How to not get banned on Reddit (shadowbans, self-promo & the 9:1 rule)

The three kinds of ban (and which you'll actually hit)

• →Subreddit ban. One community removes you. Often automated (you broke a rule or tripped automod), sometimes a moderator. You'll usually get a message, and you can appeal to the mods.
• →Sitewide ban. Reddit admins suspend the whole account for breaking site-wide rules (spam, ban evasion, manipulation). Rare for normal use; serious when it happens.
• →Shadowban. The silent one. Your account looks normal to you, but everything you post is auto-hidden from everyone else. No notice. This is what aggressive self-promotion most often triggers, and it's what to actually worry about.

Why you got shadowbanned without knowing

Shadowbans come from Reddit's automated anti-spam systems, not a person, so there's no warning and no explanation. The triggers are mechanical: a young account posting links, the same text across many threads, a burst of promotional comments in a short window, or a karma/age profile that reads as throwaway. The system isn't judging intent; it's matching patterns. Which means staying clear of it is mostly about not matching those patterns.

The 9:1 rule, and why ratios matter

Reddit's own historical guidance was that no more than about one in ten of your contributions should be your own promotion. The “9:1 rule”. Whether or not you hit that exact number, the principle is what every moderator and filter is really measuring: do you give far more than you take? An account whose history is 80% helpful comments and 20% product mentions looks like a member with a side project. One that's the reverse looks like an ad account, and gets treated like one. Before you post anything promotional, sanity-check your own ratio with the free self-promotion checker.

Account age, karma, and trust signals

New accounts are treated as guilty until proven human. Age, a little comment karma, a non-blank profile and a history of genuine participation are the trust signals that keep the filter off your back, and many subreddits gate posting on them via automod anyway. Don't buy or age accounts to fake this; it backfires. Build the history for real, which is exactly what warming up a new account covers, and the warm-up planner will tell you when you're clear.

Self-promotion the way subreddits allow it

Self-promotion isn't banned everywhere. It's banned when it's done wrong. Done right it looks like this:

• →Only where it's genuinely relevant and the community's rules permit it (some have weekly self-promo threads. Use them).
• →Disclosed every time. Never pretend to be a neutral user recommending yourself; sockpuppeting is a fast sitewide ban.
• →Helpful first: answer the question completely before you mention what you built.
• →Name, not link, especially from a younger account, and vary your wording across threads. The full method is in how to write a comment that doesn't get removed.

How to check if you're already shadowbanned

Because Reddit won't tell you, check manually every so often:

• →Open one of your recent comments in a logged-out browser (or incognito). If it's invisible there but visible when you're logged in, you're shadowbanned.
• →Visit reddit.com/user/yourname while logged out. A shadowbanned profile shows a “nobody on Reddit goes by that name” style page.
• →If you are shadowbanned, stop posting, fix the behaviour that caused it, and appeal to Reddit admins via r/help. Evading with a new account makes it worse.

The related risk: lurking and removed comments

Shadowbans are the silent failure; removed comments are the loud one. If individual comments keep disappearing rather than your whole account going dark, that's usually automod or a subreddit rule, and the fixes are different. Both are covered in how to lurk on Reddit without getting banned.