u/Much_Motor_4408

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

I know calls to action supposedly help with growth, but every time I ask viewers to like or subscribe on YouTube it feels forced and unnatural to me. At the same time, creators who do it confidently seem to grow faster and build stronger engagement habits with their audience. Curious how other people handle this. Do you directly ask viewers to subscribe or avoid it because it feels weird on camera?

I know this is going to be controversial but I've been sitting on this for weeks and I need to say it.

Before January 2026 I never thought about whether my content was going to get flagged.

I posted. It either did well or it didn't. But it went up.

Since the ownership changed I've had more videos flagged, more reach suppressed, and more accounts in my circle quietly banned than in the entire two years before that combined.

When the glitches started happening right after the ownership transfer, TikTok blamed a power outage at a data center. But users were watching political content disappear in real time and the timing was impossible to ignore.

California's governor launched a review into whether TikTok was violating state law by suppressing certain content. That's not a small thing. That's a sitting governor saying something is wrong here.

And then a week later everyone just moved on.

New sound dropped. New trend. New drama.

The conversation died.

But the flagging didn't stop.

I'm not saying the old TikTok was perfect. It wasn't.

But there was something predictable about it. You knew the rules even when they were frustrating.

Now it feels like the rules change depending on what you're posting about and nobody will admit that's happening.

The platform didn't get freer when it became American owned.

It just got differently controlled.

And we're all pretending that's not worth talking about.

Thought the blue tick would help. More credibility. Better reach. Priority in search.

That is literally what they advertise when you subscribe.

First month after verifying my reach dropped 30 percent. Support gave me automated responses. No real explanation.

Asked around and found 6 other creators with the exact same experience. Paid for verification. Reach tanked. Nobody at Instagram to actually talk to.

The blue tick used to mean something. Now they sell it to anyone with a credit card and it does absolutely nothing for your actual growth.

Is anyone here genuinely seeing better reach after getting verified or is it just a paid badge that helps Instagram's revenue and nobody else?

My channel has been sitting between 9.8k to 10.2k subscribers for almost 3 months now and it’s driving me crazy. Some videos hit 15k to 20k views, CTR stays around 5 to 6 percent, and average retention is usually above 40 percent, but subscriber growth barely moves. Feels like YouTube keeps testing my videos without fully pushing them. Did anyone here break out of this stage recently, and if yes what actually changed for your channel?

I’m honestly confused at this point because my last few videos barely got pushed past the first couple hundred views even though retention and watch time looked normal. Meanwhile I’ll see almost identical content from bigger accounts getting insane reach instantly. Starting to wonder if TikTok already decides which accounts are worth pushing before people even interact with the video. Anyone else feel like the algorithm has been extra rough lately?

And I say this as someone who just went through 3 weeks of it.

Here's what makes it uniquely maddening compared to any other platform issue.

You're not banned. Your account still works. You can post. You can comment. You can scroll. Everything looks completely normal from your side.

But from everyone else's side you basically don't exist anymore.

Your videos stop showing up on the For You Page. They disappear from hashtag results. Even your existing followers stop seeing your content in their feeds.

And TikTok doesn't send you a single notification about any of it.

No email. No in-app alert. Nothing.

The only way most people find out is by searching their own hashtag from another account and realizing their video isn't there. Or watching their analytics crater overnight with zero For You traffic.

So now you're trying to fix a problem you can't fully confirm, caused by a rule they won't specify, using a system they haven't explained.

The advice online doesn't help either because half of it contradicts the other half.

Delete the flagged video. No wait, deleting videos makes it worse.

Take a 3 day break. No, a 2 week break.

Switch to a pro account. Account type doesn't matter.

Post a test video with a unique hashtag. Check it from another account.

That last one is actually the only real way to confirm it. If your video doesn't show up in that hashtag search from a separate account that doesn't follow you, you're shadowbanned. That's as close to a confirmed answer as you're going to get because TikTok will never just tell you.

What actually helped me was stopping completely for 10 days. Not reducing. Fully stopping. Then coming back with one clean video, no hashtags, completely original content.

It took almost 2 weeks after that before my For You reach came back properly.

3 weeks of stress for something TikTok caused, won't acknowledge, and left me to figure out alone.

If you're in it right now just know the 10 day full stop is the closest thing to a real fix I've found. Everything else is just noise.

I started noticing something weird a few months ago.

Any post where I talked openly about making money online would instantly underperform.

Not low engagement.
Dead.

Meanwhile the exact same style of content same hook, same editing, same pacing would do completely normal numbers if I removed any mention of income, clients, or monetization.

At first I thought I was imagining it.

Then I tested it.

Posted a reel about how I made money from my page.
Flopped.

Reuploaded later with a different caption that removed every money related phrase.
Same video.
Same audio.
Same account.

The reach tripled.

And before someone says “your content just wasn’t good”
maybe.
But creators across completely different niches keep noticing the exact same pattern.

You can post luxury lifestyles all day.
Designer clothes.
Cars.
Trips.
“Day in my life as a millionaire.”

But the moment you start explaining how money actually works?
How sponsorships work.
How pages get monetized.
How people make income outside the platform.

Reach suddenly falls off a cliff.

That’s the part I can’t stop thinking about.

Because social platforms love creators making money
as long as the platform stays in control of how it happens.

The second creators start teaching people how to monetize independently, the relationship changes.

And honestly?
I don’t even know if this is intentional suppression anymore or just algorithms trained to avoid “financial” content automatically because advertisers prefer safer topics.

But either way the result feels the same.

Educational money content dies.
Consumable lifestyle content explodes.

Have any of you tested this yourself or noticed the same thing?

If YouTube stopped recommending videos tomorrow and creators could only rely on people manually searching or returning on their own, how many channels do you think would actually survive? Feels like a huge part of growth now depends on the algorithm deciding who gets visibility. Do you think most creators have built real loyal audiences, or are many channels more dependent on recommendation systems than they realize?

That's it. That's the whole algorithm.

Think about it. A genuinely useful post that someone reads, saves and closes gets buried. A controversial reel that makes people comment and argue for 2 hours gets pushed to explore page overnight.

So creators started optimizing for drama. For outrage. For clickbait. Because that's literally what the platform rewards.

And then Instagram wonders why content quality is dropping.

They built an algorithm that punishes education and rewards addiction. Then they put a "Creator" label on your profile and act like they're doing you a favour.

The game isn't about making great content anymore. It's about making content that Instagram profits from.

Took me way too long to realize these are two completely different things.

Anyone else feel like they had to compromise their content just to get reach?

Sometimes it feels like a lot of YouTubers slowly stop caring about the audience itself and start focusing only on numbers. More views, higher CTR, better retention, bigger reach. At some point the viewer starts feeling more like data than an actual person. Do you think most creators genuinely care about their communities long term or does growth eventually become the only thing that matters?

I blamed everything except the actual content.

Hashtags.
Posting time.
Shadowbans.
“Dead” audience.
The algorithm.

For 60 days I tested two accounts in the same niche.

Same effort.
Same posting frequency.
Different strategy.

One account used 30 hashtags every post.
The other used none. Just stronger keywords and better captions.

The no-hashtag account consistently performed better.

Not by a little either.

That was the first hit to my ego.

The second came when I asked myself one question I’d been avoiding the entire time:

“Why would anyone share this?”

Not like it.
Not watch it for 3 seconds.
Actually send it to another person.

And honestly?
Most of my content had no reason to be shared.

It wasn’t useful enough.
Wasn’t emotional enough.
Wasn’t interesting enough.

It was optimized.
But forgettable.

That’s when I realized Instagram doesn’t reward “good effort.”
It rewards content that creates enough reaction to spread naturally.

The moment I stopped trying to beat the algorithm and started making posts people genuinely wanted to send to friends —
everything changed.

More saves.
More shares.
More comments from strangers instead of mutuals.

Growth finally started feeling real.

Most people don’t want to hear this because there’s no hack hidden inside it.

If nobody is sharing your content, the algorithm probably isn’t your biggest problem.

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

I’m genuinely curious how new creators are supposed to grow on Instagram right now without already having an audience somewhere else. It feels like organic reach is getting weaker unless a post randomly takes off.

Even with decent editing, consistent posting, and following trends, growth still feels painfully slow compared to what people used to describe a couple years ago.

Do you think Instagram still gives small creators a fair chance organically, or is paid promotion slowly becoming necessary to grow now?

At this point it feels like even good creators rely heavily on exaggerated thumbnails and titles just to compete on YouTube. Some people call it smart packaging, others think it’s ruining the platform and rewarding manipulation over quality. If YouTube suddenly removed aggressive thumbnails and forced simple titles only, which creators do you think would actually survive based purely on content quality?

I’ve been trying to reply to every comment on my YouTube videos thinking it might help engagement and push the video further, but I’m not sure if it actually makes a difference. Some say it signals activity, others say it doesn’t matter at all. For those who consistently reply, have you noticed any real impact on reach or is it just good for community building and nothing more

Body: I’ve seen mixed opinions about posting multiple times a day on TikTok, but lately it feels like uploading too often might actually reduce overall reach. Sometimes when I post less, videos seem to perform better, but when I increase frequency, everything starts getting lower views. Not sure if it’s audience fatigue, algorithm behavior, or just coincidence. It makes it confusing to decide between consistency and spacing content out. Curious if others have tested different posting frequencies and noticed a clear pattern.