Reddit Not Showing All Comments? Why Some Are Hidden

You open a thread, the count promises a long list of comments, and you can only find a fraction of them. Before you assume the app is broken, it helps to know that Reddit hides comments on purpose in several situations, and its help centre explains most of them.

This matters if you run a community, answer questions for your business on Reddit, or use threads for research. A missing comment can mean a rule, a filter or a block, rather than a glitch. I'll go through each official reason, then what you can do about it.

Why the Reddit comment count is higher than the comments you can see

Reddit's help centre answers this directly. When a comment is removed, it's hidden so people in the thread can't see it, but the comment count stays the same. Comments are often removed by community moderators or automod for breaking community rules, or by Reddit's spam filter.

That means it's normal for the number at the top of a thread to be higher than the number of comments you can read. Nothing is wrong with your connection or your app. The count includes comments you're not meant to see.

Reddit auto-collapses comments that look like spam

Reddit also collapses comments by itself. It says it will auto-collapse comments detected as likely to be spam or low quality, and that this is switched on across Reddit to deal with spam before it reaches moderators or readers.

In a collapsed state you may only see a short line instead of the text, and you can usually open it. Moderators of a community see these comments uncollapsed, labelled Potential Spam, and they can approve them to override the collapse. If you think a comment is spam, Reddit says you can report it to its enforcement teams.

How Crowd Control collapses Reddit comments in busy threads

Another reason comments seem to vanish is a moderator setting called Crowd Control. Reddit describes it as a safety setting that lets moderators automatically collapse or filter comments, and filter posts, from users who aren't trusted members of their community yet. It's meant for moments such as a post going viral and bringing in lots of new people.

Moderators can pick a threshold for comments:

• Moderate filtering catches accounts with negative community karma.
• High filtering catches accounts with negative community karma and new accounts.
• Maximum filtering catches those plus non-members of the community.

Reddit adds that moderators can choose to hold crowd-controlled comments in their mod queue until they approve or remove them, and that anyone moderators have added as an approved user isn't caught by the filter. Once it's set up, it applies on old Reddit, reddit.com and the official apps alike.

If you run a community and your own replies are being collapsed, remember it's the moderators' threshold doing it, not something you've done wrong. If you post in someone else's community as a business, building a little history first is the sensible route, as Reddit's guidance on new accounts and spam filters suggests.

Comments from people you've blocked on Reddit

If you've blocked someone, their comments won't be shown to you the usual way. Reddit says you can't open the blocked person's profile, their posts won't appear in feeds, and if you come across their comments or a direct link, their content will be collapsed. You can choose to uncollapse it, which Reddit says helps you check they aren't breaking the rules, and you can still report them.

It works the other way round too. A person you've blocked sees your comments as if they'd been deleted. If a thread looks thinner than it should, someone in it may have blocked someone else. My guide to blocking someone on Reddit explains what the setting does and how to undo it.

Spam flags on your own Reddit account

Sometimes the missing comments are yours. Reddit says that if your posts, comments, chat messages and profile page aren't showing up as expected, your account might have been flagged for spam or inauthentic activity.

1. Open a browser window and log in to the affected account.
2. Go to Reddit's appeals page.
3. Fill out and submit the form if you believe the flag is a mistake.

New accounts are most likely to hit spam filters. Reddit's article about posts you can't see says there's a limit to how often users can post and comment in a community, and that if you're brand new and have little karma, you may hit that filter. Earning a small amount of karma by commenting on another post in the community can help you get past it.

What a Reddit moderator can and can't do with removed comments

If a moderator removed your comment, you can message the moderators through modmail to ask why. Reddit suggests doing this if you think a removal was a mistake. Be polite and specific: name the thread, quote the rule you think you followed and ask whether it can be restored.

Remember that moderators write their own community rules, so one subreddit's comments are not another's. A reply that is welcome in one place may break the rules in the next, which is worth knowing before you use Reddit to talk about your business.

Vote counts that look wrong on Reddit comments

A related oddity: you may not see how many votes a comment has. Reddit says that in the first few hours after something is posted, votes aren't displayed, to prevent vote manipulation. Some communities also choose to hide votes on comments and posts for a short time. That is a display choice, and it doesn't mean the comment is hidden.

Changing how you view comments on Reddit

The sorting article in Reddit's help centre covers search results, where comments can be sorted by Relevance, Top and New. Reddit's help centre doesn't describe the thread-level comment sort menus, or the buttons that load more replies, so I won't invent steps for them. If a long thread seems to stop, refreshing the page or opening it in another browser or the app is a sensible general check, but it isn't something Reddit's own pages list.

A short checklist when Reddit doesn't show all comments

Possible cause	What Reddit's help says
Removed comment	Hidden from the thread, still counted
Likely spam	Auto-collapsed, shown to mods as Potential Spam
Crowd Control	Collapses comments from newer or untrusted accounts
You blocked someone	Their comments are collapsed for you
Your account flagged	Submit the appeals form if it's a mistake
Vote counts missing	Not shown for the first few hours

If a moderator removed something because of a typo or a formatting slip, my guide to editing a Reddit post shows what you can and can't change afterwards. And if you've been through the whole list and a thread still looks wrong, Reddit's bug-reporting community is the place for a real glitch.

Frequently asked questions

Why does Reddit say there are more comments than I can see?

Reddit says removed comments are hidden from the thread but the comment count stays the same, so the count can be higher than what you can read.

What does it mean when Reddit collapses a comment?

Reddit auto-collapses comments it detects as likely spam or low quality, and moderators can use Crowd Control to collapse comments from accounts that aren't trusted members yet.

Why can't I see comments from someone I blocked?

Reddit says content from accounts you block is collapsed for you, though you can choose to uncollapse it. You can still report them.

Why are my own Reddit comments missing?

A moderator or automod may have removed them, or your account may be caught by a spam filter. Reddit offers an appeals form if you think your account was flagged by mistake.

Can moderators see comments I can't?

Yes. Reddit says moderators see Potential Spam comments uncollapsed in their communities and can approve them to override the collapse.