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.
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.
. . . [Quietly hides the fact that he is, indeed, a bot]
In all seriousness, though, thank you for that answer.
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.
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
Reported! /joke
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.
Got banned over a star trek mod abusing his power
Quick let’s mainline this person some linux
Is . . . is that why a mysterious penguin suddenly appeared in my living room. Whew. That’s a relief. I was worried it was because of the shrooms.
get some programmer socks so it knows your not a threat
Stares down at crocs in horror. I’m doomed by my own hubris!
Just switch from Mario Kart to Tux racer and you’ll be OK.
Yeah, that’s your sign.
Furries get a slightly different vision:
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 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.
Seriously fuck Reddit, it’s gone to shit
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 sure don’t mean to go off topic but it’s against TOS to have a favorite dog and not post a picture to back it up.
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.
We would love a Ted Lasso of Lemmy. Welcome aboard!
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.
Hey, invite your friends.
Luckily I have connected with most of them on Discord. One messaged me just now with the same problem, so she’ll probably be incoming. I only ever saw her post about gaming stuff, and nothing that seemed controversial. She’s saltier than I am, though. Oooh! Now I want to good cop/bad cop Reddit with her! I know it won’t work, but the real hostility are the friends we made along the way.
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.
Welcome aboard!
We’re still a little small so you may need to make community you wish to see.
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.
From my own personal experience:
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I can’t use my phone. I think they log the device ID (MAC address).
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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.
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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.
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.
Contact user support…oh right there is none
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
Even the human mods won’t tell you what rule you broke.
This is what will end Reddit.
AI moderation and AI bans.
We’re pretty much all here because of it. Reddit is actively driving their users to other platforms. Oh well.
AI ban evasion detection.
They’re probably tuning the type of engagement the
stockholdersadmins demand. Anyone who doesn’t fit the bill of circlejerking the hive mind gets the boot.
Consider it a nudge in the right direction.