Check the post against the eight Reddit Rules first
Open the Reddit Rules and read your post or comment against them. The four that catch most of what lands on us are Rule 1 (harassment, bullying, threats of violence), Rule 3 (someone's personal or confidential information, and intimate media shared without consent), Rule 5 (impersonating a person or entity in a deceptive manner) and Rule 7 (illegal content). If one of those actually fits, Reddit's own safety team has a route for you.
There is no defamation rule, no false-review rule and no rule against a thread being unfair to your business. The list is eight rules long and none of them covers a post that's harsh, one-sided or simply wrong about you. If that's what you're looking at, every report form below is a dead end and the moderators are your move.
Copy the exact link before you go anywhere else. Use the Share button directly below the post or comment and select copy link, because a report needs the address of the specific comment rather than the thread it's buried in. Reddit wants the full URL beginning with https://www.reddit.com, and if the thread was crossposted or reposted somewhere else, each copy is its own URL and its own request.
Report it to Reddit if it breaks one of them
With a Reddit account, report it from the post itself. Reddit's instruction is to tap or click the overflow menu, then select Report, and pick the rule that fits. Reddit points account holders to reddit.com/report for the same thing and says that's the way to get an issue handled quickly, but it's no use to you signed out.
Without an account, use Reddit's Other reports form, which opens with Report Reddit Rules Violation already chosen. Required: Your email address, Reddit username you are reporting with no u/ in front of it, a Policy Violation category, Additional Reddit link(s) to where this activity happened (no screenshots):, both checkboxes, and Subject of inquiry plus Details of inquiry. Your Reddit username(optional) and Attachments(optional) are the only two you can skip.
Paste links, never pictures. Reddit says flatly that it doesn't accept screenshots, because they're too easy to manipulate, so a report built on images is a report that closes. Reddit also warns on that same form that responses using this method may be delayed, and it publishes no turnaround for any report at all: its own language is that it acts in a timely manner. File once and go do the next thing on this page.
Message the subreddit's moderators, which is the real lever
Moderators can remove anything in their own community under their own community's rules, and they don't need Reddit's permission. Reddit says mods perform the majority of community moderation actions across the platform. On a thread that breaks no sitewide rule, this is the only fast route that exists.
Reddit's own instructions: on reddit.com, click Message the mods under the moderators section in the sidebar of the community. On iOS and Android, go to the community, tap the overflow menu at the top right, then tap Message moderators. Don't chat an individual mod instead, because Reddit says modmail is the channel and replies come back in your chat inbox labeled MOD.
Write it as a community-rules problem, not a legal threat. Name the rule of theirs you think it breaks, link the exact comment, say what you want in one line, and keep it short. Reddit warns that in a large community it can take a while for mods to get back to you. If they say no, reporting the same thread to Reddit's admins won't overturn it when no sitewide rule is broken, and a crosspost in another subreddit is a different set of mods and a separate message.
Ask the poster to delete it, and know what a delete leaves behind
A mod removal hides the words behind [removed] and an author deletion hides them behind [deleted], so when the mods won't act, the poster is the only route left. Nobody at Reddit will delete a rule-compliant post, so if you want the text gone rather than hidden, the poster is the whole ask. Keep the message short and human and don't open with a legal threat, which on Reddit tends to buy you a screenshot of your own message.
A delete doesn't kill the URL. Reddit's own words: when you delete a post, the link to the post will still exist, but the post itself is deleted, and the post is only accessible with a direct link and will not appear in Reddit search. That's exactly why a page you were told was gone can still be sitting in Google under its old title.
Deleting the account does even less than that. Reddit states that any posts or comments made from a deleted account stay on Reddit, but people can't see who they came from. So if the poster offers to nuke their account instead, the thread survives with the byline stripped off it. Ask them to delete the post and the comments first, which is what Reddit tells its own users they have to do before deleting an account.
If they used your photo or your writing, file a copyright notice
This is the one route with teeth that doesn't need a rule break. If the post reproduces a photo you took or text you wrote, it's a copyright complaint, and Reddit says that on a valid takedown notice it will remove the violative content, notify the user who posted it, and confirm with the reporter that it removed the content. File it on Reddit's Intellectual property requests form with Copyright Infringement / DMCA selected.
It costs you your address. The form requires the copyright owner's full name, street address, city, state or province, postal code and country, what your copyrighted work is and its title, the exact Reddit URL, two required statements, one a good-faith belief and one made under penalty of perjury, and an electronic signature typed as your full name. Reddit says it doesn't accept initials, nicknames, aliases or stage names, and that it may share basic information about your notice with the reported user, including your name and email address, on request.
Don't fire this at a thread that only talks about you. Reddit lists facts, ideas, and short phrases such as names and titles among the things copyright generally doesn't protect, and gives a text post that describes a work without copying from it as an example of what isn't a violation. The poster can also counter-notify, which puts the whole thing back in front of Reddit with your name attached to it.
Then do the Google step, because that's what moves the result
If the post published your home address, phone number, email address or a government ID number, you have a Google route that doesn't need Reddit to do anything at all. Google's Remove my private info from Google Search page carries a Start removal request button. Expect a partial removal, which Google defines as the page not showing up for any search query that contains your name or identifier, though it might show up if someone searches for something else. That's suppression on your name, and it's usually the outcome that matters.
Once the post is actually gone or visibly changed, tell Google. Open the Refresh Outdated Content tool, which you have to be logged in with a Google account to use and which does not require you to own the page. Enter the URL, click Submit, and if the page still resolves you'll be asked for 1 to 2 words that existed in the snippet of the search result but are no longer live. Your request lands in the request queue at the bottom of the tool, so check back there for the status.
The order is the part people get wrong. Google states that if a page has not been removed or had significant changes, the request will fail, so filing it the day you sent your Reddit report burns the attempt. Load the URL yourself and confirm the content is down or different first, then file.
If nothing comes down
Stop refiling, because a denial on a rule-compliant thread isn't a filing mistake. Reddit warns on its copyright form that abuse of its reporting systems may result in delayed processing of your reports or the suspension of your ability to submit future reports, and it says the same about appeals: it may limit how many times a decision can be appealed and suspend processing for people who frequently submit unfounded or abusive appeals. No Reddit request form has a defamation option and there's nowhere to upload a court order, so a demand letter doesn't open a route the rules don't have.
Find out what the page is actually ranking for before you spend a dollar on it. Search your name and your business name, note where the Reddit link sits and which query pulls it up, and check whether it's holding a top spot on your own name or turning up on some longer phrase nobody types. A thread that ranks on a mid-tail search can be cheaper to outrank than to remove, and you can't tell which one you're dealing with without looking.
Be clear about what a Reddit removal never reaches. It doesn't touch a screenshot someone posted somewhere else, the same link quoted in another community, or a site that copied the thread, and each of those is its own owner and its own request. A page that won't come down can still be pushed off the first result for your name, and that's different work from anything on this page.