X (Twitter) account locked, limited or suspended: what each one means

LockedFeaturesReach LimitedFeaturesReach LabelFeaturesReach SuspendedFeaturesReach

Everything in this table comes from X’s Help Center, apart from two things that come from our own accounts: what still works under a label, and the review button. Details and sources below.

Locked: X wants proof the account is yours

X locks an account when it suspects someone else has gotten into it, or when it sees “suspicious automated behavior that violates the X Rules”. Either way, the next time you log in you’ll see a message that your account has been locked, and a Start button.

What happens next depends on the message:

• Locked for security. X thinks someone else may have your password. Follow the steps to change it. X also emails the instructions to the address on the account.
• Locked for automated behavior. X asks you to verify by phone, by email, or with a captcha “to confirm you are not a robot”. Enter the code X sends you, or pass the captcha, and the account opens again.

While the account is locked, people who visit your profile may see a message that the account “has displayed unusual activity”, asking whether they still want to view it.

If you no longer have the phone or the email on the account, X asks you to contact its support team, and says that in some cases the only option left is to create a new account.

If your account is locked because we’ve detected suspicious automated behavior that violates the X Rules, you’ll need to confirm you’re the valid account owner.

Limited: some features are off for a while

X describes it like this:

If we detect behavior that may violate the X Rules or inhibit other people’s ability to express themselves freely, we may temporarily limit certain account features.

In practice that can mean only your followers see what you do on X. In X’s words, “your account and posts may be filtered out of certain places on X, including from search results and notifications.” At its strictest, X calls it read-only mode: you can read your timelines, but you can’t post, repost or like.

X names two kinds of limits.

Limited for suspicious activity

X’s example is “aggressive following or aggressive engagements (such as, like, repost, and quote)”. You see a message that some features are limited for a set time, which “varies based on the nature of the violation”, and you get two choices:

1. Use X in a limited state for that time. Press Continue to X and the countdown starts.
2. Verify your phone number or email address to get the features back sooner.

After repeated violations, or very aggressive engagement, X may not offer the phone option at all, and you can only wait. If you choose to wait, the option to verify doesn’t come back.

Limited for a possible rule violation

This one is stricter. You can still read X, but you can only send direct messages to your followers, and you can’t post, repost or like. Only your followers can see your past posts, and visitors to your profile see a warning that the account may have broken the X Rules. To start the countdown, X may ask you to verify your email, add a phone number, or delete the posts it says broke the rules. X adds that “repeat violations of the X Rules may lead to permanent suspension.”

The label: “may impact its reach”

This one is easy to mix up with a limit, and it’s the one we ran into. X’s authenticity policy lists it apart from taking features away, as restricting reach:

Restricting Reach: This may include excluding posts from search results, trends, and recommended notifications, removing posts from the For You and Following timelines, restricting a post’s discoverability to the author’s profile, … and downranking the post in replies.

The account keeps working. Under the label we could still post, reply and like as usual. X just showed what we posted to far fewer people. The notice reads like this.

We’ve added a temporary label to your account which may impact its reach.

Open it, and X explains:

Why does my account have a label?

We have found that your account may contain spam or be engaging in other types of platform manipulation.

What does this mean for my account?

The reach of your account may be limited and its content may also be temporarily restricted, such as being excluded from trends, replies, recommended notifications, and search results.

Request Review

The notice says the reach of your account “may be limited”, so many people, us included, call this being limited too. On X’s own pages it’s a separate action: a limit takes features away, and a label takes reach away.

When X doesn’t tell you

X’s help pages don’t cover what happened on one of our own accounts.

1. Day 1Replying as usual
2. Day 2Views drop
3. About a weekNo notice
4. One replyThe notice shows up
5. 20 minutesLabel removed

Two things to know before you count on this. First, this is our own experience. X hasn’t published it as a process, and X may treat your account differently. Second, the Request Review button only ever showed up on our account with X Premium. On our account without Premium we never saw it. X’s authenticity policy does say you can submit an appeal if you think X made a mistake.

That week cost us the most. Every reply we sent in that time reached nobody, and nobody got a notification from us. On X, people forget an account that stops showing up in their replies. We lost close to 120 followers that week.

Suspended: the account is off X

A suspended account shows “Account suspended” on its profile. X gives three main reasons:

• Spam. “Most of the accounts we suspend are suspended because they are spammy, or just plain fake.” X admits that real people’s accounts get “suspended by mistake” now and then.
• A security risk. X may suspend an account it thinks has been hacked, to stop the damage, and give it back to its owner once it’s secure.
• Abuse. Threats, impersonation and other abusive behavior can mean a temporary suspension or a permanent one.

To get a suspended account back:

1. Log in. If X shows prompts to add a phone number or confirm your email, follow them. Some suspensions lift that way.
2. If they don’t, file an appeal. X’s instructions: log in to the suspended account first, then open a new browser tab and file an appeal.

One thing not to do: don’t make a new account to get around a suspension. X’s authenticity policy calls that ban evasion, and says X may suspend any other account it believes the same person runs.

From our own story: one account of ours, without Premium, stayed under a label for weeks, and we had no way to ask for a review. We hoped it would clear by itself. Instead, the account was suspended, and every appeal we filed was turned down.

Sometimes a real person’s account gets suspended by mistake, and in those cases we’ll work with the person to make sure the account is unsuspended.

How people who reply a lot end up here

Replying is how most accounts grow on X, so know which habits X reads as spam. These are the ones X’s own rules name, and the ones that got us in trouble:

• Bulk replies. X’s authenticity policy lists “sending bulk, aggressive, high-volume unsolicited replies” as content spam. We used to send 50 to 80 replies in one or two hours.
• Many replies to one person. We had a habit of opening someone’s profile and replying to every post they’d made that day. X counts aggressive engagement among the reasons it limits accounts.
• The same reply twice. X’s rules page says “repeatedly posting duplicated and unsolicited replies to many accounts is considered spam behavior.”
• Apps that act for you. Automated accounts outside X’s developer rules break its policy, and X says you are “ultimately responsible for third-party applications” you let into your account.
• No email or phone on the account. It doesn’t cause a limit, but X needs them to give you access back.

Twick came out of those mistakes. It drafts replies about the post in front of you, in your voice, and you press Reply on X yourself. Its Safe mode reminds you when you pass 30 replies in an hour, 100 in a day, 5 to the same person in a day, or two replies only seconds apart. It helps you keep a pace that looks like a person. No tool can promise X will never limit an account, Twick included.

Questions

How long does a limit last on X?

X says a limit lasts a time that “varies based on the nature of the violation”, and its notice tells you the length. For a label, X gives no time. On our account the label notice took about a week to appear, and the label came off 20 minutes after we asked for a review.

Is a limited account the same as a shadowban?

What most people call a shadowban is closer to the label: the account works, but X shows its posts and replies to fewer people. X itself avoids the word. It calls that restricting reach, and it calls an account limited when features are taken away.

Can I ask for a review without X Premium?

X’s help page says you can appeal a limit through its support team. The Request Review button inside the label notice only ever showed up on our Premium account.

Will verifying my phone number end a limit?

It can. For some limits, X offers verification as a way to get your features back sooner. After repeated violations it may not offer it, and you wait out the time.

Why are my replies missing from threads when my profile still shows them?

That’s how the label looked on our account: replies on our own Replies tab, but missing from the posts we replied to, and not behind Show probable spam either. Show probable spam covers the milder case, where a single reply gets hidden.