How to check if a foreign government has restricted your X account

If you have ever been left wondering why your posts on X seem to suddenly be reaching less people than usual, then there might be a simple - albeit strange - explanation.

It can often lead to speculation whether or not your account has actually been shadowbanned or if users aren’t as interested in what you have to say but now, you’ll be able to find out for sure.

This comes after X, formerly Twitter, announced on Monday (September 21) that the social media platform will become more transparent with ‘government-required content filtering’.

Sharing a post on X, the company, which is owned by Elon Musk, wrote: “We’ve expanded Under The Hood after seeing people’s appreciation of more transparency into government-required content filtering.

“In addition to showing labels applied to your account and posts in the prior month, Under The Hood now shows if your account or posts had their visibility limited because of required compliance with local law(s).

“For example, you can see if any of your posts were withheld in a country following a legal demand – and which country.

Elon Musk's X will now share information on government-required content filtering (Harun Ozalp/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“We’re making this Under The Hood update available to all accounts that meet the basic eligibility criteria (10+ posts in prior month, account at least one year old).”

You can download the report directly from X, although you will need to meet the above eligibility criteria during its pilot testing period. All you need to do is head to the ‘under the hood’ section of the Settings page.

Why are governments shadowbanning X accounts?

Shadowbanning, which means a website or social media platform secretly blocks or hides your content so that only you can see it, can be done for a variety of reasons.

There isn’t a single factor why governments shadowban accounts from certain social media platforms, it can depend on country laws and requests can sometimes relate to things such as election content, terrorism and hate speech.

Foreign governments are shadowbanning X accounts (Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

The rules also aren’t universal, meaning something that remains available in one country could potentially be restricted in another, therefore, a government request doesn’t necessarily mean a post has disappeared from X worldwide.

Instead, a platform can be required to make particular content unavailable, or less visible, to people in a specific jurisdiction.

Some organizations, including those that promote free expression, argue that these laws can be used to restrict political speech or dissent.

While X’s new transparency policy doesn’t completely settle those arguments, it does give users more information about what has happened to their content.