[gnicholas]

Can OP or another employee provide some background here? I feel like most Show HNs have one of the founders explaining a bit in the HN discussion page.

One thing I'd like to understand better is how to avoid problems with mods. My startup had some very popular posts on LPT and YSK, but both were taken down. Some of the mods said that the reasoning given by other mods was bogus, and that we were just being targeted.

Since then, I've never tried engaging on reddit much, since it seems like even successful posts can be taken down without rhyme or reason. Any insights into how to avoid these sorts of problems, either with your tool or in general?

[Maxion]

Reddit is not a platform for self-promotion, and moderators there are very keen for it not becoming such a place.

Each subreddit is moderated differently by completely volunteer moderators. How things are in one subreddit does not really tell you how it is in another.

In broad terms, directly engaging as a company on Reddit by creating a post is generally frowned upon. What works better is to respond to posts in the comments hwhere your company would be relevant. But it is very hard to toe the line between spamming advertisements, and engaging with the community. 90% of companies I see trying to engage on Reddit seem to do it with metrics such as ROI or engagement in mind, rather than simply trying to make a community a better place.

If you go by the former, you'll have your posts removed and maybe even banned from the community. If you do the latter, then you will make some headway.

E.g. Do not promote your business selling router bits, DO make a lengthy post explaining the differences between router bits and how to choose one that's right for you.

[maest]

> Reddit is not a platform for self-promotion, and moderators there are very keen for it not becoming such a place.

Counterpoint: mods can (and have been) paid off to promote/allow posts from certain companies, while shutting down posts from competitors.

The biggest example is u/gallowboobs, but many mods of medium to large sized subreddits have reported being approached by people offering them money to use their power to influence what gets posted.

So, while on the surface of it, it looks like a subreddit is moderated by clear, transparent rules, in most cases, decisions are made by a handful of people whose interests are not clear or aligned with the community's.

[gnicholas]

Appreciate this detailed reply! Just for additional context, I wasn't going around spamming — I made a post on LPT when my startup launched, and then on YSK at the suggestion of a mod who thought my very popular post was unfairly taken down on LPT. Each post had over a thousand upvotes and an 85% +/- ratio, and was generating good conversation. It was super frustrating to lose those posts, which were driving tons of traffic!

I can see that I would have been much better off letting one of my startup's users, or someone who had seen our Show HN, post to reddit and get the ball rolling. That would have generated the same type of publicity, and I would have been able to jump into the comments and answer questions in the same way. Lesson learned!

[AlchemistCamp]

> I wasn't going around spamming — I made a post on LPT when my startup launched

How many launches of other startups not affiliated with you did you share there first? What % of your comments in the sub would you say were on threads you didn't start?

[gnicholas]

I made one post! If I'd known that my idea was going to get so popular, and that reddit would be somewhere it might spread, I would have joined the community sooner and gotten engaged. But lacking a time machine, I just created an account and made the one post that became incredibly popular.

[AlchemistCamp]

It sounds like you weren’t a spammer but your interest really isn’t community so much using them as a marketing channel.

If you were more intrinsically interested in the community, you’d probably have signed up long ago and engaged with plenty of other people’s posts, like you did here here on HN!

[gnicholas]

Haha I signed up for HN around the same time, actually. I stayed involved in the community here because it was so welcoming! After my experiences on reddit, I was a bit gun-shy.

Is there a subreddit that has an analog of 'Show HN'? Or have HN and PH basically sucked all the oxygen out of that particular room?

[PUSH_AX]

The spirit of Reddit is to share things you’ve found that you think are cool or suited to the sub. This falls down when people start self promoting their stuff. The thing is there are lots of cool things people have created that should be shared, but if you open the floodgates then you also get the other 90% of spammy garbage. So generally there are blanket rules about this kind of thing.

[dmitriid_y]

> This falls down when people start self promoting their stuff.

Pinterest manages it just fine. And Reddit crossposting hints at the fix: sever content from specific subreddits and instead have content be tagged with relevant subreddits and attributes. Something being paid-content would just be another tag that could be optionally filtered.

[lloydatkinson]

Honestly the best way to avoid mods I’ve found is to repost something some time later at a different hour or when a particular American National holiday happens (I’m from the UK. This way you get to avoid the usual trigger happy Reddit mods. As you’ve probably experienced Reddit has some of the worst and biased moderation and administration around.

[thefedoration]

Ah the mods. Feared by most, hated by some, necessary to make Reddit the place is is.

If you make a post that mentions your company, in most subreddits there's a chance you could get it taken down. There are ways to mitigate that, but my recommendation is to start out by commenting as opposed to posting. There are a lot of conversations where people are talking about pain points you can help with, or asking for solutions which are exactly the business you run. By answering with a thoughtful reply and linking to your site (blog post with more info or product free trial is received best), you open up a win-win-win situation. OP gets their question answered (unless you're doing it wrong), you win because you get a potential customer, and the community wins because they learn of a related resource to a post they are reading. In my experience, comments are a lot less moderated, and because you're actually helping someone with your reply, less likely to be called out for self-promotion.

I've found that a lot of startup founders have similar experiences, so much that part of my job has been helping people get comfortable with Reddit. If you want to know more, here's my intro to Reddit for founders blog post: https://gummysearch.com/insights/reddit-startups/

[rco8786]

Avoiding mods is a problem with Reddit itself. If you think that mods devalue the conversation on Reddit so much that searching the discussions for relevant information is not worth it then the product here is not for you.