Got Permanently Banned from Reddit for Criticizing trump & edolf. Who Else Here for Similar Reasons?
I lurked Reddit for a long time before creating an account which is now over 6 years old. I was a ‘Top Contributor’ and in the rewards program. 89k karma, never promoted violence or targeted any group, but I got a 7-day ban which was followed up hours later with a permanent ban. This is because of a comment criticizing Senator Radcliffe, trump, and Musk. The comment included profanity, (I called them hypocrites and cunts), but it wasn’t directed at any user or marginalized group. Just harsh political commentary.
Reddit initially issued a 7-day ban, which I appealed. That appeal was approved, the comment was restored, and they admitted it didn’t violate the rules. But the permanent ban still stands, and my follow-up appeals on that have been ignored. No explanation. No transparency. Just gone.
It’s made me realize how fragile “free speech” is on platforms like Reddit. You can insult regular users and get away with it, say horrendously racist, misogynistic, and homophobic things, but speak too plainly about powerful people and suddenly you’re promoting “hate.”
I combed through the Reddit rules, and nothing I have ever commented or posted violates them.
That’s the reason I’m here on Lemmy now. I’m trying to read more, scroll less, and engage with platforms that aren’t actively censoring political dissent. Who else is in the same boat? Is there anything that can be done to hold Reddit accountable or make people aware of they way they are censoring speech? This is my first Lemmy post. I marked it NSFW because of the profanity.
I cant even tell you what I got banned for because they banned me without saying why. I dont even know the last thing I was talking about was finding anime in the style of berserk.
My leaving was originally from the api cost changes, I had payed for a 3rd party reader years ago and all of a sudden my lifetime of no ads was gone and I had to pay. This change was admittedly after reddit decided to follow twitters api cost changes. I am supprised at how close Elon and spez seem to be, given that I don't know of any photos of the two of them, they they probably only know each other as CEO's.
I got permabanned for criticizing Israel. The final comment that got me permabanned was literally 'No, just the problems they deserve blame for' to a zionist who accused all Lebanese of blaming all their problems on Israel.
Holy crap that is EXACTLY what happened to me this week. I wasn’t top contributor or anything so grand but I got a 7 ban after criticizing imperialism which after making an appeal that was rejected. I literally did nothing afterwards but woke up to a perma ban that was issued several hours after with no indication of why.
First permaban was for asking: "Any updates on Mitch McConnell? I could use some good news." Mod appeal denied
Then on another account a year later (bc I got so many death threats from Nazis on Reddit), I forgot I had a ban on that sub and said, "We should spend money feeding our kids instead of spending it to blow up someone else's kids." And that was an IP ban.
Crazy, I've seen literal Nazis on there not even get comments removed. We live in dark times.
There is these blanket responses that goes like this: "Free speech is only that the government can't punish you" and "It's a private company it can moderate how it wants". I take a lot of issue issue with it. In our times the wast majority of speech takes place on online on privately owned plattforms. I don't se what the point is in freely submitting to a world where only corporate approved speech is allowed.
My 11 year old account got banned and I'm not even sure why. I posed a lot over the years. They said I was banned, pointed to a deleted comment. When I asked what the comment said they replied the reviewed the ban and now I'm banned.
I believe it was for a comment about how America would be in trouble if they invaded Canada (I'm Canadian). I stated some basic facts that Canadians look like Americans and they will attack America on American soil. It was matter of fact, not promoting any sort of violence.
Whatever. America is dying. I suppose services hosted on American soil die right along with it. We're actively avoiding as many US products and services as possible, so Reddit can kick rocks.
I discovered Lemmy, it suits my needs and I like it better.
My first offense was recommending that we bring back the guillotine.
My second offense was saying that MTG and fElon needed to get punched in the face after they said that Sesame Street was woke trash that needed to be canceled.
Fuck those vile pieces of shit!
Over 13 years and a quarter million karma later, it has come down to this.
I got my 10+ year old account permabanned for saying “trans women are women”, which somehow went against their rules about promoting violence. No warning given or anything. Appeal went ignored.
I never called for or celebrated violence, didn't upvote pictures of Luigi (which they have a STRANGE hard-on for) or any of that. I just posted neutrally-worded opinions.
Shadowbanning is an abusive behavior and Reddit has been about that for well over a decade. On Twitter, you do something they don't like, they just tell you, "you have to delete this tweet and wait 12 hours" or whatever. On Reddit, your account just gets "weird" with strange error messages. You have to go digging for information on the phenomenon because they don't display a message or send an email about it.
The cute little aliens are there to paper over the fact that Reddit's leadership has no concept of user advocacy. You're just rows in a few tables to them. You're the product that's being sold, and as far as they're concerned that gives you the same rights as any other product on a shelf.
They are still sending me emails with cute little aliens in them, even though my account is hosed. This is how disjointed they are.
Someone else wrote that on Reddit, the users and admins hate each other. I think that's true.
Honestly, the only thing Reddit is good for any more is porn. That's mostly what I go there for now. Occasionally something comment worthy will catch my eye and I'll post one but I'd say at this point I use it for porn about 75% of the time. I come here for discourse now. Though there are places here that can be as bad as reddit sometimes. * cough * .ml * cough *
I was already iffy about Reddit since the r/place #fuckspez whitewashing.
I was never suspended - but when I learned Luigi was suddenly an "unperson" topic there, I realized that commercialized social media is inherently compromised.
I'm not swearing off FB/Insta entirely just yet, but every time I visit them I'm more and more vividly aware how tedious Meta channels are.
Closed account myself because got tired asking to remove shadow ban for two months. I have no clue why I got shadow banned, only realized when I stopped getting replies that something is not right. Oh well, I guess it's more useful to bookmark useful reddit links in any browser instead of being able to post and comment on a platform where nobody can even see your efforts because of shitty AI and incompetent admins. I was with them for over six years.
I had my main and a business account permabanned during the election, after Trump said Liz Cheney should be shot. I said I didn’t really care or have any empathy, because Liz is a warmonger who’s called for violence against millions of people.
I didn’t say I agreed, and I didn’t say someone should do it. I simply said I didn’t care that she felt threatened by him. Permabanned.
Wiped out my 13 years of posts and comments and deleted my account when they started this crap. I thought the day they killed old reddit would be when I left but I can't stand by while they censor free speech. The site has been a shit pile for some time though and not even a ghost of what it was in the good old days.
I was on reddit since around 2010. Had probably 500k karma in total? I was around before the apps. Still in the air of early internet vibes. It was a great place to find your community and chat.
I got my first ever temp ban a month ago for saying Luigi started a movement that our world needs. For billionaires need to be afraid of every day people.
Got a ban on r/news. Then shortly after a full ban.
I’ve been banned from plenty of right wing subs and it’s never been an issue. But one comment into their top corporate subreddit did it. So I left. Fuck em. There is no free speech there and to be honest. The quality of comments and community has dropped so heavily since 2016 that it doesn’t feel like a loss to me. Reddit community used to have standards and free speech for anyone. Now it’s no different from Facebook. Shitty joke comments on serious topics. Bots everywhere. It’s just a black hole now.
Also here after a reddit ban. Mine was also politically motivated.
I watched admins remove a comment that was not violent, no profanity, nothing like that. The offense: the commenter described what "black-bagging" was, in reference to the immigrants being abducted around the country. Someone asked what "black-bagging" meant, he replied with one sentence just explaining the meaning of the term, comment nuked within five minutes.
I then told this story in another comment in another thread. Didn't say shit about Musk or Trump. Just told the story of how reddit admins wouldn't let this guy explain what black-bagging meant.
Permanent ban within one hour for "ban evasion." Never been banned prior. It was my first and last reddit ban.
I had a 12 year account, with over 900K karma. I was permabanned in Fenruary for repeating a comment I'd made nunerous times before the Inauguration without a word.
I came to Lemmy, and found lots of other 10+ year accounts that were banned as well. It seems February was a bloodbath, as they ejected lots of veteran accounts. We'll probably never know how many, but probably in the thousands. We were the people that built Reddit over the last decade, with high volumes of posts, and they never had reasons to ban us. Then suddenly, in February, ALL of us became such egregious violators that we all had to be permabanned?
Whatever, Reddit was becoming increasingly frustrating. Every post was filled with puns, bots, Russian Propaganda Farmers, conservative trolls, and other such nonsense. Without all the active veteran posters, it's only gotten far worse.
I received a warning and my comment got deleted by Reddit. And after the news about potentially getting banned for upvoting specific content, I decided enough was enough, I deleted my account which I've had for 12 years.
I really liked Reddit, getting a lot of value out of the content posted there by people. And I met some cool people through it.
I never got banned from it myself, but as time went on it was very clear that the company in charge of the platform was not steering things in a good direction, and was not responsible for the value I liked. They just captured the value by being the place where people posted. They really drove that point home when they locked off the API, and I completely quit Reddit at that point, migrating to Lemmy instead.
I definitely feel that Lemmy doesn't have as much value collected on it yet compared to Reddit. There's just not as many people posting and generating that value. But, it is free of that sort of draconian control that Reddit has. Not just temporarily free, as a favor from venture capital to draw people in. Permanently free. So, if we build up the value of Lemmy by having more people post here, we will be able to enjoy that value free from the corpo BS.
I wish more people would travel here. We need people to build up the communities and interact with content. It’s refreshing to see comments under limited moderation, or moderation that actually targets the right kind of hate speech: the powerful punching down.
I only visit Reddit when someone here links to it, since I’m assuming the comments are relevant, or if I’m doing a Google search and the answer is in a Reddit comment.
Reddit is dying from the top down. People migrating away would show billionaires that they don’t control us.
I was banned from a sub for explaining why "globalist" is an antisemetic dogwhistle. They said my comment was hate speech but left up the one I responded to, dogwhistle and all.
When I asked the sub's mods about the ruling, I was given a 3-day sitewide ban. I brought it to admins, and instead of any explanation, they responded by making that ban permanent.
I dont think there is any way they don't know what they're doing. Reddit is complicit.
I told Nazis to go kill themselves. Then made multiple Krasnov accounts. All banned and now perm banned unless I use VPN. It was time to go, fuck that place. Welcome home.
I was perma-banned because I made a joke about chucking a rock through the windshield of a literal, out-and-proud-capital-N Nazi.
Didn't make any appeals because it was time to leave. I spent waaaay too much time on that stupid site and now I'm starting to finally feel free of the outrage/affirmation addiction.
Permabanned for asking what Eisenhower would do if he was present at a Nazi march in Wisconsin and someone handed him a machine gun.
Apparently, impossible hypotheticals (Eisenhower is long dead) intended as a commentary on the fascist shift of the republican party (Eisenhower was a republican) are advocating violence. Eisenhower famously led efforts to kill Nazis.
So here I am.
Part of me wants to engage in ban evasion and just post hate all over reddit to make it worse. What are they going to do? Ban me? Too lazy to bother though.
All I can do is extend my sympathies, and tell you that you’re better off in the long run. Most people here don’t like corporate social media because of situations like yours.
Don’t worry about profanity. People swear all the time and don’t mark their posts.
Is there anything that can be done to hold Reddit accountable or make people aware of they way they are censoring speech?
Many people on social media platforms don't realize the spam filters can be abused by attackers to prevent certain topics from being mentioned. And on front-page subreddits they do not publish comments, they look published if you are logged in, but if you check from off-axis they are unpublished. I've been posting some of them here and on Bluesky, but nobody cares (on Bluesky, but people have here) !CensoredByReddit@lemm.ee maybe some tech press will cover it.
Lifetime (of the person) bans on Reddit for individual subreddits and accounts are dumb. That sites been around for decades. I can only image how many people got banned there at age 16 and are completely different people at age 22. I never see people bring this kind of criticism up.
Is there anything that can be done to hold Reddit accountable or make people aware of they way they are censoring speech?
The best thing you can do to hold reddit to account would be to become an active lemmy user. You could make a reddit sucks sublemmy and moderate that if you are angry enough to take action.
I have said all kinds of nasty things there about GropenFührer...I mean inmate #P01135809 and other than a few downvotes, nothing. Maybe it's a "no warning" kind of thing?
I came here after they banned third party apps. No way I'm browsing with ads on their shitty app. RES still works fortunately but I've grown to really like it here. Haven't touched reddit in a year or so.