Shadowbanned on Reddit: the 60-second diagnostic that actually works

You posted a thoughtful comment. Forty minutes later, zero upvotes, zero replies, and your karma hasn't moved. Are you shadowbanned, or is it just a slow Tuesday?

Most founders never run the actual test. They guess, panic, and either rage-quit the account or keep posting into a void for another week. The diagnostic below takes 60 seconds and rules out (or confirms) the four things people lump under "shadowban" but which are actually distinct problems with different fixes.

The 60-second diagnostic

Do these in order. Stop at the first one that gives you a clear answer.

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Step 1: the incognito profile check (15 seconds)

Open a private/incognito window. Don't log in. Go to https://www.reddit.com/user/YOUR_USERNAME.

• Profile loads, posts visible → your account is not fully shadowbanned. Move to step 2.
• Profile returns "page not found" or "this account has been suspended" → you have a full account-level problem. Could be a shadowban, could be a suspension. If you see a suspension banner when logged in, it's a suspension, not a shadowban. If your logged-in view looks normal but the logged-out view 404s, that's the classic shadowban signature.

Step 2: the r/ShadowBan auto-checker (30 seconds)

r/ShadowBan runs an automated bot. Post a one-line submission with any title (people post things like "am I shadowbanned" all day). The bot replies within seconds with one of three verdicts:

1. You are not shadowbanned, and your post karma is fine.
2. You are shadowbanned.
3. You're not shadowbanned but some recent posts have been removed by subreddit filters.

Verdict 3 is the one most founders mistake for a shadowban. It means your account is healthy at the site level, but specific subreddits are auto-removing your posts. That's a completely different fix.

Step 3: the per-thread check (15 seconds)

If the bot says you're clean but your comments still feel invisible, open the thread you commented on in an incognito window. Search the page for your username (Ctrl-F).

• Your comment appears → you're fine, it just didn't get traction.
• Your comment is missing → that subreddit's AutoModerator (or a human mod) removed it. Check the sub's removal reasons or message the mods. Common triggers: low karma, account age, banned keywords, domain blacklists.

The distinction most founders get wrong

There are four states people lump together as "shadowbanned". They feel the same from inside the account (no engagement, posts vanishing) but the fixes are completely different.

State	Logged-out profile	r/ShadowBan bot	Fix
Full shadowban	404	"You are shadowbanned"	Appeal via r/reddit.com modmail. Often slow.
Account suspension	Suspended banner	N/A (can't post)	Appeal via the suspension email link
Sub-specific filter	Profile fine, post missing in that sub	"Some posts removed by filters"	Build karma, age the account, modmail the sub
Just bad content	Everything visible	"You're not shadowbanned"	Write better posts, post at better times

A real shadowban from Reddit corporate is rarer than founders think. The vast majority of "I think I'm shadowbanned" cases are state 3, sub-specific filters, often tied to a karma requirement on the subreddit the founder doesn't meet yet.

Why this matters for outreach

If you confirm state 3 and the fix is karma + account age, you do not need a new account. You need 2-3 weeks of legitimate participation in subs that don't gate low-karma posters. The 30-day Reddit warmup playbook covers the sequence: which subs accept brand-new accounts, what to comment on, when to start submitting posts of your own.

If you confirm state 1 (a real shadowban), nothing you do from that account will land. File the appeal, then either wait or move to a new account and warm it properly from day one. Don't keep posting through a shadowban hoping it'll lift, that's how founders waste two months.

What actually causes shadowbans (and what doesn't)

Full account-level shadowbans almost always trace to one of these:

• Vote manipulation patterns: upvoting your own posts via a second account, coordinating votes across accounts you control, paying for upvotes (see why buying upvotes backfires).
• Spam at scale: posting the same link to 15 subs in an hour, mass-replying with identical text, comment chains that read like a script.
• Brigading: linking a Reddit thread from off-site with the implication to go vote/comment, especially across subreddits.
• Ban evasion: creating new accounts after a previous ban, posting from the same IP and behavior pattern.

What does NOT cause shadowbans, despite the folklore:

• Scheduled posting via the API or a third-party client. Reddit's API exists precisely for this.
• Drafting replies with AI and editing them before posting. The thing that gets you removed is dumping unedited AI text into a thread that needs context, not the act of using AI.
• Cold DMs to relevant strangers at low volume with a genuinely useful message. The thing that gets accounts flagged is DM blasting hundreds of users with the same template in an hour.
• Running multiple accounts for different purposes. The line is vote manipulation across them, not their existence.

If the manual version of "check 12 subreddits every morning for buying-intent threads, then comment within the hour while the post is hot" is what's grinding you down, that's exactly the workflow Bazzly handles in the background. It scans, surfaces, and lets you reply from a single queue, so you spend your minutes on the actual reply, not the hunt.

A note on r/ShadowBan etiquette

The sub is a bot service, not a discussion forum. Post your one-line check, get your verdict, move on. Don't reply to other people's checks, don't editorialize, and definitely don't argue with the bot. The mods remove off-pattern posts aggressively, and ironically, getting your r/ShadowBan post removed for being off-format is a separate problem from being shadowbanned.

Run the diagnostic now while it's fresh. Sixty seconds beats a week of guessing.