Reveddit: The Best Tool For Tracking Reddit Removed Posts

Why do we need Reveddit?

It seems like shadowbans are being handed out like candy on Halloween over on Reddit these days. In the resource Fighting the Reddit Shadowban Waves for Direct Sellers we chatted a bit on things to avoid to prevent shadowbans.

But what if you notice a ton of your content, be it posts or comments, are being removed with no reasons stated from mods? Of course we first check Reddit’s appeals page. If it does not have the big red box at the top, it’s time to start appealing. But what if when you check, it does look like the image below stating that you have no shadow?

If you are not shadowbanned, suspended or otherwise limited, and yet your content keeps getting removed, I suggest a fantastic online tool called Reveddit.

What is Reveddit?

 Reveddit can be accessed by clicking that link and entering any username or subreddit into the search function, or by changing the URL of a account or subreddit to include the ‘VE’ into the word Reddit (Ie: – https://www.reddit.com/user/username would become https://www.reVEddit.com/user/username). 

How does Reveddit work?

GitHub explains how Reveddit is able to do this by stating:

For user pages, reveddit compares the content shown on a reddit user page to what is displayed elsewhere publicly on reddit. For subreddit pages, it compares what is recorded in Pushshift to what appears on the subreddit page. 

How can creators use Reveddit?

Using Reveddit we are able to see all of our removed content, as well as a general idea of who removed it. Comments that were deleted by the poster do not show on this site. We know that comments and posts of ours, especially as creators, get taken down all the time. And often we do not get a notification. If anything the only sign that a post was removed or a comment was removed will be the red trash can next to that content (see below).

We also know very well that accounts that are shadowbanned do not receive notice of the ban, and appear to be working perfectly fine to the shadowed user. Reveddit lists even more reasons users don’t get notified of content removal on their FAQs page

Reddit does not ping authors when their posts (links) are removed. In addition, Reddit does not display the post removal notice on removed posts if:

• Reddit’s spam filter removed the post, and the post is less than 24 hours old.
  • A subreddit’s “spam filter strength” setting may impact how often this occurs. Some subreddits set this to remove all posts up front.
  • You can post in r/CantSayAnything to see how this works.
  • See here for more info.
• you visit the page using a link to a comment, here for example.
• the post was removed prior to December 2019 when Reddit announced Post removal details. Here is an example of an old removed post on Reddit and on on Reveddit.
• you visit the page using old.reddit.com. Only new.reddit.com shows post removal notices.

De-mystifying the removals

Reveddit, once triggered to a subreddit or user account, will list out all of your content removals. They also display a few details that can absolutely help us figure out what is happening, one of the main details is who, or what, removed the content.

Let’s look at a post of mine. This removal was no surprise to me as I had personally deleted the post. It was on a direct selling subreddit so it was accompanied by my comment menu. As I was the one to remove it, it does not show up as a removal.

However, I did not remember to remove my comment menu after removing my post (okay I will be honest, I just didn’t feel like going through and cleaning up that night).  When a post is deleted by a user the comments attached to the post become ‘orphaned links’. Orphaned links are web pages that no longer contains internal links on that site. This results in this content being hard to see for users and search engines. Reveddit designates these posts with the gray tag labeled: [orphaned] link deleted.

The tag next to it designates who or what took what action on that post. As you can see in this example the tage states: [removed] mod/auto. This mod/auto portion of the tag can get a little bit tricky to understand as it can mean one of three things: a human mod, automod or other bot, or worse, Reddit’s spam filter. In my case I am fairly certain either their automod did a sweep or a human mod popped in and cleaned house.

If Reveddit and the database it pulls from has the ability to capture further information it can also show:

• [removed] automatically – This was removed the second it was posted. It is a safe bet to say bots were involved, be it the spam filter or automod. If you are seeing a lot of these:
  • From one subreddit: Are you verified? Do you need to be? Check this resource on a step by step guide for verifying in subreddits. Are you following all of the rules and not posting anything that automod would catch in violation of them?
  • From all/multiple subreddits: Might be time to check your account health. If it is all good, double check the content of your posts. Reddit’s spam filter might be snagging you. Is it a piece of media you have shared multiple times or recently? Are you repeating the same text over and over? Give this resource a read through to brush up on what we know can trigger the filter.
• [removed] by mod: This one is fairly easy to understand. This just means a human moderator manually removed your content.

Below the tags there is a blue box that says ‘show comments in context‘ which directs you to scroll to the bottom of the removed comment to a painfully small font menu. One of the options is ‘context‘. Clicking into this gave me a bit more details on what happened to my removed comment.

On the post itself it showed what happened with a tag that reflected I was the one to delete it. Then on the removed comment it showed one thing we already knew. It shows the removal by either a human mod or automod. Under that though it showed how Reveddit was able to grab the comment information. The tag here, restored via user page, shows that the database was unable to archive the comment. Rather than pulling from it, Reveddit snagged the information from my user page.

Other tags you may see are:

• Collapsed: Usually you will see comments collapsed due to a mod tool called crowd control where comments from low karma accounts, from users new to the subreddit, or comments that have been downvoted. This tag will show for comments still in positive karma, but have been collapsed.
• locked: This will be a yellow tag that shows the moderators have locked the comments and no one can reply
• [removed] by reddit (spam): Now I am thinking this tag description is incorrect on their site as it is labeled mod/auto removed once clicking into it. But allow me to tell you my experience when this post went down. Reddit admins removed it and then permanently banned my account (I did eventually get her back though after a few days of fighting). So, I am going on a limb here and going to say this is the big bad one we definitely don’t want to see.

Final thoughts

There are plenty more features to check out as well! I just thought with so many reports of creators content and comments going down this could help us get some perspective on why!