Yesterday I have written my first article on dev.to and shared it on Reddit. I have a good amount of Reddit karma and I was expecting it to become a trending article. However, it got no upvotes. I figured maybe it didn't resonate and deleted those posts after 6 hours.
I have tried posting on Reddit today again and again got 0 upvotes. Perhaps my account got banned, I thought. I have created a new account and posted a modified link – again, 0 upvotes. This is where I realised that the post does not even appear on Reddit. It does not appear if you search for it and it does not appear if you sort by "new".
To validate this, I have posted the same link on a sub-reddit where I am a mod. Sure enough, the post was automatically removed and put into a moderator queue.
In fact, there have been no posts linking to dev.to that were approved in the last 24 hours.
Top comments (25)
I didn't know that shadow-banning was a thing... like hiding the fact that they are hiding it? that's an /r/assholedesign right there.
There are posts linked to dev.to, though... see: reddit.com/domain/dev.to/
The thing about those is that the mod of whatever subreddit they were posted to might have whitelisted the post. Shadowbanning puts every post in the mod queue.
Some mods never look at the queue or authorize posts from it while others do. Posting to an active sub can help with that, but it really is on the whims of the mods.
Oh, that makes sense, thanks for the explanation.
In case you're not aware @ben, @jess or @peter.👆
Actually yeah, we were pretty aware. We've had this happen in the past and we've gone through hoops to try to remedy it, only to have it happen again. We never find out, we don't know what the deal is. We get different answers every time.
The annoying part is that users submit their stuff to Reddit and they don't get upvotes. It really sucks. We should remove that from some of our instructions on where you might want to submit posts.
The reason we're not overly concerned:
We'll look into this again.
This has been my experience and why I don't post articles on reddit anymore.
I agree @ben, and love the shade you threw in there lol 😆
I think we're shadow-banned everywhere - including here. Hahaha. Wait, that isn't normal? 😃
Reddit wants to keep it's people - on Reddit - and so, since Dev.to - is much better than Reddit (for certain things), it makes sense that they wouldn't want people to migrate. However, they don't block Discord links - which seems like a bigger danger to them.
You should probably write a Reddit post about it - but just don't link to Dev.to
Same for me, always getting no upvotes at all. I'm curious to know why it's shadow-banned tho.
A large portion of their daily users are technology ones. They don't want the competition, Reddit are snakes and have always been snakes. I recommend you stop using that time-sink.
IIRC posting your own content to reddit is against their terms.
It is not. Also this comment is ill-spirited. You are making a false claim and leaving the burden of fact checking on the reader. "IIRC" might work in a real-life conversation; it doesn't translate to a written dialogue where you have infinite time to check before posting or stop yourself from posting if in doubt.
Reddit rules regarding self-promotion can be found here reddit.com/wiki/selfpromotion.
I don't think he was intentionally trying to make a false statement or involved in some deep conspiracy to spread disinformation and brainwash the general populace of this website. You could have chosen to just say "Actually I looked it up here and that isn't the case, although you were kind of close because excessive self promotion can be an issue."
He did no harm, he was offering a hypothesis...please try and be more respectful if you choose to call someone out for being wrong. This community is all about respect among members and creating a safe space to discuss the aspects of development we love, and above all, to educate each other.
Personally I don't use reddit as when I tried to post good things this sort of thing happened to me. Every couple of years I think I might be missing out and take a look and think ”meh”. Can anyone tell me what I might be missing out on to motivate me to try again?
As a content creator, you are missing out on big audience sizes. dev.to generated 2.2k views in 24 hours. Reddit generated 3.5k views in the first hour. That being said, it is true that Reddit comment threads often include personal attack and mocking comments. I deal with that by just being polite in return, providing the bare minimum response if one is needed (if something is technically inaccurately misrepresented about the contents of the article), and move on to other conversations.
As a content consumer, you are not missing out on much. Same content in one form or another reaches other networks.
How did this happen?
And more important, why is this the case?
I know you just recognized it, but since you have more experience with reddit than me, do you have any clue why this happened?
My experience with Reddit as a mod is limited. I use it just to announce my articles. I have posted this article hoping it will reach someone who is better integrated into Reddit hierarchy and can answer your questions.
Ah great, hopefully we get some answers :)
All I know is I came here because this community was far more supportive and positive than a lot of the Reddit communities. Maybe I just chose terrible subreddits, but there was a lot of downvoting simply because people disagreed with you and their are some mods who are ego-tripping hardcore. It wasn't worth my time to post there, my posts trying to share insight or help people got lost in the deluge of 50 people getting angry that someone wouldn't do their homework for them everyday.
Is it just a particular sub, or all of reddit?
edit: missed the part where you clearly stated it happened in several places. I wasn't aware reddit would ban domains site-wide.
This is still happening now. Posts or comments with links to dev.to are not appearing.
FYI @ben
You could, perhaps, make a post and then add a comment to your dev.to link? Or maybe that actually shadows the comment within the post... Oh well.
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