X opens official shadowban checker to all eligible users and adds legal withholding details

On September 19 Japan time, X announced that it had expanded access to Under the hood, its official tool that lets users check labels that affect the visibility of their accounts and posts. X also expanded the information included in the tool.

X opens Under the hood to all eligible users

X launched Under the hood in August as an official tool that lets users check shadowbans at both the account and post levels. Users need to have published at least 10 posts during the previous month to use it. X began by testing the feature with a subset of accounts that had existed for at least one year.

X has now expanded access to Under the hood to all users who meet these requirements.

You can check whether your account has access to Under the hood at this URL. If the page only shows an explanation and no download button, you cannot use Under the hood.

If you see a download button like the one in the image below, you can use Under the hood.

I published a report from my own use of Under the hood in the following article.

I tried X’s official shadowban checker, “Under the hood”

X has released an official shadowban checker that lets you check shadowbans at both the post and account level. I recently gained access to the tool, so I tried it myself.

September 4, 2026

X does not acknowledge what it calls “shadowbanning” and says Under the hood “you’ll be able to see the labels applied to your account and posts.” X uses a different definition of shadowbanning from the one people commonly use. Under the common definition, X itself acknowledges that it applies measures that qualify as shadowbanning.

X（Twitter）のシャドウバンや検閲をしていないという主張はミスリードである【コラム】

X（旧Twitter）の日本語版公式アカウントは3月12日、シャドウバンやプラットフォームの方針にもとづく検閲を実施することはないとする声明を発表した。しかし、同社の過去の発表を踏まえると、この声明は誤解を招くものである。

March 13, 2025

Under the hood now shows legal withholding requests

Until now, Under the hood let users check labels that X had applied to their accounts or posts, including spam-related classifications. X has now added information about content withheld in response to legal requests.

According to X’s Help Center, X may restrict access to content when it receives a valid legal request from an authorized body such as a court, or when it determines that content violates local law. In some cases, censorship measures or legal proceedings can result in restrictions on the visibility of an account or post.

Under the hood now lets you check whether X withheld any of your posts in a particular country in response to a legal request. If X withheld a post, you can also see which country requested the restriction.

Users already had other ways to check whether X had restricted content for legal reasons, so this addition to Under the hood has limited practical impact. X says it notifies account owners when it restricts content for legal reasons unless the law prohibits it from doing so. You can also check for these restrictions with Shadowban Scanner, an open-source browser extension I developed and published for checking shadowbans.

My analysis

As noted above, users already had other ways to check legal withholding restrictions, so this addition to Under the hood has limited impact. Opening Under the hood to all users who meet the eligibility requirements, however, gives more users access to information about how X treats their accounts and posts.

X has been pursuing greater transparency and has published and updated its recommendation algorithm as open-source software. I hope X continues to improve transparency.