account has been terminated.
Don't panic. Your main blog gets locked up and will display as deactivated, but it is still recoverable. (Your sideblogs will appear to stay active but inaccessible.) Staff can reinstate your account, you just have to put in a ticket.
Note: It does sound like accounts that break TOS and are terminated are still receiving ban emails. I have not experienced this, so I cannot speak to how much of this applies there.
Fill out the Support Form
If you are shadowbanned or your account is wrongfully terminated, you need to fill out the Support Form. However, there are some complications to that...
Those of us who've been terminated have found that:
You will not get a confirmation email if you fill out the form for Terminated Account
You will not get a confirmation email if you fill out the support form using the email address on file for your terminated account
To be clear: if you fill out the form for the accurate reason with the correct email address as instructed, you will land on a webpage telling you to expect an email, but it will not arrive. However, it's very likely the form actually goes through. Start with a ticket for Terminated Account under the correct email address and see if you get a confirmation. Try this exactly once.
If you don't get a confirmation email and you're feeling anxious, you might want to try with a different email address (one completely unassociated with your tumblr account) for Account Access. Include your actual email address for your account in the body of the email and mention that you tried to fill it out before but received no confirmation. Again, it's very likely the form went through with the first method, so try this method exactly once.
Don't fill out the form more than twice, and don't put in multiple tickets after getting a confirmation email. This may result in your ticket being marked as spam. Once you have a confirmation email, the only thing to do is sit tight and wait for a response. Support is still replying to tickets.
VPNs
Now we're getting to the why: most of the people reporting being shadowbanned or terminated in the last week have also reported using a VPN (notably Proton for a few of us). VPNs are not against TOS, but automated webtools can't always distinguish bad actors from legitimate users if both are routing traffic through the same place.
Given how short-staffed tumblr is at the moment, I would recommend split-tunneling to exclude tumblr from your VPN. This should allow you to keep the rest of your internet surfing private, while hopefully avoiding having your account suppressed or locked. (No guarantees, it could always happen for other reasons.)
If your VPN can exclude based on URL or app, you're golden. If you need tumblr's IP addresses, then this is what I found:
66.6.44.4 is listed in the Help Documentation
However, an IP address for Autommatic 192.0.77.40 is what pings
Ultimately, it's going to be up to you to weigh your privacy while using tumblr vs retaining access to your blog.
Xitter and Reddit
TumblrSupport over on Xitter now is officially unmonitored. The account occasionally replies to redirect people to fill out the Support Form but that's about it. The TumblrHelp subreddit appears to be entirely impacted users now as well. Obviously posting there was helpful in piecing together what happened, and it doesn't hurt to post in either place, but the Support Form is the best bet at this point. Fill it out first.
I know it feels isolating to have this happen, but these things tend to happen in waves so you are likely not the only one dealing with it. It'll get resolved, just give it time.
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