this post was submitted on 02 May 2025
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There's definitely something going on. Whenever I add a Lemmy instance URL that isn't obfuscated somehow, like replacing the periods with commas or (dot), then my comment gets no likes or responses, whereas a very similar comment in the same thread without a link does.
It seems to down rank it in the algorithim, if not outright shadow remove them.
Reddit won’t show you that your comment was removed by a mod and shows removed comments on user profiles (unless they had to be nuked for legal reasons). If you suspect you’re shadow banned or if your comment was quietly removed you have to check for that from a separate account in that comment thread directly.
you could probably also just open that on a private tab right?
I don't really get why this solution isn't used much or even suggested. I mean fetching the data without an account is a foolproof way to detect shadowbanning and silent removals. Frankly I'm surprised no one has simply made an extension or tool to do it automatically.
CC: @[email protected] @[email protected]
I assume those who were interested enough could whip out a script to do that easily until Reddit disabled API which is the moment I lost interest in the platform. I don’t know how people do it these days without getting accounts suspended for automated traffic but it’s something you have to consider and probably the reasons why such tools are not available widely.
I mean web scraping also exists and scraper based Reddit frontends have been and still are a thing. Also using accounts API isn't ideal since they can figure out that an account is being used to look at stuff like that and either suspend it or worse just make shadowbans visible and not apparent to that account.
Can't so easily fuck with a web scraper or tool just looking at the raw web page data.
Redlib does that but it’s a game of cat and mouse these days. Facebook fought off web scrapers and while Reddit is much less technically competent they’ll get there too eventually.
We shall see I guess, though unless they opt to only allow access to logged in users it'll still be technically possible to do, especially locally in your own browser. Though people do lose interest over time, especially as platforms lose relevance.
Reddit makes browsing without account harder and harder. I assume the end goal is a walled unindexable garden like Facebook or Discord.
modern day tobacco corporations
It doesn't surprise me. They're losing users left right and centre