1. Uploading videos without warming up a new account
When you post on Instagram, especially with a new or low engagement account, the platform doesn’t immediately show your content to a wide audience. Instead, it goes into a kind of internal testing phase (sometimes called a sandbox or algorithmic suppression). It's like the system put you in this invisible sandbox for a bit to make sure you’re not spam.
To fix this, you have to warm up a new account for a while before your posts start getting views. By warming up, it means following other accounts, interacting with their content, scrolling through your Explore page and interacting with Reels there, etc. Do this for at least a week but it’s most effective to do it for a month or more before posting any Reels you put effort into. And make some lower effort videos to start with once your account has been warmed up because you don't want to waste your high quality content in the warm up period. (you can always archive or delete the low effort videos later).
2. Videos that are against community guidelines
When Instagram detects or suspects that your reels violates its community guidelines, it can limit its distribution or remove it entirely, meaning other users won't see it and the view count stays at 0. To check this:
- Go to Settings and Activity
- Scroll down to Account Status
- If you see any orange marks, it means you broke a rule. If your account status is clean, then the problem is your content, not a ban!
In this case you either have to appeal for review or delete the video entirely to get content recommended to other people again.
3. Shadowbans
A shadow ban on Instagram is when the platform’s algorithm silently limits how widely your content is shown, especially to people who do not follow you, without notifying you. Even though Instagram doesn’t formally use the term shadow ban in its official documentation, creators have reported this visibility restriction because the effect feels like you’ve been hidden from discovery features like hashtags and explore. This might happen if:
- Uploading content too frequently
- Third party automation tools
- Fake views and likes using bots
- Spam like actions - mass liking, following too quickly
- Using banned or spam hashtags
If you think Instagram has shadow banned you:
- Take a short break from posting (24-48 hours) - this can sometimes reset algorithmic flags.
- Stop spam like activities (no mass follows/likes or automation).
- Remove or edit any risky hashtags you’ve used recently.
If any of the above doesn't help, delete the last video uploaded and wait 24-48 hours and start uploading again.
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