In this post
On 3 August we published our first Reddit post. It was not an app announcement: it was a piece about project scope, in the title format the subreddit requires, with our apps mentioned as examples in the middle and the site link at the end.
Minutes after publishing, we checked: the post appeared in the subreddit feed and on the account profile. That day's entry in our own operations log reads, word for word:
RESULT: it passed. Shows in the subreddit feed and on the user
profile, no AutoModerator removal. The 4-day-old account with 1
karma was not blocked here.On 4 August, 14 hours later, we checked again:
Sorry, this post was removed by Reddit's filters.
It had never existed for anyone but us.
We kept that "it passed" in the file. It was wrong the moment it was written, and it was still the honest reading of what the screen showed. An operations log is only worth as much as the verification method behind it — and ours, that day, was looking at our own screen while logged in.
Why the first check lied
A post caught by Reddit's spam filter stays visible to its author. In your own session it shows in the feed, shows on your profile, accepts votes and accepts comments. For everyone else, it is not there.
That is not a bug. It is the most efficient way to contain spam: if the spammer does not notice the block, they do not try another route.
The side effect for people who are not spammers is that the channel reports success and delivers zero.
Checking minutes after publishing is not checking. On a platform with asynchronous moderation, the result only exists after the filter runs — and it runs when it wants.
The test that works is mundane: open the post URL in a private window, logged out. If it appears logged in and not logged out, it is filtered.
Why it was caught — and it was not the text
This is the part that surprises writers most: the filter did not read the post.
| Signal | Value |
|---|---|
| Karma | 1 |
| Account age | 4 days |
| Comments | 0 |
| Subreddits participated in | 0 |
| Followers | 0 |
| Verified email | yes |
New account, zero karma, zero participation history, and a first post already carrying a link to our own domain. That combination is the classic signature of promotional spam. The classifier does not need to judge whether the text is good — the metadata already decided.
Worth noting: the email was verified. It was not a verification problem. It was reputation.
It was predicted, in writing
The uncomfortable part is that none of this was a surprise. The recommendation on record before publishing was not to publish — to use the account genuinely for about three weeks first — and it listed the two likely outcomes: immediate removal by AutoModerator, or the post appearing published while existing for nobody. The second scenario was described in those words, and it is exactly what happened.
The decision was to publish anyway, with safeguards: read each subreddit's rules before posting, unique text per community, space the posts out in time, and never post where self-promotion is banned.
The safeguards were good. The problem is that the first one was applied to the subreddit we posted in, and not to the five already queued. Reading the house rules on your way in is too late: house rules are a selection criterion, not a checklist at the door.
The mistake before the mistake
Seven days later, rechecking, things had got worse: karma dropped from 1 to 0 and the post was still filtered, invisible in the subreddit's own search.
Then came the uncomfortable discovery: the subreddits we planned to use had never been read against their house rules. They had been picked by topic affinity. When we finally read the rules, one by one:
| Subreddit | Self-promotion rule | Usable? |
|---|---|---|
| r/androidapps | self-promotion not allowed; redirects devs elsewhere | no |
| r/brdev | open-source or non-commercial only | no |
| r/AndroidGaming | active members only, with a required prefix | no |
| r/empreendedorismo | no self-promotion without prior mod approval | no |
| r/investimentos | explicit rule against undisguised self-promotion | no |
Five out of five. And the first one appeared in six of the eight posts already drafted.
This is the third time in this series that an unchecked assumption cost work. It is a pattern, not bad luck: we verify what we know how to do and assume what we do not.
The right subreddit existed the whole time — one with 12,481 members, which is exactly where r/androidapps sends developers. But it requires:
Account age: 24+ hours ok
Karma: 2+ combined short by 2
Limit: 1 app post per week per accountTwo karma. Two useful comments, written by a human, with no links. That is the whole unlock.
Sitting with that for a moment is uncomfortable in a useful way. The gap between "blocked" and "allowed" was two comments — perhaps twenty minutes of genuine participation — and we had instead spent days writing eight posts for communities that would never accept them. The cheap thing was invisible because it did not look like work.
And since the limit there is one post per week, eight apps means eight weeks — not an afternoon. There is no "ship everything today" version that survives a written rule.
The same problem in another channel
Reddit was not an isolated case. On X, the account landed in graduated access — reduced reach until the platform is convinced there is a person behind it. It does not block posting; it just makes posting produce little.
And there is an even quieter signal: your own domain being filtered. On more than one platform, a post carrying a link to our domain performs consistently differently from the same post without it. Nobody tells you. There is no dashboard, no email, no error. Just a smaller number.
The difference between the first and last row is not content. It is how much history the account has on that platform.
What we decided not to do
There was an obvious shortcut: mass-produce comments until karma passed 2. One afternoon of work.
We did not, and the reason is practical before it is ethical. That is precisely the pattern the filters exist to catch. Being classified as inauthentic is worse than the current state, because the next penalty does not hit the account — it hits the domain. A banned domain would contaminate any future account, for anyone on the team, permanently.
Trading a permanent risk for two saved weeks is a terrible deal.
The takeaway
A channel gated by reputation is not a launch channel. It is an accumulated-presence channel. You do not arrive on launch day; you arrive having already been there.
The strategic mistake was not getting filtered — with a four-day-old account that was the expected outcome, and it was predicted in writing before we published. The mistake was treating the channel as distribution when it is relationship, and finding that out with the post already live.
In part 4, the scoreboard: nineteen channels, which delivered, which reach nobody, and which ones we could actually measure.
Frequently asked questions
How do you check whether a Reddit post was filtered?
Open the post URL in a private window, logged out. If it shows up logged in and not logged out, it was filtered. Searching for the title inside the subreddit is the second test. Checking minutes after publishing proves nothing: the filter acts with delay.
Is the filter the subreddit's or Reddit's?
Two different mechanisms. AutoModerator belongs to the subreddit and usually leaves a comment explaining. The spam filter is platform-wide, acts silently and does not clearly notify the author or the moderators. Ours was the second.
Can you speed up the reputation of a new account?
Not in a way that survives. Mass-producing comments to farm karma is exactly the pattern the filters look for, and being flagged as inauthentic costs more than an idle account. The path is real participation, and it takes weeks.
What happens if you keep posting?
The risk we ran and avoided: every removed post reinforces the signal, and the platform's next step is banning the domain, not the account. A banned domain contaminates every future account, including other people's.