Why Reddit Posts Get Removed and How to Prevent It

You submit a post to Reddit. It appears in the feed, looks fine, maybe picks up a handful of upvotes. Then you check back an hour later from a different browser — and it is gone. No notification. No explanation. No removal message. The post simply does not exist anymore from any perspective except yours.

This is the most common and most damaging experience in Reddit marketing, and it is far more prevalent than most people realize. According to Reddit's own moderation transparency data, the platform takes action on hundreds of millions of pieces of content annually — the vast majority of which is removed without the submitting account ever being notified.

Understanding why posts get removed, how to detect silent removals, and how to structure content that survives moderation is not optional for anyone using Reddit as a marketing or community-building channel. Get it wrong and you are investing time and budget into content that no one ever sees.

The Five Mechanisms That Remove Reddit Posts

Reddit post removal is not a single process — it operates through five distinct mechanisms, each with different triggers, different visibility, and different paths to resolution. Confusing these mechanisms leads to wasted appeals and misaligned prevention strategies.

1. AutoModerator (Automated Rule Enforcement)

AutoModerator is a bot provided by Reddit to every subreddit moderator team. It runs against every submission in real time, evaluating posts against a custom YAML ruleset written by that community's moderators. When a post matches a rule, AutoMod fires the defined action — usually removal — instantly, before any human moderator sees the content.

AutoMod removals are silent by default. The submitting account sees the post as live. Anyone else navigating to the subreddit sees nothing. This creates the disorienting situation where a post appears to exist from the author's perspective while being completely invisible to the community.

Common AutoMod triggers include:

• Account age below threshold — most major subreddits require 30–90 days minimum account age
• Karma below threshold — comment karma requirements commonly range from 50 to 2,000 depending on subreddit size
• Keyword blacklists — promotional phrases like "check my profile," "DM me," or "discount code" trigger instant removal
• Domain blocklists — links to domains flagged for previous spam campaigns are blocked site-wide or at community level
• Post type restrictions — link posts submitted to text-only subreddits, or posts missing required flair, are removed automatically
• Suspicious behavioral patterns — high posting frequency from new accounts, low comment-to-post ratios

According to analysis from Sprout Social's Reddit marketing research, AutoModerator is responsible for the majority of marketing post removals across Reddit. Most affected users never identify AutoMod as the cause because the removal is invisible and unprompted.

For a complete breakdown of how AutoModerator works and how to structure posts that pass its filters, see our dedicated guide to Reddit AutoModerator.

2. Human Moderator Removal

Human moderators — unpaid volunteers who manage subreddit communities — can remove any post at any time at their discretion. Unlike AutoMod, human removals are sometimes accompanied by a comment explaining the reason, though this is not guaranteed.

Human moderators remove posts for reasons that extend well beyond the written rules:

• Perceived promotional intent — even posts that technically comply with subreddit rules can be removed if a moderator believes the primary purpose is promotional
• Off-topic content — posts that technically follow rules but do not fit the community's focus
• Low effort — content that moderators judge as insufficiently substantive for the community
• Community culture violations — posts that violate unwritten norms even when explicit rules were followed
• User reports — posts that accumulate community reports get escalated to moderator review

Broadly, moderators have near-absolute authority within their communities. Reddit's content policy grants communities significant latitude to self-govern, and Reddit will not reverse a moderator decision unless that decision itself violates site-wide rules.

The critical implication: a post can be removed by a human moderator for reasons you will never know, with no appeal path that is likely to succeed. Prevention matters far more than recovery in this context.

3. Reddit's Site-Wide Spam Filter

Separate from AutoModerator, Reddit operates a platform-level spam filter powered by machine learning models. This filter evaluates accounts and content against patterns learned from billions of identified spam submissions. When the filter identifies a submission as likely spam, it may:

• Remove the post before it appears publicly
• Hold it in a pending queue for moderator review
• Allow it but suppress its algorithmic distribution

The platform-level spam filter is distinct from any subreddit's AutoMod configuration. It operates globally and is controlled by Reddit's engineering team, not by individual community moderators.

Behavioral patterns that trigger the spam filter include:

• Cross-posting identical or near-identical content to multiple subreddits in rapid succession
• Posting the same domain across many submissions from the same account
• Account age and karma patterns inconsistent with legitimate participation
• IP address and device fingerprint patterns associated with previously identified spam operations

According to a Pew Research Center analysis of social media content moderation published in 2024, platforms with algorithmic spam detection remove a significant proportion of new content within minutes of posting — often before organic engagement has any chance to develop. Reddit's spam filter operates within this paradigm.

4. Shadow Removal

Shadow removal is the hardest category to detect and the most damaging for marketing campaigns. Unlike a standard removal where the post disappears, a shadow removal leaves the post visible to the author while hiding it from all other users — including anyone browsing the subreddit, searching Reddit, or viewing the author's profile while logged out.

Shadow removals can occur through:

• AutoMod configured to "spam" rather than "remove" — this action moves the post to the spam queue where it appears to the author as live but is invisible to everyone else
• Platform-level spam filter soft-removal — similar mechanism, different origin
• Moderator spam designation — a moderator manually marks the post as spam rather than using a standard removal

The practical consequence of shadow removal is that an author can continue believing their post is gaining organic traction — replying to comments that do not exist, waiting for upvotes that will never come — while the post has been invisible to the community since minutes after submission.

Shadow removal is closely related to, but distinct from, a Reddit shadowban. A shadowban applies at the account level and makes all content from that account invisible. A shadow removal applies to a single post. Both share the same symptom: the author cannot detect the removal without external testing.

5. User-Triggered Reporting and Spam Designation

Reddit users can report posts as spam, rule violations, or policy violations. Sufficient reports from the community escalate content to moderator review. In communities with active, well-aligned user bases, coordinated reporting can result in rapid removal of content the community perceives as promotional or low quality.

For marketers, this mechanism is particularly relevant because community sentiment does the moderation work before any algorithm or moderator needs to intervene. A post that the community identifies as spam gets buried through downvotes and reported out of existence, regardless of its technical compliance with written rules.

How to Check Whether Your Reddit Post Was Actually Removed

Because so many removal mechanisms operate silently, the only reliable way to know whether your post is visible is to check externally.

The Incognito Window Test

The fastest diagnostic: copy the direct URL of your post, open a private browsing window where you are not logged into Reddit, and load the URL.

• Post loads normally with visible content: The post is publicly visible. It was not removed.
• Page returns an error or shows no content: The post was removed.

Also navigate to the subreddit directly in the incognito window. If your post appears on your profile but not in the subreddit feed, it has been removed from the community view — which is the view that matters for organic discovery.

Reveddit

Reveddit (reveddit.com) is the most comprehensive tool available for auditing removed Reddit content. It pulls your posting history and cross-references it against what is currently publicly visible on Reddit, generating a list of everything that was removed, when it was removed, and whether it was removed by AutoModerator or a human moderator.

For any sustained Reddit marketing effort, running a monthly Reveddit check on your account is essential audit hygiene. Reveddit surfaces patterns — if your posts are consistently removed in certain subreddits but not others, or if removal rates spike after a specific change in your posting behavior, that data is actionable.

Reveddit can also distinguish between AutoMod removals and human removals, which determines the appropriate prevention strategy. AutoMod removals indicate a fixable technical issue (account attributes, keyword choices, post structure). Human moderator removals indicate a content or community fit problem that requires a different approach.

The Mod Log Check

Some subreddits make their moderation logs publicly accessible. Navigate to reddit.com/r/subredditname/about/log — if the subreddit has a public mod log, you can see recent AutoMod and moderator actions, including removals. This can confirm not only that your post was removed but what type of action caused it.

Modmail Inquiry

If your post was removed and you believe it was incorrectly filtered, you can send a polite, brief message to the subreddit's moderator team via modmail explaining the post and asking for clarification. Keep the message factual and respectful — moderators are volunteers, and requests that are specific and professional receive better outcomes than frustrated complaints.

Do not argue if the moderators confirm the removal was intentional and explain their reasoning. Accept the feedback, adjust your approach, and move on.

Why Posts Get Removed: The Most Common Triggers by Category

Self-Promotion and the 10% Rule

Reddit's self-promotion guidelines are explicit: no more than 10% of your activity should be self-promotional. The platform's principle is that it is acceptable to be "a Redditor with a website" but not "a website with a Reddit account."

Posts from accounts that primarily exist to promote are removed at high rates regardless of post quality. AutoMod and Reddit's spam filter both evaluate the account behind a post, not just the post itself. An account with 50 posts, all linking to the same domain, looks identical to a spam account — because it is structurally identical.

For a comprehensive framework on what constitutes self-promotion and how to stay within Reddit's guidelines, see our guide on Reddit self-promotion rules.

According to Buffer's social media research, 73% of Reddit users actively downvote content they perceive as promotional, even when it is factually useful. Downvote accumulation triggers community reporting, which triggers moderator review, which leads to removal. The pipeline from perceived promotional intent to removal is short and reliable.

Subreddit Rule Violations

Every subreddit operates its own rules that exist independently of Reddit's platform-wide policy. These rules range from obvious to highly specific:

• Flair requirements — posts without required post flair are auto-removed in many communities
• Title format rules — some subreddits require specific elements in post titles
• Minimum post length — text posts that fall below required word counts are filtered
• Link restrictions — subreddits that prohibit external links remove all link posts automatically
• Topic restrictions — content that does not match a subreddit's defined scope is removed regardless of quality
• Account requirements — karma and age minimums, as discussed in the AutoMod section

Failing to read a subreddit's rules before posting is the single most preventable cause of removal. The rules are accessible in every subreddit's sidebar and in the community info section. Reading them takes two minutes. Not reading them costs you the post.

Karma and Account Age Thresholds

Karma thresholds are the most mechanically consistent source of AutoMod removals. The relationship is direct and non-negotiable: an account below a subreddit's minimum comment karma threshold has its posts removed instantly, regardless of content quality.

This threshold structure exists because spam accounts are consistently low-karma accounts. Legitimate users who have participated on Reddit organically for weeks or months accumulate comment karma well above typical thresholds as a natural consequence of genuine participation.

Data compiled from major subreddit ruleset disclosures suggests the following approximate thresholds by subreddit size:

Building karma through genuine participation is the only path to clearing these thresholds. There is no shortcut to account age — the clock starts at account creation and runs in real time.

Spam Behavioral Patterns

Reddit's platform-level spam filter uses behavioral pattern recognition that operates across accounts and across time. Patterns that reliably trigger spam detection include:

• Cross-posting velocity — submitting the same content to multiple subreddits within hours
• Domain concentration — a posting history where most links point to the same domain
• New account activity spikes — a brand-new account posting at high frequency immediately after creation
• Low comment-to-post ratio — accounts that submit posts but rarely engage in comment discussions look like broadcast operations
• Vote pattern anomalies — upvoting activity concentrated on your own content

A 2024 analysis by Social Media Examiner on Reddit marketing found that accounts posting to more than three subreddits within a 24-hour window on the same topic faced post removal rates three times higher than accounts that spread submissions across multiple days. Spacing matters mechanically, not just strategically.

Low Reddit Contributor Quality Score (CQS)

Reddit operates an internal Contributor Quality Score (CQS) that evaluates how well-received your posts are within each specific subreddit community. A low CQS in a given subreddit can cause AutoMod to apply more aggressive filtering to your submissions in that community, even when your global karma meets the stated threshold.

CQS is not publicly visible but is influenced by the upvote-to-downvote ratio on your posts, the comment engagement your content generates, and how frequently your posts are reported in that community. For a detailed breakdown of how CQS works and how to improve it, see our guide on Reddit Contributor Quality Score.

The practical implication: a history of downvoted or reported posts in a subreddit makes future posts from your account more likely to be filtered in that same community, creating a feedback loop that worsens over time.

Policy Violations

Posts that violate Reddit's content policy are removed by Reddit's trust and safety team, independent of subreddit moderation. Category-1 violations — doxxing, harassment, prohibited content types — result in immediate removal and typically trigger account-level enforcement as well.

For marketers, the relevant policy violations are primarily around vote manipulation, coordinated inauthentic behavior, and spam. These violations result in post removal plus potential shadowban or account suspension.

Shadow Removal vs. Shadowban: Understanding the Difference

These two enforcement mechanisms are frequently confused because they share the same symptom from the author's perspective: content appears to exist but receives no engagement.

A shadow removal affects a single post. The post is invisible to everyone except the author, but the account is not otherwise affected. Future posts from the same account may be publicly visible. The cause is typically a single AutoMod rule, spam filter action, or moderator spam designation.

A Reddit shadowban affects the entire account. Every post, comment, and vote from a shadowbanned account is invisible to all other users. The account's profile page returns a "page not found" error when any other user tries to visit it. Shadowbans are applied at the platform level by Reddit's anti-spam systems, not by individual subreddit moderators.

To determine which situation you are in:

1. Open a private browsing window and navigate to reddit.com/u/yourusername
2. If the profile loads normally but your recent posts are missing from subreddits, you are dealing with shadow removal at the post level
3. If the profile returns "page not found," you are shadowbanned at the account level

The recovery paths diverge completely. Shadow removal is addressed by fixing the specific post issue (account attributes, rule compliance, content quality) and potentially contacting the subreddit's moderators. A shadowban requires an appeal to Reddit's admin team and a wholesale review of account behavior.

For a complete guide to shadowban detection and recovery, use our free Reddit shadowban checker and read the full Reddit shadowban guide.

How to Prevent Reddit Posts From Being Removed

Prevention is demonstrably more effective than recovery. The following strategies address each removal mechanism directly.

Build Account Credibility Before Posting

This is the most impactful single action for preventing AutoMod removals. An account with 300+ comment karma earned across multiple communities will clear the karma thresholds of the vast majority of subreddits relevant to any marketing campaign. An account created last week will not.

The recommended account development timeline before any promotional posting:

• Days 1–30: Genuine participation only. Comment in communities related to your actual interests. Upvote content you find valuable. Do not post any promotional content.
• Days 30–60: Begin sharing non-promotional content in target communities. Industry news, genuinely useful resources from sources other than your own. Build a reputation as a contributor.
• Days 60–90: Your account now has the age, karma, and community history to support occasional promotional posts without triggering automated filters.

This timeline is not arbitrary. It reflects the account age and karma requirements of most major subreddits. An account with 90 days of genuine history looks nothing like a spam account to AutoMod, Reddit's spam filter, or human moderators.

Read and Follow Every Subreddit's Rules

Every subreddit's rules are visible in the sidebar and in the community info section before you post. This is the simplest and most consistently underestimated prevention measure.

Before posting to any subreddit:

• Read every rule in the sidebar
• Check for pinned moderator posts that clarify policy
• Look at recent successful posts to understand what content the community accepts
• Check whether the community requires post flair before submitting

Posts removed for rule violations account for a substantial proportion of all marketing post removals. Every one of these is preventable with two minutes of preparation.

Write Text Posts, Not Link Posts

Self-posts (text posts with no external link) clear AutoMod filters at significantly higher rates than link posts. The reasons are structural. Link posts expose your submission to domain blocklists over which you have no control. Text posts expose your content only to keyword filters, which you can work around through natural writing.

For marketing purposes, a text post that provides genuine standalone value — a case study, a how-to guide, an analysis — and references your product or service contextually will consistently outperform a link post in every moderation metric. It will also generate more organic engagement because community members can engage with the content directly rather than being asked to click away.

According to Social Media Examiner's analysis of Reddit content types, text posts in professional and marketing-adjacent communities receive 3.4x more organic comments than link posts on equivalent topics, which translates to higher algorithmic promotion and lower removal rates.

Follow the 90/10 Rule Rigorously

Maintaining at least 90% genuine community participation relative to promotional content is the foundational strategy for avoiding spam detection. This ratio applies across your total activity — posts, comments, and votes.

Accounts that operate within this ratio are structurally different from spam accounts and are treated as such by both automated filters and human moderators. An account with 200 comments across a dozen subreddits and 20 promotional posts has built the context that makes those 20 posts credible. An account with 2 comments and 20 promotional posts has not.

For the full framework on staying within Reddit's self-promotion guidelines, see the dedicated guide on Reddit self-promotion rules.

Time Your Submissions Strategically

Posting frequency and distribution timing affect spam filter assessment. Posting the same content to multiple subreddits within hours is one of the strongest behavioral signals for automated spam detection.

Best practices for submission timing:

• Space submissions of related content across different days, not the same hour
• Post to no more than two or three subreddits per day
• Vary your posting pattern — consistent mechanical regularity (posting at exactly the same time every day) looks automated
• Submit during peak activity hours for each subreddit, as active communities provide faster moderator review of any incorrectly filtered posts

Use Appropriate Post Flair

In communities that require post flair, submitting without flair results in immediate AutoMod removal. This is one of the most common and most preventable causes of removal.

Before submitting to any subreddit, check whether post flair is required. If flair options exist, select the most appropriate one before posting. Some communities allow users to add flair after submission, but many configure AutoMod to remove flairless posts before the author can correct the omission.

Avoid Promotional Language

AutoMod keyword blacklists are built from the promotional language that specific communities have historically seen in spam. Avoiding the vocabulary of ad copy protects your posts from keyword-based filters while also making them more likely to resonate with the community.

Phrases to avoid:

• "Check out my..."
• "Link in bio" / "Link in comments"
• "DM me for..."
• "Use my code for..."
• "Limited time offer"
• Generic superlatives ("best," "amazing," "revolutionary") applied to your own product

Replacing these phrases with specific, substantive language achieves the same communication goal without triggering keyword filters. "I built a tool that does X by doing Y" is factually equivalent to "Check out my tool" but reads as community participation rather than promotion.

Give Your Best Posts Early Upvote Velocity

Some subreddits configure AutoMod to remove posts that fall below a minimum score in the first hour — effectively filtering content that fails to demonstrate early community acceptance. Beyond explicit score thresholds, Reddit's algorithm significantly weights early upvote velocity in determining whether a post surfaces to a wider audience.

For content that has cleared all rule-based filters and provides genuine community value, ensuring early upvote traction is a legitimate strategy for maximizing visibility. A post that earns real Reddit upvotes in the critical first 30 to 60 minutes clears score-based AutoMod filters and receives algorithmic promotion that generates organic engagement momentum.

This distinction matters: upvote services amplify content that belongs on Reddit. They do not rescue posts that violate community rules — those are removed regardless of upvote count. The right application is giving your highest-quality, rule-compliant content the initial traction it needs to be seen by the community it was written for.

What to Do When Your Post Gets Removed

Even well-prepared posts get removed sometimes. The correct response depends on which removal mechanism is responsible.

If AutoMod Removed the Post

AutoMod removals are usually triggered by a specific, identifiable attribute. Use Reveddit to confirm AutoMod as the cause, then audit the likely triggers:

1. Check your karma and account age against the subreddit's stated requirements
2. Review the post text for keyword blacklist matches — if you used any promotional language, that is likely the trigger
3. Check post type — did you submit a link post to a subreddit that only allows text posts?
4. Verify flair — did you include required post flair?

Once you identify the cause, you can either fix the issue (increase karma, rephrase the post, add flair) or contact the subreddit's moderators via modmail to ask whether the post can be manually approved.

If a Human Moderator Removed the Post

Human removals sometimes come with an explanation. If you received a modmail explaining the removal reason, read it carefully — the feedback is actionable.

If no explanation was provided, send a brief, respectful modmail asking for clarification. Accept the response professionally. If the moderators explain the removal, adjust your approach for that community. If they decline to reinstate the post, move on rather than escalating.

Human moderator decisions are final within a subreddit unless the moderator themselves violated Reddit's site-wide rules — an unlikely scenario in standard removal situations.

If the Platform Spam Filter Removed the Post

Spam filter removals indicate a behavioral pattern issue with your account or content. Review your recent posting history:

• Have you been posting the same type of content to multiple subreddits within a short time window?
• Do a high proportion of your posts link to the same domain?
• Is your account relatively new with a high posting frequency?

If yes to any of these, the fix is behavioral. Slow down your posting cadence, diversify the content you share, participate more in comment threads rather than primarily submitting posts, and allow the account's history to accumulate before resuming promotional activity.

If You Cannot Determine Why the Post Was Removed

When the removal cause is not apparent, run a full account health audit:

1. Use Reveddit to check which recent posts were removed and by what mechanism
2. Check for a shadowban using the free Reddit shadowban checker — if your account is shadowbanned, all post removals become secondary to the account-level issue
3. Review your post-to-comment ratio across recent activity
4. Check whether you have any pending subreddit bans that might indicate a pattern issue

"The brands that consistently succeed on Reddit treat every removal as a data point rather than a setback," notes Brian Dean of Backlinko in a 2025 analysis of long-term Reddit marketing strategies. "The removal is the feedback. The question is whether you act on it."

The Mod Log: A Resource Most Marketers Ignore

Many large subreddits maintain publicly accessible moderation logs at reddit.com/r/subredditname/about/log. These logs show recent AutoMod and moderator actions, including removals.

For any subreddit where you plan significant posting activity, the mod log is a valuable intelligence resource:

• It reveals what types of content are being removed at scale, which tells you what not to post
• It shows whether the subreddit's moderation is active and consistent or sparse and irregular
• It identifies whether AutoMod or human moderators are the primary enforcement mechanism, which affects your posting strategy
• It can confirm whether your specific post was removed and by what category of action

Not all subreddits make their logs public, but major ones frequently do. Checking the log before investing significant effort into a subreddit saves time and prevents the pattern of repeated removals in communities where your content is structurally incompatible.

Post Flair and Reddit Post Removal: An Underestimated Connection

Post flair requirements account for a larger proportion of preventable AutoMod removals than most marketers expect. In communities that require flair, a flairless post is removed instantly — before the content is evaluated by any other rule.

The implication is that even a perfectly structured, rule-compliant post with ideal karma and appropriate content will be silently removed if the subreddit requires flair and the submitter did not add it.

Subreddits that use flair requirements extensively include technology communities, professional communities, location-based subreddits, and any community that organizes content by type or topic. Flair requirements are listed in the sidebar rules and are visible in the post composer interface.

The fix is trivially simple: select the appropriate flair before clicking submit. The cost of ignoring this is the entire post and the time invested in it.

Building a Reddit Presence That Is Removal-Resistant

The accounts and content strategies that consistently survive moderation share a common characteristic: they are structurally indistinguishable from genuine community participation because they are genuine community participation.

Removal-resistant Reddit marketing is not about gaming moderation systems. It is about building the kind of account and content that Reddit's moderation systems are designed to protect, rather than filter.

The practical framework:

• One established account maintained over months or years, with genuine activity across multiple communities
• Comment karma above 500 earned through substantive contributions, not filler comments
• 90/10 participation ratio maintained consistently — the ratio is a description of authentic participation, not just a compliance target
• Content that provides standalone value — posts that are useful to the community regardless of whether the reader ever visits your website or uses your product
• Transparent disclosure when promotional content is posted — "I built this" or "[Full disclosure: I work at X]" converts undisclosed promotion to honest community sharing
• Regular account health monitoring — Reveddit audits monthly, shadowban checks weekly if you are running active campaigns

When you have content that meets all of these criteria and you want to maximize its initial visibility, buy Reddit upvotes to give it the early traction that Reddit's algorithm requires to surface content to a wider audience. The combination of genuine community standing and strategic early amplification is significantly more effective than either approach alone.

According to HubSpot's analysis of social media platform trust, Reddit ranks as the highest-trust social platform among consumers aged 18–34 — a direct reflection of the community's active curation and rejection of promotional content. That trust is the reason Reddit traffic converts at higher rates than virtually any other social referral source. Preserving it requires operating within the norms that created it.

Post removal is Reddit's immune system — the mechanism by which communities reject content that does not belong. Understanding that system, working within it, and building the kind of account that earns genuine community trust is the only sustainable path to Reddit as a meaningful marketing channel.

Check your account status with the free Reddit shadowban checker if you suspect your removals may be part of a larger enforcement pattern. Read the dedicated guides on Reddit AutoModerator, Reddit self-promotion rules, and Reddit shadowbans to build the complete picture. And when you have content that genuinely deserves an audience, boost it with real Reddit upvotes to ensure it gets seen.