Okay, posting this here because it is literally called No Stupid Questions, but I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on this.
I got a message today on Reddit saying I was permabanned . . . I had really good karma there, never received any notification that I had done anything wrong, and never had a post deleted. The message said to check my inbox for more details . . . but there were no details in my inbox. I tried to appeal, and it was just denied in a couple of hours. No explanation.
Anyone else experience this or know what other avenues I can take? I'm going to be honest here, I had made a lot of friends there. I suppose I could make a throwaway account to let them know where else they can find me, but I'm pretty bummed out.
For context: I kind of prided myself as being a "Ted Lasso of Reddit." I mostly just got on to give people pep talks in the beginner fitness and /toastme subreddits. I'm going to miss that a lot, and I kind of needed a community right now, even if it was an online one. But, hey, maybe that's just my sign to check out this place instead. I'll try to look at the bright side.
What you should do next is free yourself
https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite
Delete all your comments, give them nothing. Reddit doesn't deserve your post history. I was there since the beginning and same thing happened to me two years ago. No reason. Great comment history, never found out why. So I used this and deleted everything (it also backs it up for you to a file so you can still view your comments which can be useful).
I got a message on reddit that I had been auto-banned from a sub I had never even been to r/landlords, because I posted in a sub they didn't like, I forget if it was r/antiwork or r/latestagecapitalism or something like that. It's just a silly place now.
Yes. Reddit is obsessed with banning and censorship to an unhealthy and stupid degree. As someone who thinks social media should be moderated, even I think they go way too far with it.
I’ve had to create a lot of alt accounts because I kept getting banned. I’m not right-wing, I don’t troll people and I don’t use slurs or violent words. You would THINK that would be enough, but no.
The bans are AI driven, and the appeal responses are AI driven. You won't find an explanation for why you were banned, because there was no human behind the ban
They're probably tuning the type of engagement the stockholders admins demand. Anyone who doesn't fit the bill of circlejerking the hive mind gets the boot.
Here?
On one hand, it's a smaller place, so there's less content to browse...
On the other hand, it's a smaller place so you can reply to an older thread and still have interaction with people.
On reddit, if I replied to a thread that was 1h old, it was like sending a message in a bottle, floating in an endless sea where none would find it or shouting in the void.
The decentralized nature means you will never truly be banned from everywhere unless your behaviour is universally considered unacceptable, in which case good riddance
There are fewer of us, so some people care about keeping individual users around. I've still received bans from communities for reasons I find questionable, but that's in the nature of having people manage communities themselves.
Also the federated nature of it means that no one has enough power such that they can abuse it in a way that hides their abuse on the entire platform. With the modlog, you can see what the original message was that prompted a moderator response. And with other instances, you can make an account elsewhere and talk about it even if an admin banned you.
Imagine you are a smoker and the addiction makes it impossible for you to quit. Then one day nobody will sell you a cigarette or let you bum one off them.
Count your blessings and move on.
Reddit Karma ain't worth shit. Imaginary Internet points.
My old account was 15 years old, approaching 2 million karma, never a single warning, no posts or comments ever removed for violating Reddit TOS and a some Zionist fascist pig admin didnt like a pro Palestinian comment and permabanned me
But that sucks. 15 years? I don't think I posted anything "political" aside from some LGBTQ stuff. I did poke some fun at some gamers who were butthurt about their game finally including girls. I don't think anything I said was all that controversial, but maybe they reported me for that. Warhammer 40k fans aren't above organized mass reporting from what I've seen on places like YouTube.
I was very political, but everything said and posted was within TOS limits. 3 of my huge subs were abandoned and are now being run by shit mods. They claimed I was inciting violence by saying Palestinians have the right to defend themselves.
My 13 year old account with 250,000 comment karma was perma-banned without warning for commenting "It's ok to punch Nazis". Since then, maybe 3 years, I've had probably 25-30 Reddit accounts. Pretty easy to create a dummy email account and set up a new Reddit account. I have a browser script that auto adds all my subs back for me if I just copy the link from my old account. I'm usually back up and running in about 10 minutes. But I finally decided to drop the platform after the election because it just isn't worth it anymore.
Mods of individual subs can get you banned site-wide if they don't like you. You can be auto-banned from individual subs if they've detected you commented in other subs they don't like. Their block system is a joke that prevents people from correcting other's misinformation. They banned 3rd party apps. And their co-founder/CEO is a trashcan of a human being.
Reddit is quickly becoming a cesspool. You should just give up on it. The internet is a big place.
Thanks! I'll still try reaching out to the online friends I had made over there, but I don't think I'll bother with it again aside from that. I'll plan, instead, to find fun communities here for pep talks and stuff. I like cheering people on and have been told I'm good at it.
If you can't find them, don't hesitate to create them! Might be challenging to find users and get them up and running, but you gotta start somewhere, and you sound like the kind of person who is up for the task.
I got a 7 day ban for saying you haven’t served your life sentence until you are dead, they said that was promoting violence, I decided if they rejected my appeal it could only mean they don’t actually read appeals and I should just leave.
Oh . . . wow. I don't think I did anything wrong, but I'm certain whatever I did was worse than that. I'm pretty sure I've said worse things to my favorite dog today (it's okay to have favorites). Plus, that was really f*ing funny. Reminds me of when my friends and I have "stoner thoughts" competitions.
My last winning one was "Whenever you shorten 'convenience store' and call it a 'c-store', you are removing the convenience for the sake of convenience."
I got banned for reporting a post with the statement "links to nazi platform" (it was a link to X).
I got a message in my inbox about my account being given "a warning" for abusing the report system. I was then permanently banned an hour later.
I had like 5 accounts, one of them dating back to 2008. They are now all permanently suspended. Because I offended some loser moderator.
Or maybe they all got banned because I still used a third party Reddit client? Oh well. Fuck Reddit. I'll continue using my cracked third party Reddit client and browse Reddit in read-only mode. Lemmy can be where I actually contribute !
Welcome to reddit dawg. I had an account over 10 years old and another SFW account I was using that was about 5-6 years old. I was on my SFW browsing one day, tried to make a post, and saw that I was blocked, but there was no inbox message yet, so I went on my other account and saw that it had gotten a message about being banned for a comment made months ago, so I tried to appeal it, which was denied. Best I can tell they just banned all of my accounts once the first one got banned, even though I wasn't even aware of the ban in the first place.
Reddit has been on this trend for a long while. It might be because you posted in a sub that's gotten scoured. It might be because you said a word or set of words that tripped their algorithm. You might have been reported by someone for some reason.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that Reddit actively does not want real users anymore. They just want lurkers and bots. You might have genuinely been banned for no reason whatsoever.
I think they want real users because they want to sell their data for LLM training, but that might mean purging accounts that are "too political" to be of use.
I got permabanned twice. One account was for using a slur. I was quoting from a movie in a post about that movie (Glengarry Glenross). It was clearly a quote but they didn't even respond.
The second time I made comment that happened to be in a post about an Indian man on a train, something about the simple fact that every video I see with an Indian man and a train, the man will do something stupid and die. It was in no way racist but some twat complained that I was using a stereotype and I was permabanned again. Again, no reply when I chased them
Fuck Reddit to hell and back. It's full of argumentative self-righteous tools anyway.
Yup, had this happen on 2 different accounts, both of which were in good standing. Same as you, no given explanation despite the message saying there would be, and no real recourse to appeal despite there being a provided link that simply looped on itself. Eventually, I was able to get a human via the "support team" who gave me the answer "All bans are final.". Your options are to make a new account or stop using their shit platform. Pick your poison.
I pick bourbon. Oh . . . oh, we were talking about something else. But, yeah, I'm going with quitting the platform. I don't see the use in trying to fight it, and even if I were to 'win', this will probably happen again in another month or so.
Side note: are you a raccoon that likes to debate, or is it debatable that you are a raccoon?
Literally the reason I'm here now, banned because I share my computer with someone, which triggered some "ban evasion detection". Both of use appealed, both of us denied within hours, despite both accounts being multiple years old
I don't use Reddit, nor do I tend to do so, so take what I say with a pinch of salt!
Reddit is one of those sites that utilizes AI moderation, so if you've been banned without any warning or notice, chances are your ban wasn't even authorized by another human, but instead by a bot. Your IP address can either be static or dynamic, and if you have a dynamic IP address that changes to an IP that is associated with a user who got banned at some point in time, chances are the bot will see you as that other person and assume a ban evasion.
You could try appealing. If that doesn't work, perhaps it's best to shrug it off and try a different social media. Lemmy isn't the biggest website in the world, but it's one of the best social medias I've used and people here are generally helpful and friendly!
FYI you likely won't succeed with your alt accounts as they have extensive ways of fingerprinting you outside of basic stuff like your email or IP address.
I was permabanned for "ban evasion" after initially getting banned from /r/movies for talking about piracy and then inadvertently commenting there later on an alt account. I attempted to make a new alt with a VPN active and was banned again almost immediately. This happened to coincide with the great exodus, so I wasn't too sad to just let go of my 10 year old account and settle in here.
They also use device ID. You need a new device that has never interacted with reddit before (with a VPN and different email). They also look at the subs you subscribe to. The amount of info they collect is invasive, fuck 'em.
I had created an alt in the past where I had asked some legal questions. That was about it, but maybe that tripped things up. Eh, regardless, it seems this place is more inviting. Also, the combination of words in your name might be one of the most comfortable combination of words ever.
I can't use my phone. I think they log the device ID (MAC address).
But I've gone through maybe 25-30 accounts on my work computer at work. Same computer. I use Reddit in a Brave private window and I even use a browser script I found to automatically re-add all my subs. It works. I'm not shadowbanned. I post and get responses for X amount of time until some dipshit mod gets me banned from the entire site. Usually a few months.
I had an account from 2013 with hundreds of thousands of comment and post karma. They banned my account without even telling me why. I filed an appeal and that was a month ago now. Still haven't heard anything back.
I made a new account under a new email with a new Internet connection and a new device. It got banned after 30 minutes. I literally left one positive comment and upvoted a few things.
Reddit and their power tripping admins/mods can suck it.
Yeah I've been in this experience. One of my accounts got Perma banned. I was moderating my subreddit and trying to clarify if a bigot was being bigoted so that I could ban him without remorse. Apparently my clarification sounded bigoted so Reddit banned me with no recourse.
I was never able to talk to a human being, all attempts at trying to restore my account were met with computer no's. Even my whole mod team messaging reddit on my behalf got struck down with automated responses.
I logged in to my second account, got that re-added to the mod team, and continued on. Apparently their bans are as pointless as they are confusing.
My first ever suspension from Reddit was for an anti religion comment. On Reddit. Then after my 3 days were up, the first thread I saw was on the subject of religion, full of people saying worse thing than I had, and in one of the major subs, not even atheism or anything.
I could definitely buy that they're using AI but personally I always had the impression that they outsource the job and don't make sure everyone is even on the same page or can read English properly.
Because even the stuff that gets [removed by Reddit] seems to be nonsense a lot of the time. A while ago I saw someone make a post saying something like "Hi guys, haven't been active much lately. But I'm back and gonna be posting more." Came back later and it was [removed by Reddit]. So not even that is trustworthy or gives the impression that they actually know wtf they're doing.
Kind of. Imagine a rope lasso, only it's a supportive father figure who makes you feel better about yourself and also maybe sets expectations that border on toxic positivity and oh my god when is my next therapy session?
You probably crossed an admin and didn't even realize it. Reddit is really utterly shit behind the curtains, they just happen to put on a good face that has generally fooled politicians and influencers alike. Most people care about what's behind the curtains like they do with politics, not much at all, so they keep getting away with it specially due to the heavy control they have on the narrative. You know societies will begin to give a shit about social networks and what that is doing to our real societies when you actually have a recourse against their Black Mirror Nosedives.
I made my Reddit in 2013 and posted alllll sorts of stuff, never really caring what TOS or anything I could be violating.. never had problems except getting a horribly downvoted comment here and there. That being said, I am much happier after transitioning to Lemmy. I use voyager which has a bit of Reddit-like view.