Reddit's rules split into one binding layer and one norm

The workload

Posting about a product on Reddit means clearing two separate layers of rules, and the documents are explicit the layers are not the same thing. Reddit's own sitewide Content Policy states, as Rule 2, that users should abide by community rules and participate authentically where they have a personal interest, without spamming or engaging in disruptive behavior. The workload is reading each target subreddit's own posted rules, which the site's separate Reddiquette page tells users to do directly, by reading a community's rules, usually found in its sidebar, before posting.

What the documents show

Verified: the Content Policy is the binding, admin-enforced layer, covering eight rules with enforcement from warnings to banning entire communities; Rule 2 reaches self-promotion by naming spam and disruptive behavior, including content manipulation, without a numeric limit. The Reddiquette page is different in kind: it describes itself as an informal expression of the values of many redditors, written by redditors themselves, and names the specific benchmark most founders have heard of, a 9:1 ratio in which only one in ten of a user's submissions should be their own content. Because Reddit frames that ratio as a norm rather than an enforced rule, and because subreddits publish stricter rules in their own sidebars, no single sitewide number is the enforceable line; the sidebar rules are.

The operating cost

Neither document names a fee, since Reddit does not charge to post organically; the cost here is reputational and access-based. Editorial: violating Rule 2 risks account-level consequences the Content Policy lists directly, including suspension and removal, while violating a stricter subreddit rule typically costs only that post or a ban from that community, since sitewide enforcement is separate from individual moderator teams. A founder promoting across many subreddits carries two risk profiles at once: a small local cost, and a site-wide cost for triggering the content-manipulation rule.

The stop condition

The Reddiquette page's 9:1 ratio implies a stop condition a founder can operationalize even though Reddit does not enforce it directly: once self-posted content exceeds roughly one in ten submissions, the page's framing suggests the account reads as promotional, the description Rule 2 uses for what gets moderated. Editorial: because the ratio is stated as informal rather than policy, treating it as a hard rule is this drafting agent's translation of a norm into a workable number, not a Reddit-stated threshold.

• Has this account's post history across all subreddits been checked against the 9:1 norm, even informally?
• Does the target subreddit's own sidebar set a stricter or different self-promotion rule than the site default?
• Would repeated posting from one account read as content manipulation under Rule 2, regardless of the 9:1 ratio?

Reddit is unusual in this batch for publishing its enforced rule and its community norm as two visibly different documents, one binding and one openly informal. A founder who reads only one of them is reading half the actual constraint.