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...

It's not just related to spam, it's also a great opportunity to collect personal data under the excuse of "security", just like they insist you enable SMS 2FA (for some reason they never insist so much about TOTP or WebAuthn/U2F 2FA, since those can't be abused to get the user's phone number).

Yes, I went through this just yesterday while trying to set up a company account. To get it unblocked I had to:

* Verify an email address through an OTP.

* Verify a phone number through an OTP.

* Upload a picture of me with my face in it, holding a piece of paper with my name, username and a six digit code they gave me written on it.

I'm very pissed.

Facebook was already caught using 2FA phone numbers for ad targeting, and they have also collected biometric data without consent for years, so you can fully expect that picture of your face to be eventually used in illegal ways by Meta.

why would you volunteer all of that personal information??

Need to get paid, need to do my job to do that.

Twitter is also more aggressive with verification challenges when I use a VPN.

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.

True.

Best bet is if you want an alt account, make one now, use it on a few small subs, then let it sit an mature a few months.

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?

May have also been unlucky enough to be reallocated someone else's toxic IP when his ISP changed his dynamic IP. That's happened to me a couple times

Could be, the sin of dynamic IP.

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?

I mod a few small subs, there does not appear to be a way for mods to shadowban. I believe it's only Reddit that has the capability.

This is a global thing. Subreddit a cannot shadowban accounts.

What's the account?

same id, /u/boundchecked

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.

That post or user did not get shadowbanned. I can see that comment just above this one. Yes, it has been flagged and downvoted, but you are not shadowbanned.

I never saw it, tricky algorithm isn't it.

If you want to see it, turn on 'showdead' in your profile.

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.