A prediction is only as good as what it's based on. Here's exactly how WillItStay decides whether a post survives — including the parts we can measure precisely and the parts we can only estimate.
The four ways a post dies
A Reddit post can be removed by four different systems, and they behave differently. We check all four:
- AutoMod— the subreddit's automated rules. Fast, deterministic, and the most common cause. Removes on banned domains, URL shorteners, keywords, missing flair, karma and account-age gates.
- The spam filter (CQS)— Reddit's site-wide trust system. Opaque and probabilistic; it holds back low-trust accounts and link-heavy posts before a mod sees them.
- Human moderators — slower, judgment-based removals, usually minutes to hours later.
- Shadowban — an account-level ghosting, not a per-post action. The post looks normal to you and is invisible to everyone else.
What we read for each subreddit
For a given community we pull what Reddit exposes, then fill the gaps:
- Public rules and post requirements— flair requirements, title and body length limits, allowed submission types, and domain allow/deny lists. These are deterministic: if a post breaks one, it's removed, full stop.
- Observed removals— the karma gate, account-age wall, and AutoMod keyword triggers that aren't in any public API. We infer these from what actually gets removed in a subreddit, which is the hard part — and the part most tools skip.
- Your account signals — account age, karma, and shadowban status (checked by whether the profile is visible when logged out).
Measured vs. inferred
We're specific about confidence, because you should be able to trust the strong signals and weigh the soft ones:
- Deterministic (hard gates) — a required flair, a banned shortener, an account below a stated karma floor. If we flag one of these, it will be removed. High confidence.
- Probabilistic (opaque filters)— the spam filter and shadowban risk. We can raise a flag, but Reddit doesn't publish the thresholds, so these are estimates, and we label them that way.
Where we're honest about limits
Reddit doesn't document its spam systems, subreddits change rules without notice, and moderators are human. So WillItStay predicts risk; it doesn't promise a post can never be removed. We'd rather under-claim and be right than quote an accuracy number we can't stand behind. When a signal is a guess, we say so.
Sourcing and respect for Reddit's content
We paraphrase and link to a subreddit's rules rather than republishing them verbatim, and we don't store your drafts beyond running the check. WillItStay reads public Reddit data to help you post better — not to scrape, repost, or automate anything on your behalf.