Every platform blocked me on launch day. Here's what happened.

So I shipped Maintenant this week : a Docker monitoring tool, solo dev, AGPL-3.0, the whole thing.

Day 1: posted on r/selfhosted. Image gallery without description in the body. Mods removed it instantly. Fair enough, my bad.

Day 2: reformatted as a text post. Banned. Can't even message the mods. Can't access my account details anymore. Cool.

Day 3: ok forget Reddit, let's try Hacker News. "Show HN posts are temporarily restricted for newer accounts." Amazing timing.

Day 4 (today): I'm writing this post instead.

Turns out in 2026, launching a product as a solo dev with no existing audience on these platforms is basically impossible. Reddit wants 6 months of karma farming before you can share your own work. HN wants you to be an established community member. Both are fair rules I guess, but the catch-22 is brutal when you're starting from zero.

So here's the new plan: newsletters (selfh.st already pitched), YouTube creators (pitching Techno Tim, DB Tech and a few others), LinuxFr.org (french tech community), Lemmy, Mastodon, and this place. Basically every channel that doesn't require permission to exist.

Current stats: 0€ revenue, 1 newsletter pitched, 1 reddit account destroyed, 1 HN rejection. Momentum is great.

If you've launched a dev tool recently, what actually worked for distribution?