We created the original post in response to seeing so many members of our community becoming Shadow Banned for no reason. We noticed these bans became especially extreme around 2020/2021, probably as Reddit ramped up the use of sitewide filters to manage the influx of bots, spammers, and purveyors of disinformation. Some improvements to the accuracy of the filters appear to have been made since then, but our info post has proved useful to our community as well as moderators and users across the site, so we'll try to keep versions of it refreshed and accessible. Version 2.0 is here!
Mods around Reddit are welcome to link your users here if you feel it will be helpful to them. r/ModGuide also has an excellent post from 2021 with suggestions specific to moderators.
- r/kpophelp Mod Team!
READ THIS FIRST!
For those who want the simplest info/advice, read the following:
We did not Shadow Ban you and we cannot remove your Shadow Ban. Subreddit Moderators do not have the power to do anything about Shadow Bans.
Your Shadow Ban is likely the result of Reddit's sitewide automated bot/spam filters.
Only Reddit Admins can remove your Shadow Ban. We are not Reddit Admins.
Go to https://www.reddit.com/appeals to check the status of your account. If there is a problem with your account, there is a way to directly message Admins at the same link to try to get your Shadow Ban or Suspension removed.
It can take roughly 1 to 2 months for Admins to assess your Appeal. Do not expect any notifications or feedback from Admins until then.
If you are looking for more detailed information about Shadow Bans to the best of our knowledge as moderators, continue reading below!
What is a Shadow Ban?
A Shadow Ban is a type of sitewide account ban across Reddit. When a user's account is Shadow Banned they are not notified. They can continue to browse Reddit, make posts and comments, and use Reddit like normal. However, their posts and comments are automatically removed as soon as they are made, making them invisible to anyone else. A Shadow Banned user's profile is also invisible to any other users or moderators. This means a Shadow Banned user often has no idea they have received this kind of ban.
Note that users who are Suspended are notified by Reddit and given more information about whether their suspension is temporary or permanent. Again, this is only something Admins have control of. Moderators do not.
Why are users Shadow Banned?
It can be helpful to know the difference between Moderators and Admins to understand what is happening.
Moderators (subreddit volunteers) can only ban you from the individual subreddits under their care based on the rules they have set for their own communities. If you have been banned from a subreddit, you can no longer post or comment in that subreddit only. This is not a Shadow Ban.
Admins (Reddit employees) can Shadow Ban or Suspend users across the whole site. They have set many automated filters to help catch spammers and bots, which will apply Shadow Bans or Suspensions to those suspected accounts to assist human Admins from needing to do this all manually.
As far as we can tell, the purpose of Shadow Bans is to quietly make spammers and bots disappear into a void without their awareness. Reddit is constantly inundated with malicious bot rings trying to spread bad links and other nefarious spammers. The site's filters are always running in the background to automatically catch and remove any posts or comments made by them. Shadow Bans are applied quickly and broadly to keep normal users as safe as possible from their garbage.
But this automation means Shadow Bans can also affect normal users with false positives. If you have received a Shadow Ban, but you know you aren't a bot or spammer, it can be very confusing. You are not alone. This happens to many normal users. No one is out to get you, you have just accidentally triggered Reddit's automated filters.
How do I know if I’m Shadow Banned?
This is something you can check on your own with any of the following methods:
A. While signed in to your account on Reddit, go to https://www.reddit.com/appeals.
B. In an incognito browser window, open a link to your profile (https://www.reddit.com/user/yourusername). If it says anything like, "user not found", "page does not exist", or "Sorry, nobody on Reddit goes by that name", then you are Shadow Banned or Suspended.
C. r/ShadowBan or r/ShadowBanned are subreddits specifically for checking your account.
D. Self-awareness. You can pay attention to certain signs that you might be Shadow Banned:
- Your posts do not show in the subreddit 'new queue' within a few minutes of posting.
- Your comments almost never show up in posts and might say [Removed].
- When you look at your own profile/history, many of your recent comments/posts have only 1 karma.
ONLY if you have tried the methods above and still have confusion, you may message us directly. Remember, we are just the moderators of this subreddit. We did not cause your Shadow Ban. We cannot remove your Shadow Ban. We do not know why you received a Shadow Ban. Beyond the information in this post, we can only make an educated guess about your specific case if you provide information about the age of your account and activity. Otherwise, we are as clueless as you.
BUT, we can give you absolute confirmation that you are, or are not, Shadow Banned. We get a note in our Modmail interface in clear red letters telling us that a user is Shadow Banned when they contact us, which is the most direct indicator available other than the official Appeals link. Keep in mind we are the mods of r/kpop's ecosystem. If you're here from communities unrelated to K-Pop, let us know when you message if you’re comfortable with that! Message the Mods to get a yes/no confirmation of a Shadow Ban on your account.
I am Shadow Banned. What should I do?
https://www.reddit.com/appeals
This link above is the only way to remove your Shadow Ban. If your account is normal it will tell you so. If you have a Shadow Ban or Suspension, it will give you the option to message the Admins to make an appeal. We have seen many users successfully restore their accounts this way, sometimes within a day or two. It's basically your way of signaling to Admins that you are a real person, not a bot/spammer, and you have good intentions as a user on their site. We have also seen appeals take much longer to be granted. Most seem to take at least one month to hear back from Admins.
Some users don’t mind having a Shadow Ban because they only use their account to lurk, which is fine. You don’t have to do anything. Some users abandon their account and make a new one. Be careful doing that because Ban Evasion filters are also active and might trigger a Shadow Ban on any new accounts if you are using the same device or IP address.
We recommend that Shadow Banned users do not continue to post/comment once you know there is a problem with your account. This applies all across Reddit. You are likely wasting your efforts by doing so. Many subreddit moderators will not bother to check their spam queue and will not approve your posts/comments, so they will never be seen. In some subreddits like here in r/kpophelp, the mods are paying more attention. We will sometimes manually approve posts/comments of users who are seeking or offering genuine help and unknowingly have a Shadow Ban. We also try to let you know if you are Shadow Banned, but this creates a lot of extra work for us, which we can't always afford to do.
Please help us by being proactive, checking your own accounts if you suspect an issue, and not continuing to post/comment until you know you are no longer Shadow Banned.
If your appeal to the Admins is successful, your profile, comments, and posts will become visible again to other users and moderators. You can check your account status with the same methods listed in the section above. Sometimes if a user has been very active on Reddit for a long time before their Shadow Ban it will take longer for all their previous posts/comments to be approved again. This is also an automated process, but it can be slow, so you can expect it to take a week or two to get everything back to normal again.
Tips to avoid being Shadow Banned
Remember the automated Shadow Ban process is looking for bots/spammers and is triggered by that kind of suspicious behavior. Here are some things you can do so your account does not look like a bot.
When creating a Reddit account, don’t use the automatic username generator if possible. Those names usually look something like word-word-5678. These are common indicators of bots. Set your own name instead. If you’ve already made an account with an auto-generated name, take extra care to check if you are Shadow Banned!
Customize your profile: Snoovatar/banner, description, email verification (if you're comfortable with that).
Have patience! When you make a brand new account on Reddit, wait at least 24 hours to post/comment anywhere. Upvote comments/posts you like and maybe 'Join' some subreddits that interest you, but try not to do much else. The most common false positives we see are completely new users that make posts/comments quickly in subreddits that have new user filters to keep out trolls or bots. By waiting, you can prevent triggering these filters.
Before you start posting or commenting in a subreddit, READ THE RULES. Every subreddit has its own rules. If you break them by doing something wrong or having bad conduct, your posts/comments may be reported by other users and removed by the moderators. Doing this multiple times on a new account can trigger a Shadow Ban. Be considerate of where you are and what you are doing there!
Especially here in r/kpophelp, be careful of what links you include in your comments/posts. Try not to use shortened urls because they can disguise links to bad sites or affiliate links. Try to use the long form of links as often as possible and avoid using anything like these: youtu.be, pin.it, t.co, bit.ly, goo.gl, tinyurl.com.
A note for r/kpop: a huge Shadow Ban generator over there is when we have AMAs. They attract a ton of brand new users who then immediately comment dozens of times in the same AMA post. This triggers the filters like a bot would. If you want to participate in an AMA with a new account, make it early at the time of the AMA announcement post and follow the points listed above. Then try to limit the amount of comments you make in the actual AMA to only a few at most. We’ve even had big AMA guest accounts get Shadow Banned in the middle of an AMA, which is a nightmare. That goes to show it can happen to anyone and is equally frustrating for us moderators!
If you use a VPN, you might get Shadow Banned or Suspended by default. Check your account status!
How does this relate to r/kpophelp?
The nature of this subreddit is fairly simple. It was designed to take the burden off of r/kpop since lots of K-Pop fans had questions about the industry or were looking for music/artist recommendations and that subreddit was becoming overwhelmed with such posts. So this subreddit was built with a very focused mission as a space to get help and provide help with our fellow fans. That means we’re pretty small as a community and not a good target for bots/spammers.
And yet, us moderators noticed lots of users showing up as Shadow Banned here. They weren’t causing problems. They were providing help and recommendations in comments or were posting sincere and thoughtful questions. Some of their usernames were recognizable as regulars previously active in the larger K-Pop ecosystem on Reddit. Obviously, something was wrong. This is what sparked our initial interest to figure out how the Shadow Ban system worked and what to do about it.
After confirming with Admins that we could provide guidance to users, we tried to pay extra attention to what was happening, what kinds of accounts seemed to pick up these bans, what activities might be triggering filters, and what Shadow Banned users shared with us about their experience. Everything we’ve learned is now gathered here in hopes it will help others.
There are a couple primary reasons we think r/kpophelp users are affected in a higher proportion and are being seen by Reddit’s filters as bots or spammers. One is that it's common for users to make a brand new account just because they are trying to identify a K-Pop song they heard recently, post to ask for help immediately, and then comment rapidly when replying to other users as they search for the song. Another is that users here will frequently put tons of links in their comments or posts as they offer recommendations or educational references. And furthermore, some of those links might be shortened urls (from YouTube, Pinterest, etc) or domains which Reddit really doesn't like.
Thus, the most common uses of our subreddit, which are totally normal and expected from our perspective as moderators, can trigger Reddit's automated Shadow Bans designed to catch bots. But knowledge is power and we hope what we’ve learned will help you keep your accounts in good working order!
Thank you for taking the time to read through and inform yourself!
Happy Redditing!
Further Resources