Tell HN: Reddit shadowban account upon creation

I remember registering for Reddit with Tor, then posting my first comment, only to have it invisible when I browse in an entirely new browsing session. So I tried my trusty residential connection and then I was able to post without any shadowban in place.

I concluded they place a 'score' on your IP. Obviously Tor has low reputation, so they ban that. I imagine residential IPs due to their traceability actually helps Reddit in some cases where if you say something off-color or highly inflammatory or outright illegal, then they have grounds to call law enforcement and track you down.

Hackernews does this too. I can't create throwaway HN accounts on a VPN/Tor because my first post is always shadowbanned, but my residential IP is never banned, and my posts show up in /newest every time.

Also: Welcome to the Internet!

I've noticed instagram does this too.

You try to create a second account and they will "suspend" you automatically and force you through a verification system.

Their spam algorithms have to be better than this...

I think they only let bots post on Reddit nowadays. /s

In all seriousness though, this happened to me too and I bypassed it with a clean VM (no weird fonts that can be fingerprinted), default Chrome install, standard browser window size, time zone/IP location matching, and connection to a VPN. I was able to make several accounts and none were shadowbanned.

Take heart, even if you weren't shadowbanned, with a young, low karma account your first comments on most subreddits would get automatically modded as spam by Reddit's dumpy spam filter anyway.

I'm not 100% sure, but Reddit seems to shadowban accounts created from some IPs based on some reputation score. Perhaps malicious activity is occurring on your network due to malware?

Can't post to Reddit? Guess what: it's not the end of the world. Think about moving on.

Is this done globally by Reddit itself or is applied individually by subs to new accounts?

What's the account?

Maybe just me but I'm starting to doubt any "name-and-shame" Tell HN posts from throwaway accounts.

If you are a regular here and have a proper account then why did you make a throwaway for this? If you are not a regular here then why do you make a name-and-shame post as your first post?

Most subreddits require a certain amount of karma to interact with the subreddit most don’t tell you about it some do per PM. Most of the time it’s 100-300.

Reddit, she ded

I made a post that said, "sounds like HN lmfao" and I got shadowbanned lmfao

It kinda sucks that the name of this concept (shadow ban) is completely ruined by analphabetic luddites (hyperbole, don't worry) calling every platform that ignores them a bunch of shadowbanners while it might simply be a case of an eventually consistent database, a hype algorithm that chose someone else's message, or a feed curation mechanism that simply doesn't include everyone else's messages.

A more usable term might be 'muted' or 'hidden' instead of a complete 'ban without letting you know'. Internally it's even more likely that they work with an extra reputation system next to the visible karma system where new accounts are simply given 'bad' reputation way sooner than they should. Considering mod-communication works fine, it's probably just shoddy spam protection systems combined with a recursive problem of not having enough reputation to post, which is required to gain said reputation.