Reddit Shadowbans- A Deep Dive Into What Little I Could Find

So back in July, while using a fairly popular commercial VPN, I made a comment on the LocalLlama sub answering someone's question by linking one of my own posts with some benchmarks; something I would do often. After a few minutes, I decided to edit the post to add a tl;dr with the relevant information, so that folks wouldn't have to click through the link and read a big post.

The moment I clicked save on the edit, my account was security locked. Little red banner at the top and an email telling me they take my account security super seriously, so please go change my password to get back in. So that's what I did. Added MFA, too. Good to go!

Or so I thought. Turns out, the system also shadowbanned me.

What's a Shadowban, you might ask? It's a ban where you don't immediately realize it happened. There's no red bar at the top, and no email or message sent. You could go on for quite a while never knowing it happened. You can interact with the site, upvote, and comment all day. The only catch? No one can see anything you do. The only way to really notice is either someone else tells you, or (like me) you go to your profile often and notice ALL of your old posts and comments are now removed by automods.

Since that day, I tried to do a bit of research into how Shadowbans work, what the appeal situation looks like, etc. Here's what I've learned from reading over comments and posts from other folks around the net. Unfortunately, there is very little actual information out there.

Almost all of this is pulled from unproven anecdotes, but I tried to focus on what I could see multiple people corroborate as happening to them as well.

  • Shadowbans appear to be a largely an automated process. Think automod, but site wide.
    • There's not a ton of rhyme or reason as to what gets you shadowbanned. You could post for 5 years on VPN, and then one day it decides you made a post too many.
    • Based on what other folks have said, it looks like upvote patterns, commenting on a post that itself gets banned, etc all appear to have an effect as well
  • While an actual ban (with the red banner across your screen and a message explaining why) is the result of you breaking rules, it would appear that a shadowban has very little to do with your behavior and more to do with you getting caught in the middle of an automated war between an administrative site bot and posting/upvoting bots.
  • Just as the shadowbans appear automated, I highly suspect that there are automated filters around appeals.
    • You know how some companies use job application filters, and the only way to get through is the right keywords in your application, else it ends up in the recycle bin? I'm really starting to think that this is the same situation for appeals.
    • Some folks get a response to their appeal in 3-4 hours. Some have been trying since last April without a peep. I suspect that the wording of your appeal determines whether a human ever sees it, so simple luck may play a huge factor in your ability to get unbanned.
    • You can appeal once every 24 hours via the appeal pages. This really adds to my thought that it probably is somewhat automated. If you're overwhelmed with appeals, why let people keep trying? Unless it's more like a lottery, giving them daily chances to get through.
  • There seems to be no limit on who gets shadowbanned. I've seen folks with new accounts and 13 year old accounts all complain of it. Additionally, I've seen people complain of it who are also paid members, so paying doesn't seem to change the outcome.
  • I saw a sharp uptick of people talking about getting shadowbanned while on VPN a few months back, so something likely changed with the ban-bot's logic around then.
  • Making another account may result in it getting banned as well. Additionally, any roommates or other household members on the same IP who have accounts may also be at risk, as some folks have said that the bot is looking at IPs and will suspect you of Ban Evasion. In that event, they will need to do the appeals process as well.

Appealing can be done in one of 3 places:

The first 2 links have 24 hour limits, while the last one doesn't appear to have such a limit.

Use this as a lesson in not relying on a single social media to post your news and information. Every post, every upvote, and every comment comes with the risk of a random shadowban, and if you pull a bad draw and the bot locks your account, there seems to be a pretty good chance that you just aren't coming back from it.

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