I had a Reddit marketing problem that cost me 4 months and a product. So I reverse-engineered how their spam detection actually works.

The part about account behavior patterns vs actual content is so real. I spent weeks being genuinely helpful in subreddits related to my apps and still got flagged because I was commenting too often. Turns out looking like a bot matters more than not being one.

Your 45-day rule before any product mention lines up with what finally worked for me too. The counterintuitive thing is that slowing down actually gets you better results because the few posts that survive reach way more people than a dozen that get shadow-removed.

Curious how you handle multiple products. Do you run separate accounts per product or rotate mentions on one account?

This is actually very helpful. I tried posting about my product on reddit and it immediately was taken down. Then I received 3 emails from reddit bots talking about rules. It's hard starting out and it seems everything is against you. Thanks for the taking the time to find the pattern.

This is interesting. I ran into something similar when trying to understand how some large platforms handle moderation.

At scale they can’t realistically review everything manually, so a lot of it ends up being pattern-based instead of content-based. Things like account age, posting frequency, or sudden bursts of activity seem to matter more than the actual message sometimes.

One thing I’ve learned over the years is that on platforms like this you almost have to treat your account like a reputation system that builds slowly. If you try to use it as a marketing channel too early, the system tends to push back.

Your spreadsheet approach actually makes a lot of sense. A lot of founders assume the written rules are the whole story, but the real behavior of the system is usually more nuanced than that.

Curious if you noticed a big difference between smaller subreddits and the large ones?

The "it's not what you post, it's the pattern" insight is exactly the kind of thing we wish more people documented publicly. Most platform advice is surface-level — "be helpful, add value" — and completely ignores the behavioral layer underneath.

We ran into a version of this on Twitter. The written rules say one thing, the algorithm rewards something else entirely. The gap between "official guidelines" and "what actually survives" is where the real knowledge lives. The fact that you tracked every ban for 4 months and turned it into a dataset instead of just quitting — that's the builder move.

$5.4k/month from a spreadsheet-turned-product is a strong validation that the pain is real and widespread.

Genuine question: as Reddit updates its detection, how do you keep the patterns accurate? Is it continuous testing on new accounts, or do you have another signal that tells you when the rules shift?

Cool extreamly helpful for me, trying to promote my microapps has been a nightmare from operation perspective. That huge frustration for a microapp that target spesific niche where on subreddits i usually get the best early adaptor users.

Thanks for sharing!

Hey everyone,

I recently built a small AI tool that scans ecommerce stores and shows where revenue might be leaking (SEO, trust signals, product page persuasion etc).

You can paste any store URL and get a quick audit.

I’d really appreciate some honest feedback from ecommerce founders — does something like this actually help store owners?

Free AI store audit (no signup required storeauditpro

This resonates. Got shadowbanned on HN despite genuine comments. Pattern detection is real.

Thank you for tackling this problem space! I completely agree with your note. I get why Reddit does this (it is annoying when people hijack threads with promotional content), and yet what else can you do as a builder?

Ohhhhhhhh this is soooo helpful coming from who gets easily banned on these apps and who is planning on pivoting to Reddit

Bunun yerine paylaşılan metinde spam içerecek bir kelimeyi tespit etseler birçok girişimcinin de piyasadan silinmesine engel olabilirler bence.

Many thanks for your advices. It actually annoying that almost all platforms are workinfg in that way, I can also understand, somehow, that spam is always a big risk but they could really improve. If you are new you literally just kicked out

Nice- Working on a reddit growth tool myself. I wish they made the API more accessible. I'd like for there to be more tools to help founders engage meaningfully without spamming subreddits

Interesting

Thats great.

MediaFast is a total game-changer for Reddit marketing!

I highly recommend it to anyone looking to organically scale their product on the platform!