Shadowban info

What is a shadowban?

A shadowban is Reddit's quietest penalty. Your account keeps working from your point of view: you can post, comment, vote and message. But for everyone else your content is removed on arrival and your profile shows "This account has been banned" to everyone else (old Reddit simply says "page not found", as if you had never existed).

It was built as an anti-spam tool. Spammers who notice a ban immediately just open a new account, so Reddit lets them keep shouting into the void for a while. The side effect: genuine newcomers who trip the same wires get the same silence, with no message and no explanation.

Three things it is not:

• Not a subreddit ban. Moderators can only ban you from their own community, and you get a message when they do. A shadowban comes from Reddit itself and applies site-wide.
• Not a suspension. Suspended accounts cannot post at all, the profile says "suspended", and you are told about it in your inbox.
• Not a filter. AutoModerator, reputation filters and crowd control remove content in some communities. A shadowban removes it everywhere. More on that below.

Am I shadowbanned? Four ways to know

1. Use the check on this site. It asks Reddit's official API, without logging in, for your profile and whether your name is still taken. Hidden profile plus taken name equals shadowban.
2. Log out and look. Open a private window and visit reddit.com/user/YOURNAME. "This account has been banned" (or "page not found" on old.reddit.com) for an account you were using five minutes ago is the sign. A normal profile shows your posts; a suspended one says "suspended" instead.
3. Open the appeal form. While logged in, visit reddit.com/appeals. If it lets you file an appeal, your account is either shadowbanned or suspended. If it tells you there is nothing to appeal, you are fine.
4. Ask the bot. Post or comment in r/ShadowBan. A bot replies with a verdict within minutes, and the humans there have seen it all.

One caveat for all methods: a brand-new account can take a few minutes to become visible, and a deleted account looks a lot like a missing one. If in doubt, check twice.

Why did I get shadowbanned?

Reddit does not publish the rules, on purpose: the people it is aimed at would love to read them. What follows is the community's educated guess, collected over years in r/NewToReddit and r/ShadowBan. New accounts are watched far more closely than old ones, so most of these matter most in the first weeks.

• Too much, too fast. Many posts or comments in a short time, especially identical or near-identical ones across communities.
• Links, links, links. Repeatedly sharing links to sites outside Reddit, above all the same site (your shop, your channel, your fundraiser; it does not matter whether you profit). Reddit sells ads for that: Reddit for Business.
• Multiple accounts. Several accounts on one device or network, voting on the same things or replying to each other. That is vote manipulation, and a new account after a ban is ban evasion.
• Collecting removals. Content that keeps getting removed by moderators or filters tells the system you do not read rules.
• Cold DMs and chats. Starting lots of conversations, especially when many are declined or blocked.
• Nuisance reports. Reporting things that are plainly not rule breaks.
• Unverified account. No verified email or phone makes you look disposable.
• Karma farms and bought accounts. "Free karma" communities and aged accounts from a marketplace carry baggage.
• Network signals. VPNs are allowed, but a cheap VPN exit shared with a thousand spammers is not a great first impression. Same for data-centre IPs and disposable email domains.
• NSFW only. Accounts that exclusively post in adult communities seem to be scrutinised harder. Mixing in regular communities helps.

Reddit's own, deliberately vague, wording is in the Help Center article "My account was banned for spam, inauthentic activity or ban evasion", and in "What constitutes spam?".

Filters, restrictions and crowd control: the shadowban look-alikes

Most "I think I'm shadowbanned" posts turn out to be something else. If your content disappears in one or a few communities but your profile is visible, you are dealing with one of these:

• Community restrictions. Many subreddits require a minimum account age or karma. Your post is removed on the spot, usually with a notice or a modmail. How to tell.
• Reddit's spam filter and reputation filter. A banner on your post that mentions "Reddit's filters" means exactly that. Moderators can approve it, which also teaches the filter. Your contributor quality score plays a role; you can look yours up in r/WhatIsMyCQS.
• Crowd control. A per-community setting that holds back comments from new or negative-karma users in a thread.
• AutoModerator. Custom rules per subreddit. Some remove silently, which feels like a shadowban but only applies there.

The fix is the same for all of them: send the moderators a polite modmail and ask what happened. The r/NewToReddit wiki has a full page on reasons for removals. If, however, every single thing you post is filtered everywhere, come back to the check.

Starting on Reddit without ever getting shadowbanned

None of this is official, all of it is cheap insurance. Think of your first month as pre-season.

1. Secure the account. Verify your email (and phone if asked), set a real password, enable two-factor. Pick a username you can live with; you cannot change it.
2. Lurk before you leap. Spend a few days reading. Learn how threads, karma and flair work; the karma explainer and Reddiquette are a good evening's reading.
3. Comment first, post later. Thoughtful comments in big friendly communities build history with almost no risk. Start with the new-user friendly subreddits; r/findareddit helps you find your corners.
4. Read the rules of every community before posting there. Sidebar, pinned posts, wiki. Each removal is a mark against you; three removals in a row is a pattern.
5. No links for the first weeks. And after that, keep self-promotion to a small share of what you do. If you are here to promote something, say so openly and use the communities that allow it.
6. Write every comment yourself. No copy-paste across threads, no bulk replies, no LLM-generated filler. Identical text is the oldest spam signal there is.
7. One account, one person. Alt accounts are allowed, but keep them apart: never vote on the same things, never talk to yourself, never use them to dodge a ban.
8. Don't repost a removed post. Ask the mods instead. Reposting the same thing until it sticks is how shadowbans begin.
9. Skip the shortcuts. No karma farms, no "upvote for upvote", no bought accounts, no sketchy VPN exits while the account is young.
10. Pace yourself. A handful of good contributions a day beats fifty in an hour. Reddit rewards slow and steady, filters punish fast and loud.

Follow these for a month and the filters will treat you like a regular. Follow them for a year and you will be the one explaining shadowbans to newcomers.