CSS to indicate removed posts in old Reddit

Here is some CSS you can use to indicate a post's removal on old Reddit, which doesn't appear otherwise.

The problem: no removal indications on old Reddit

I still use old Reddit (old.reddit.com). "New" Reddit is shiny and fancy but I just don't like it. I'm used to the old layout. It's way faster and less bloated. I just like it. 

But it has some issues in that Reddit only develops for the new version of the site now, and this includes visual indications that a post was removed by mods. "New" Reddit will show you something like this:

But on old Reddit, unless the post was fully deleted (usually by the poster themselves) and thus the post just shows "[removed]", there's no visual indication that the post was taken down. You'd have to rely on a message from mods alerting you to the fact. Or you'd have to see the post in "new" Reddit. 

I was thinking about vibe-coding a userscript that would check a post's JSON version from the Reddit API to get the removal status and display that on the page. But my goal is light-ness and speed and less bloat. That's why I like old Reddit. So I wanted something simpler. Something just using CSS.

The solution: CSS for non-crossposting

It turns out, removed posts can't be crossposted. Bingo. That means while a normal live post will have a link to crosspost it, a mod-removed post will not. So here's some simple CSS that checks for the presence of that link and if it's absent, alerts you of a possible removal.

So far I've tried it out on a few posts and it seems to be fully accurate so far. Use whatever Chrome extension or etc you want (I use Stylus) and add this CSS for old Reddit: 

.thing.link:not(:has(li.crosspost-button)) {border: 2px dashed #ff4500 !important; background-color: rgba(255, 69, 0, 0.05) !important; position: relative;}

.thing.link:not(:has(li.crosspost-button))::before {content: "POSSIBLY REMOVED (No Crosspost Button)"; background: #ff4500; color: white; font-size: 10px; font-weight: bold; padding: 2px 8px; position: absolute; top: -10px; left: 10px; border-radius: 3px;}

The end results will look like this on the post:

And this in your lists of submitted posts:

This works for me. 

Final thoughts

Hope we can keep old Reddit going for as long as possible. I agree the new site is better for new users but a lot of long term high quality users still prefer old Reddit and I hope they will reflect on that and keep this going with at least basic reading/commenting functionality.