I hate reddit. It's somehow the best and worst platform at the same time.

My experience is that many sub reddit mods take themselves way to serious and are miserable people.

Well, Reddit policy has always been controversial. I think it's what allowed Reddit to survive for decades, but it has also penalized many users unfairly. For your case, it sounds like you were astroturfing.

So Reddit is effectively asking commercial actors to become real community members first, while giving very little feedback about when they stop looking like community members and start looking like growth hackers. It's a subtle controversy.