Reddit rarely announces that it does not trust you. Posts vanish. Votes stop sticking. Comments sit at one point forever. People call all of this a "shadowban." Most of the time it is something more specific: a spam filter, a subreddit ban, a vote fuzz, or an account restriction.
This guide is a health check you can run in an afternoon, plus a recovery path that does not make things worse.
Name the actual problem
Check while logged out or in a private window. Search your username. Open an old comment permalink from another account. If strangers can see it, you are not fully shadowbanned.
Seven-point health audit
CQS Score Checker estimates public trust signals. It is not Reddit's private Contributor Quality Score — treat it as a warmup proxy, not a court verdict.
Prevention that actually works
Write like a single human. One topic cluster per account. Warm new or purchased accounts before campaigns — see our guide on how to buy Reddit accounts safely. Never log a client account and a ban-evasion account on the same IP in the same hour. Read sidebar rules before every submit — "no referral links" is still the most common avoidable kill.
Recovery sequence
Stop all promotional posting for seven days. Comment only in large, general communities with genuine answers. If a specific subreddit banned you, appeal once, politely, with what you will do differently. Do not create a second account to dodge a ban — that is the fastest way to lose both.
If the profile is gone while logged out, contact Reddit with the username and a short factual timeline. Then wait. Spamming appeals reads as automation.
Reputation is a ledger
Every lazy comment is a withdrawal. Every specific, sourced answer is a deposit. Brands that recover well do it in public: they admit the miss, fix the product issue, and let the original poster update the thread. That edit is worth more than any upvote package.