Appealing the ban
Appealing is the only way out of a shadowban. It is also easy, free and polite. Here is the whole process, including the parts Reddit does not spell out.
Run the check or look at your profile logged out. If only some communities swallow your posts, that is a filter, not a shadowban, and the right move is a modmail to those moderators.
Log in with the affected account and go to reddit.com/appeals. If the form lets you write an appeal, you are indeed shadowbanned (or suspended). If it says there is nothing to appeal, your account is not banned site-wide.
Short beats long. Say that you believe the account was flagged by mistake, say what you think might have triggered it (new account, several links to the same site, a VPN, posting too fast), and say that you have read the content policy and will keep to it. No excuses, no anger, no essays.
One appeal at a time. Sending five in a row does not make it faster and the admins explicitly ask people not to flood the queue. Do not create a new account to post in the meantime: that is ban evasion and can turn a reversible mistake into a permanent one.
Reviews are done by humans, in order, with a queue that grows whenever Reddit is in the news. Use the monitor and you get one email a day with the current state, plus a celebration when the ban is gone.
Hello, I think my account was flagged by mistake. I'm new to Reddit and in my first days I posted the same link to my photography site in a few communities, which I now understand looks like spam. I've read the content policy and the rules of the communities I'd like to join, and I'll stick to them. Could you please take another look at my account? Thank you.
Swap the middle sentence for whatever applies to you. If you genuinely have no idea what triggered it, say that, and mention anything unusual: VPN, shared household network, a second account.
Reddit says little about appeals, so this is what thousands of reports in r/ShadowBan and r/NewToReddit add up to. Treat the numbers as typical, not guaranteed.
Not reliably. Many people get an email or inbox message saying the account has been reviewed and restored; just as many simply notice one day that their profile is visible again. A rejected appeal often gets no answer at all. In other words: watch the status, not the inbox.
Anything from a few hours to several weeks. A few days to two weeks is common; around busy periods it stretches. Nothing you do speeds it up, except not making it worse.
Once, then wait at least one to two weeks before a second, equally polite one. A third after another few weeks is still reasonable. Daily appeals are not: they look like exactly the behaviour the ban is meant to catch.
For accounts caught by mistake, usually one. If two or three careful appeals over a couple of months change nothing, the account was most likely flagged for a reason the admins consider valid (spam, vote manipulation, ban evasion), and further appeals rarely help.
Technically yes, but nobody will see it, and heavy activity while banned does not help your case. Reading, saving and voting are fine. If you have a time-sensitive thing to say, say it later.
Indirectly. An account with a year of normal history and one odd week is an easy restore; a two-day-old account with five identical link posts is an easy no. If you are the second case, be upfront about it.
One email a day with the current status, for up to 30 days, and a proper celebration when you are back.
Set up the monitor