Why CBD accounts get restricted or removed

How it escalates

1. A post is removed. Often the only notice is that the post is gone.
2. A warning appears in the account status section, naming a policy.
3. Features are limited: commerce surfaces, recommendations, sometimes the ability to go live.
4. The account stops being recommended to people who do not follow it.
5. The account is disabled, with a window to appeal.

The account status section is the only place where the first four are visible together, and it is the first place to look when reach changes. Most owners have never opened it.

What actually triggers it

• Wording that presents the product as treatment. The largest single group, and it includes comment replies.
• Selling on the platform rather than describing: prices, codes, taking orders in messages.
• Restricted hashtags used repeatedly.
• Reports from people. A competitor or an unhappy customer reporting posts moves them into review faster than anything automatic.
• Bought engagement, which is detected retroactively and colours everything after it.

What an appeal can do

Appeals work for specific wrong decisions and rarely for patterns. An appeal against a single removed post that clearly did not break a policy has a reasonable chance. An appeal against a restriction that followed six removals is asking for a pattern to be reconsidered, and it usually is not.

1. Fix the cause first. Appealing while the same content is still live wastes the attempt.
2. Be specific about the post and the policy, not about how long you have been a customer.
3. Appeal once and wait. Repeat submissions do not add weight.
4. Keep evidence: screenshots of the post, the notice, and the date.

Keeping the account recoverable

The point of a backup is not that the account will be lost. It is that everything valuable about the account currently exists in one place you do not control.

• Keep the source files for every published post in your own storage.
• Export the follower facing assets you would need to rebuild: highlights covers, bios, pinned content.
• Keep an email list. It is the only audience you own.
• Keep a second account only if it is a genuinely separate presence. Duplicate accounts posting the same content are treated as evasion.

The captions themselves are the part most brands lose, and they are the part that took the longest to write. If a system produces them, it should keep them.

Prevention as a process

Every trigger on the list is checkable before publication. What makes brands skip the check is that it feels like an audit rather than a step: something you do occasionally, to a batch, when you remember. It works when it is part of writing, which is the argument for it happening automatically.

How the checks are structured is in the compliance guide, and the reach symptoms are in the shadowban guide.