81.9% of the brand-mention comments one Reddit marketing service posted from 1 to 22 September 2026 were removed within a week, up from 45.6% in August

Findings

1. 81.9% of 2,539 brand-mention comments placed by one Reddit marketing service from 1 to 22 September 2026 were removed within a week, against 45.6% of 5,329 placed in August and 51.9% of 3,402 placed from 16 to 31 July.
2. The rise began with comments posted on 2 September: 51.6% of 182 were gone at a check the same afternoon, against 23.7% of 169 posted on 1 September.
3. Removals rose at both stages: 49.4% of September's 2,539 comments were already gone at the same-day check, against 22.6% of August's 5,329, and 64.2% of the 1,285 that passed it were removed over the next six nights, against 29.8% of 4,127 in August.
4. Every subreddit group we could compare had more comments removed in September, 77.1% to 91.7% against 45.2% to 55.0% from 16 July to 31 August, and so did all 48 brands and 69 of 78 subreddits with enough comments in both periods; 36 of 38 posting accounts also had more of their passing comments removed later.
5. Removals did not stop after a week: of 344 comments posted 26 August to 1 September that were still up after six nightly re-checks, 131 (38.1%) were gone when the service fetched them again on 7 September.
6. In that 7 September snapshot of 1,210 comments, Reddit's own "[ Removed by Reddit ]" label was on 44 of the 397 comments posted 2 to 6 September that were no longer up (11.1%), and on none of the 479 no longer up among those posted 26 August to 1 September.

This report follows No. 03, which covered the same records from 16 July to 16 September.

The rise began on 2 September

• Removed by the same-day check
• Removed within a week

Chart data

posting_day	Removed by the same-day check	Removed within a week
2026-07-16	12.7%	25.5%
2026-07-17	6.8%	17.5%
2026-07-18	8.5%	57.8%
2026-07-19	8.7%	55.8%
2026-07-20	13.9%	64.8%
2026-07-21	11.1%	70.9%
2026-07-22	13.2%	73.6%
2026-07-23	13.5%	69.2%
2026-07-24	26.8%	50.0%
2026-07-25	17.9%	45.7%
2026-07-26	19.4%	51.2%
2026-07-27	23.4%	50.5%
2026-07-28	30.4%	50.3%
2026-07-29	22.8%	43.7%
2026-07-30	21.6%	48.1%
2026-07-31	32.4%	47.4%
2026-08-01	23.7%	41.4%
2026-08-02	17.8%	32.8%
2026-08-03	19.7%	38.3%
2026-08-04	20.7%	39.1%
2026-08-05	25.0%	48.3%
2026-08-06	24.6%	42.5%
2026-08-07	21.0%	38.3%
2026-08-08	28.7%	46.7%
2026-08-09	17.9%	42.2%
2026-08-10	22.2%	44.9%
2026-08-11	25.5%	46.6%
2026-08-12	19.3%	49.7%
2026-08-13	28.9%	52.6%
2026-08-14	25.7%	44.1%
2026-08-15	25.4%	44.6%
2026-08-16	19.1%	42.6%
2026-08-17	20.5%	45.6%
2026-08-18	25.7%	48.5%
2026-08-19	22.4%	54.1%
2026-08-20	26.6%	53.2%
2026-08-21	25.6%	45.2%
2026-08-22	28.3%	59.4%
2026-08-23	17.9%	56.5%
2026-08-24	18.6%	48.8%
2026-08-25	19.2%	46.7%
2026-08-26	22.5%	43.8%
2026-08-27	20.5%	42.2%
2026-08-28	25.3%	36.4%
2026-08-29	23.1%	38.2%
2026-08-30	21.3%	40.6%
2026-08-31	16.8%	59.5%
2026-09-01	23.7%	67.5%
2026-09-02	51.6%	79.1%
2026-09-03	52.2%	80.3%
2026-09-04	57.6%	81.2%
2026-09-05	46.6%	88.5%
2026-09-06	61.7%	83.3%
2026-09-07	50.0%	75.0%
2026-09-08	48.1%	74.1%
2026-09-09	47.1%	68.2%
2026-09-10	43.9%	79.6%
2026-09-11	46.1%	79.8%
2026-09-12	49.5%	86.9%
2026-09-13	47.2%	86.1%
2026-09-14	43.1%	81.4%
2026-09-15	52.5%	89.8%
2026-09-16	42.7%	84.5%
2026-09-17	55.4%	87.0%
2026-09-18	54.0%	86.0%
2026-09-19	58.6%	87.9%
2026-09-20	59.0%	88.0%
2026-09-21	41.4%	84.3%
2026-09-22	58.1%	89.2%

Source: Strandline Research analysis of 11,270 brand-mention comments posted 16 July to 22 September 2026. Each day has 70 to 275 comments.

From 16 July to 1 September, the share of each day's comments already gone at the same-day check ran between 6.8% and 32.4%. For comments posted on 2 September it was 51.6% (n = 182), and it stayed between 41.4% and 61.7% on every day through 22 September.

The within-week figure moved first. Comments posted on 1 September failed the same-day check at an ordinary rate, 23.7% of 169, yet 67.5% were removed within a week, more than on any day in August (32.8% to 59.5%). Their nightly re-checks ran after the rise began, so comments that were already up were removed along with new ones. From 2 to 22 September, 68.2% to 89.8% of each day's comments were removed within a week.

Late July had a shorter episode with a different shape. Of the 1,458 comments posted 18 to 23 July, 55.8% to 73.6% a day were removed within a week, while only 8.5% to 13.9% a day were gone at the same-day check, so most came down days after they had passed it.

The service cut its daily volume after both episodes. The sample has 223 to 275 comments a day from 16 to 24 July, 160 to 190 a day from 25 July to 6 September, and 70 to 118 a day from 7 to 22 September (daily.csv).

A same-day check overstates how many comments stay up

• Posted 16 to 31 July (n = 3,402)
• Posted in August (n = 5,329)
• Posted 1 to 22 September (n = 2,539)

Chart data

check_point	Posted 16 to 31 July (n = 3,402)	Posted in August (n = 5,329)	Posted 1 to 22 September (n = 2,539)
Same-day check	83.2%	77.4%	50.6%
Night 1	73.6%	70.5%	37.3%
Night 2	67.0%	66.1%	32.2%
Night 3	61.1%	62.8%	28.1%
Night 4	56.3%	60.1%	24.3%
Night 5	52.0%	57.6%	20.6%
Night 6	48.1%	54.4%	18.1%

Source: Strandline Research. The same-day check ran the afternoon of the posting day; re-checks ran around 11 PM Eastern on each of the six nights after it.

Each comment was checked on the afternoon of its posting day, a median 12.8 hours after the assignment went out, and again around 11 PM Eastern on each of the next six nights. In August, 77.4% of comments passed the same-day check and 54.4% were still up a week later, a gap of 23.0 points. In September, 50.6% passed and 18.1% were still up, a gap of 32.5 points. Of the September comments that passed the same-day check, 64.2% were gone within the week.

A week is not the end of it either. When the service fetched 692 comments posted 26 August to 1 September again on 7 September, 131 of the 344 that had been up after six nightly re-checks were gone (38.1%, snapshot-vs-tracking.csv). Anyone reporting on a Reddit campaign should say when the count was taken, because the same comments give very different answers a few days apart.

Every group of subreddits, and every brand

We grouped subreddits by the words in their names, such as "travel" or "peptide" (the patterns are in queries.sql), and report a group only when its comments came from at least five brands and no brand had more than half of them. From 16 July to 31 August, the six groups had between 45.2% (SaaS and B2B, n = 305) and 55.0% (GLP-1 and weight loss, n = 249) of their comments removed within a week, close to the 47.9% in all other subreddits (n = 6,891). From 1 to 22 September they had between 77.1% (travel, n = 35) and 91.7% (fitness, n = 48) removed. The September groups are small, but each group's September 95% interval sits above its own July and August interval (topics-intervals.csv).

The rise also shows up inside brands, subreddits and posting accounts. All 48 brands with at least 20 comments in both periods had a larger share removed in September, and the median brand went from 47.4% to 81.5%. Of the 78 subreddits with at least 5 comments in both periods, 69 had more removed, and the median went from 43.5% to 80.0%. The service records the posting account only for comments that pass the same-day check, so accounts can be compared only on later removals: of the 38 accounts with at least five passing comments in each period, 36 had a larger share of them removed later in September, and the median account went from none to 69.7% (accounts.csv). A shift toward stricter subreddits, riskier brands or new accounts would not raise the rate inside nearly every brand, subreddit and account at once.

Who removed them

The delivery records do not say who removed a comment. One more piece of evidence comes from the service itself. On 7 September it fetched 1,210 of its comments posted from 26 August to 6 September through Reddit's API and saved what each one showed.

The API returned all but one of the 1,210 comments, and every returned comment that was no longer up carried a removal or deletion label, so the rise is not a fault in the checking. Most showed "[removed]", with no record of who removed them. Reddit's own "[ Removed by Reddit ]" label appeared on 44 of the 397 comments from 2 to 6 September that were no longer up (11.1%), and on none of the 479 no longer up among those posted 26 August to 1 September, even though the older comments had more days in which to collect it. Reddit's help pages say that content breaking the Reddit Rules "is removed by admins" (Reddit Help).

A jump that began on one posting day and reached every brand, most subreddits and most accounts fits a single change that touched every comment at once. On Reddit's side that could be a tighter filter or action against the posting accounts; on the service's side, a change in how comments were written or posted. The records cannot tell these apart, and Reddit's own label, on 11.1% of the September comments no longer up, is too rare to settle it.

How this report relates to No. 03

Report No. 03 used the same records and definitions for comments posted 16 July to 16 September. This report extends the window to 22 September and adds the comparisons by month, subreddit group, brand and account, and the 7 September snapshot. Over the longer window, 55.7% of 11,270 comments were removed within a week (overall.csv). No. 03 was re-run and corrected on 29 September; its revision note lists the changes.

Method

Source. 11,270 brand-mention comments placed on Reddit by one Reddit marketing service between 16 July and 22 September 2026, each tracked for removal. The comments were written for 82 brands and posted by the service's contractors in 3,143 subreddits, in threads its software selected. The records are the service's own delivery data, read on 29 September 2026 with read-only queries. We use only counts, dates, subreddit names and check results. No comment text, links, usernames, search terms or brand names are published.

Sample. The rules are those of No. 03. A comment is included when it was posted to a thread as a reply (Reddit posts are excluded), the contractor supplied a link to the placed comment, and the same-day check reached a verdict. The window starts on 16 July because the nightly re-check began on 14 July and a fix for mismatched comment links went live on 15 July. It ends on 22 September, the last posting day whose six nightly re-checks had all run by 29 September. recheck-coverage.csv shows why both ends matter: almost no comment posted before 9 July was re-checked at night (3.7% of the week starting 2 July reached the sixth night), and comments posted after 22 September had not yet had six nights. A window that includes either group counts comments as still up that were never re-checked, and overstates survival.

How removal was detected. Each comment was fetched through Reddit's API with the ID from its link. A comment counts as up only when the API returns it with its text. It counts as removed when the API returns no comment, a body of "[removed]", a "[ Removed by Reddit ]" notice or a removal flag.

When it was checked. The same-day check ran on the posting day for 99.5% of the 11,049 comments matched to a check run, a median 12.8 hours after the assignment was released (10th to 90th percentile: 12.4 to 14.1 hours). Comments that passed were fetched again at about 11 PM Eastern on each of the six nights after the posting day. Comments that failed were also re-fetched each night, and any that reappeared, for example after a moderator approved a held comment, count as passing and as up unless removed later; 72 did (overall.csv). Removed within a week means removed at the same-day check or at one of the six re-checks. Of the 4,995 comments counted as still up, 4,981 were confirmed at the sixth-night check.

Months. Months are calendar months of the posting day, Eastern time, so 1 September counts in September; its 67.5% (n = 169) lowers September's rate slightly.

Subreddit groups. Subreddits were grouped by patterns in their names, listed in queries.sql. A group is reported only when its comments came from at least five brands and no brand had more than half of them, so that a group's rate does not stand for one brand's comments. Finance, education and legal groups were defined but fail that rule (topics-excluded.csv) and are counted in "All other subreddits", along with every subreddit whose name matches no pattern. Grouping by name misses subreddits whose names do not state their topic, and the September groups are small, 35 to 93 comments; topics-intervals.csv gives 95% intervals.

Brands, subreddits and accounts compared. breadth.csv compares each brand with at least 20 comments, and each subreddit with at least 5, in both 16 July to 31 August and 1 to 22 September. The service reads the posting account from the live comment, so only comments that passed the same-day check have one (7,201 of 8,242); accounts.csv compares accounts with at least five such comments in each period on the share removed later. Account names are not published.

The 7 September snapshot. removal-labels.csv counts the labels in a snapshot the service took on 7 September 2026 at 21:52 UTC of 1,210 comments posted 26 August to 6 September, fetched from Reddit's API. It covers placements with a full comment link from the service's main contractor team: 1,210 of 2,026 eligible placements, with 816 submitted as share links and not fetched (snapshot-coverage.csv). All 1,210 are in this report's sample, and snapshot-vs-tracking.csv joins them by ID to the tracked week. The comments were 1 to 12 days old when fetched. We counted what the file recorded and did not fetch the comments again.

What counts as removed. The delivery records do not say who removed a comment. Removal by subreddit moderators, by AutoModerator, by Reddit's spam filters and by action against the posting account all look alike in the checks. At the same-day check, a comment deleted by its own author also counts as removed; at the nightly re-checks it does not.

Limits.

• One service's placements. The comments were written, placed and timed by one company's contractors, in threads its software selected, for its 82 brands. Other services, and brands commenting under their own names, may see different rates.
• Its own practices. The comments came from accounts the service's contractors ran. The service cut its daily volume on 7 September and may also have changed how comments were written. The brand, subreddit and account comparisons rule out a change in mix, and cannot rule out a change in practice.
• Survivorship. The service steers new comments away from subreddits where earlier ones were removed, so its rates are likely lower than a random subreddit would show.
• Timing. Removals are dated by check, and nothing faster than the same-day check, about 13 hours after assignment, can be resolved. Removals after the sixth night are not counted, and the 7 September snapshot shows that they happen, so every within-a-week rate here is a floor.

Data

The CSV files below hold every number in this report. queries.sql holds the query behind each one and the steps behind the three snapshot files, which come from the service's 7 September snapshot. They are free to reuse with credit to Strandline Research.

• Sample totals and outcomes CSV, 1 rows, 0.4 KBOne row: comments, subreddits and brands in the sample, posting dates, comments removed at the same-day check, passed it, removed later, removed within a week and still up after a week, the matching rates, how many of the comments still up were confirmed at the sixth-night check, and how many failed the same-day check but reappeared later.
• Removal by month of posting CSV, 3 rows, 0.4 KBOne row per posting month (16 to 31 July, August, 1 to 22 September): comments, subreddits, brands, share removed at the same-day check, comments that passed it, share of those removed later, share of all comments removed later, removed within a week and still up after a week.
• Removal by day of posting CSV, 69 rows, 1.7 KBOne row per posting day from 16 July to 22 September 2026: comments, share removed by the same-day check and share removed within a week.
• Share still up at each check CSV, 7 rows, 0.3 KBOne row per check (the same-day check, then nights 1 to 6): share of comments still up, for comments posted 16 to 31 July, in August, 1 to 22 September, and all months together.
• Removal by subreddit group CSV, 7 rows, 0.4 KBSubreddits grouped by name (patterns in queries.sql), reported where comments came from at least 5 brands and no brand had more than half: subreddits, brands, comments and share removed within a week, 16 July to 31 August and 1 to 22 September.
• Subreddit groups with 95% intervals CSV, 7 rows, 0.5 KBThe rates in topics.csv with 95% Wilson intervals for each period.
• Subreddit groups not reported CSV, 3 rows, 0.3 KBGroups defined in queries.sql but left out of topics.csv: comments, brands, the largest brand's share of comments, and the reason.
• Brands and subreddits compared across periods CSV, 2 rows, 0.2 KBBrands with 20 or more comments, and subreddits with 5 or more, in both 16 July to 31 August and 1 to 22 September: how many removed a larger share in September, and the median share removed in each period.
• Posting accounts compared across periods CSV, 1 rows, 0.3 KBPosting accounts with 5 or more comments that passed the same-day check both from 16 July to 31 August and from 1 to 22 September: how many had a larger share of those comments removed later in September, the median share in each period, and how many passing comments have a recorded account. No account names.
• Labels Reddit showed on 7 September CSV, 2 rows, 0.3 KBFrom the service's 7 September 2026 snapshot of 1,210 comments posted 26 August to 6 September: comments fetched, still up, no longer up, shown as removed, shown as removed by Reddit, shown as deleted, not returned, and the share of comments no longer up that carried Reddit's own removal label.
• The 7 September snapshot against the tracked week CSV, 2 rows, 0.2 KBThe same 1,210 comments joined by ID to the delivery records: how many are in this report's sample, how many were removed within the tracked week, how many were still up after it, and how many of those were gone in the 7 September snapshot.
• Coverage of the 7 September snapshot CSV, 1 rows, 0.2 KBWhen the snapshot was taken, eligible placements, comments fetched with a full comment link, placements submitted as share links and not fetched, and API objects requested, received and failed.
• Timing of the same-day check CSV, 1 rows, 0.1 KBComments matched to a same-day check run, the share checked on the posting day, and the 10th, 50th and 90th percentile hours from assignment to the check.
• Nightly re-check coverage by week of posting CSV, 14 rows, 0.5 KBOne row per week of posting from 25 June to 28 September 2026: comments, comments still up after their last check, the share of those whose last check came on the sixth night, and comments found removed at a nightly re-check. It shows why the sample starts on 16 July and ends on 22 September.
• SQL queries CSV, 24.3 KBThe read-only query behind every CSV in this report, and the steps behind removal-labels.csv.