X's New Under the Hood Tool Lets You Check If You're Shadowbanned

X just rolled out a transparency tool called Under the Hood, and it answers the question every poster has asked at least once: am I being shadowbanned? The tool shows post labels and account labels that limit your reach, so you can finally see if the algorithm has been quietly working against you. There’s a small catch though. You need an account that’s at least a year old with 10 posts in the past month, and the report only downloads as a JSON file, not a friendly dashboard.

The timing here is wild. X officially denied shadowbanning in a 2018 blog post, yet there’s a long trail of accounts, including Libs of TikTok and Dan Bongino, that reportedly saw their reach tank. Governments can also formally request content limits over hate speech or national security concerns, which raises the question of who’s really deciding what you see. Now users have an official way to check their own status instead of just suspecting it.

So if your engagement has felt weird lately, you might finally have an answer. Grab your report, decode that JSON file, and see what the algorithm’s been up to behind your back. Have you ever suspected your posts were being limited without you knowing?