Account Health: Bans, Suspensions, and Auto-Join

ReddGrow actively monitors each connected Reddit account for moderation signals and manages the account's membership state in target subreddits. This page explains what the system detects, how it responds, and what you see in the dashboard and extension when an issue occurs.

Auto-Join

Before the Chrome Extension posts a comment to a subreddit, it verifies that your Reddit account is already a member. If not, it joins the subreddit first.

This ensure-joined phase runs automatically before each posting attempt. You do not need to manually join subreddits listed in your campaigns.

Passive Join-State Detection

The extension also passively tracks which subreddits your account has joined as you browse Reddit normally. When you navigate to a subreddit while the extension is active, a background content script reads your join state and reports it to ReddGrow.

The result: the subreddits list shows a join badge for communities your account is already a member of, giving you a live view of membership state across all your target subreddits.

Moderation-Message Monitoring (Inbox Scan)

Once per day, the Chrome Extension scrapes your Reddit inbox and modmail and sends the messages to ReddGrow's backend for classification. This is how the system learns about bans, content removals, and moderation rule changes without requiring Reddit API access.

What Gets Classified

ReddGrow's AutomodParserService reads each message and assigns one of three outcomes:

Each message is tracked by ID so it is only processed once, even if it appears in multiple scans.

Content Removal Is Not a Ban

A removed comment does not result in a ban record. Content removal and subreddit bans are distinct moderation actions. ReddGrow only creates a ban record from explicit ban signals, not from removal notifications. This prevents false-positive bans from accumulating and blocking accounts that are in good standing.

What Happens When a Ban Is Detected

When a ban message is confirmed:

1. A ban record is written for that (Reddit account, subreddit) pair.
2. That subreddit is immediately excluded from slot selection for that account.
3. A short comment hold is applied to the account, pausing all posting briefly while the situation is assessed.
4. The subreddit list shows a ban badge for the affected community.

Rule-Only Outcomes

When a message contains only rule information, ReddGrow updates the subreddit's stored requirements (minimum karma, minimum account age, extra rules) so future draft generation respects the updated constraints.

Per-Subreddit Bans

Permanent vs. Temporary

Subreddit bans can be permanent or temporary:

• Permanent bans are excluded indefinitely.
• Temporary bans carry an expiry date. The system automatically stops excluding the subreddit once the ban period ends.

Both types are visible in the subreddits list as a ban badge with the ban status.

Where the Gate Applies

The ban gate is enforced at slot selection, before any posting is attempted. If your account has an active ban for a subreddit, no draft for that (account, subreddit) combination will be claimed or posted. The gate checks permanent bans, bans with no set expiry (treated as permanent), and temporary bans whose expiry is in the future.

Account Suspension and Comment Hold

Site-Wide Suspension

If Reddit suspends your account site-wide, the Chrome Extension detects this during its normal operation and reports it to ReddGrow. The system responds by:

1. Marking the account as suspended.
2. Pausing all automation for that account for 30 days (circuit breaker).
3. Showing a suspended banner in the extension's SidePanel.

The suspension state clears automatically on recovery. When the account is no longer suspended, the next successful extension run removes the banner and resumes automation.

Comment Hold After a Ban

When a subreddit ban is confirmed, the account enters a short comment hold. During this window, no new comments are posted from the account across any subreddit. This allows you to review the situation before activity resumes. The hold expires automatically without manual intervention.

Suspected vs. Confirmed States

Not all signals are certain. ReddGrow uses a confidence model to avoid customer impact from ambiguous data:

Only confirmed states trigger gating, account demotion, or deactivation. Suspected states are surfaced in the dashboard for your review but have no automatic effect on posting. This design prevents a false positive from silently disabling an account in good standing.

Authoritative signals include:

• A Reddit API ban error returned when a post attempt is rejected
• An explicit ban message or banner detected by the extension
• A ban notification parsed from modmail

Content removal messages, rate limits, and network errors are not authoritative ban signals.

Dashboard and Extension Indicators

Related Pages

• Comment Safety — how ReddGrow validates draft content before it reaches the queue
• Chrome Extension — where inbox scans and posting sessions run
• Karma Warmup — how new accounts build karma before entering target subreddits