Why Olivia Dunne Thinks She's Banned On TikTok

Gymnast and influencer Olivia Dunne thinks there's some funny business going on with her TikTok account. Unfortunately, Dunne — who's currently in a relationship with baseball star Paul Skenes — believes that TikTok has shadowbanned her popular account, which has over 7.8 million followers and has racked up nearly 420 million views during its lifetime. Dunne — who makes a great living from social media — usually makes video content revolving around her athletic career, romantic life, and many other interests. These videos typically yield at least a million viewers, though she can reach that several times over. For example, Dunne's November 16 hair filter video has eight million views. But something's changed in Dunne's eyes — and she's not pleased about it.

Dunne made the announcement on TikTok, according to Deadline. In December, Dunne pondered if TikTok was artificially deflating her usually astronomical views. And while TikTok has yet to respond directly to Dunne's claims that they're sabotaging her account, their spokesperson provided a general statement to Fox News when questioned about Dunne's comments. For starters, TikTok outright denied shadowbanning any of its user's accounts, which must include Dunne's. The outlet also detailed the company's rules about limiting content and accounts that violate its terms of service, though there's no way to know if that could potentially apply to Dunne.

Whether or not TikTok actually interfered with Olivia Dunne's account, she was certainly right to notice a slight difference in her views. Most of Dunne's December uploads failed to garner the same interest as previous videos. As of this writing, six of Dunne's last seven uploads fell short of the one million viewership mark. Dunne's first noticeable drop in views occurred on December 10, when she tried out a filter that listed her top three celebrity look-alikes. The popular filter compared Dunne to Emilia Clarke, Cara Delevingne, and Zendaya. However, Dunne wasn't impressed with the filter, dubbing the results "a reach" in the caption. This particular video topped out at 930,000 views, while the video directly before that had 1.5 million views.

Her subsequent uploads — except a video of her shooting hoops with a friend in gymnastic gear — continued to dwindle in viewership. Dunne posted her least-viewed (recent) upload on December 19. In the video, captioned, "I can't help myself," Dunne paced around her room as she struggled to keep her Christmas gift list a secret. It's only been viewed 567,000 times. Another video of Dunne lip syncing to SNL's "Big Boys" by SZA and others accumulated a similar number of views, barely reaching 677,000 people. Unfortunately, for Dunne there are endless reasons that she could be experiencing a dip in viewership. In the meantime, her audience is still large enough to carry her for some times.

Olivia Dunne's TikTok woes haven't drummed up much sympathy on social media. "Really? With all that's going on in the world, this is the 'news' you're posting?" tweeted one user underneath a Fox News tweet of their story. "Oh honey be happy that is all you need to think about. Bless you," tweeted another fan, downplaying the incident. Meanwhile, another fan chimed in, writing, "Maybe her 15 minutes is winding down. She has made millions during it. Don't complain." Fortunately, Dunne did have a few allies — like the user who corroborated her claim about her potential reach to her audience. "Her videos stopped showing up on my side. They used to always be there and now, nothing," they tweeted.

Despite the harsh reception that Dunne has received online, it's natural for her to be upset about her declining views. After all, Dunne worked hard to build her social media empire. "She was used to following a schedule, so she just started doing social media like it was her job," Dunne's mother, Kat, told Elle. "She would sit down, make a schedule, map out what kinds of content she'd do, and then watch how it performed." As the outlet noted, Dunne was also once unable to capitalize monetarily off her social media fame. "She couldn't earn a single dollar. The rules were so strict, she couldn't even take a cup of coffee for free."