I’m on day one of my third temp 7-day sitewide reddit ban this past year. Before that, I was a daily participator on reddit for over 10 years with no site-wide actions.
I thought it might be fun to share the story of my bans. Feel free to share yours.
The first one was for summarizing Bill Maher’s views on fat women, old women, and transgendered people. This was understandably determined to be hate speech by the AI, but was upheld by human appeal.
The second one, I don’t even remember clearly. I think I may have been criticizing Zionism on somewhere, probably a popular news subreddit. One thing you have to keep in mind is they delete the offending comment and so you have to guess at what your offense might be; then you only have 250 characters to defend yourself. The ban was done by AI. About five days after my seven-day ban ended, I got the notification: Your ban has been overturned. Thanks!
The third one just happened, so it’s fresh in my memory. I wanted to talk about something I found crazy on one of my favorite TV shows: a black woman, mother of two black children and wife of a black man, who was in her 30s living the United States had her FIRST social justice epiphany–and it was about press freedoms in Guatamela. The post was shadowbanned. I commented on another thread, warning a user that the mods would come along soon to shadowban any comments on race. Both our comments were shadowbanned, and thereafter, I was perma-shadowbanned on that sub–any comment I made was immediately sent to the shadow realm.
I looked for discussion about the show’s treatment of race (which would be interesting since the show did not–as the subreddit does–ignore the issue entirely) and found nothing more recent than 14 years ago. The sub had been wiped clean of any discussion of race on the show.
I wrote the mods and asked them to either a) lift my shadow ban or b) ban me permanently.
To make things easier for them, I also called them racist cowards. An hour later, I received my temp ban for bullying and harrassment.
My appeal simply laid out the facts: they objectively demonstrated both cowardice (by shadowbanning) and racism (for shadowbanning discussion on race) therefore it is not bullying to call them racist cowards. Any conversation forum that shadowbans members for conversing is obviously lost, and then further sitewide bans them for complaining, is clearly lost.
Perma-Banned for suggesting an American woman get a gun to defend herself from a stalker harassing her.
Tell me about it…I was in the top 1% commenter on r/palestine - I picked up a couple of 3 day site wide bans, followed by a 5 and a couple of 7 day bans. All anti zionist/anti israel posts.
No sooner I got back in, a comment I made some weeks back drew reddit’s attention and suddenly I get a lifetime ban. That’s why I’m here too, lol!
My killer comment? I suggested that the word ‘settlers’ was a collective noun for a group of thugs, thieves, rapists and murderers. What’s wrong about that ffs…it’s the truth! 🇵🇸✊
Damn, congrats bro! I kind of imagine that being anti-Zionist puts you on the fast-track to all of your comments getting reported by a crack division of the IDF… Maybe it’s not a coincidence that I got banned since I came out against Israel.
Still, there are some really bizarre calls on the part of human site moderators and plenty of non-anti-Zionists are getting capriciously banned…
they used AI to sniff all other accounts you had, if you were banned recently in this account on a specific sub, if a previous account also posted on the sub it will retroactively ban you, eventhough though a past sub than recieve a ban. that is why reddit mostly ignores appeals, because they know they are in trouble for banning people with accounts that even participate in ban evasion.
the word ‘settlers’ was a collective noun for a group of thugs, thieves, rapists and murderers
Always has been.
Just ask Native Americans about European ‘settlers’.
Cut the cord.
I’m here, ain’t I?
I got a seven-day time-out for trying to reason with some troll who kept going ‘so you secretly agree with me :)’ in barely more words. Finally said “insert it inside yourself,” and that is the reply the admins considered harassment.
I got another seven-day time-out for explaining how printer drivers inspired the open-source movement. I suffered a number of bewildering replies from some idiot confused why a 1970s printer would matter today, and finally said “You might be an idiot.” Apparently that’s bullying.
I got a third seven-day time-out for telling someone “Okay, enjoy your dead kids, I guess.” That one at least sounds awful in a vacuum. But if you just scroll up, the context was an antivax crank asking, ‘are parents meant to disregard their own experience in favor of a study?!,’ and the repeatedly explained answer was, yes. Medical science is how your children stay alive.
My account is from mid-2007. I lurked for a few months beforehand. When they pulled that API shit, I was gone. Didn’t even use a client. old.reddit.com, exclusively, for fifteen years. But I could see the writing on the wall.
Yeah, it’s like every redditor is a palestinian–everything you do can never be justified by context and is always unprovoked. It’s so maddening.
“Enjoy your dead kids,” sounds perfectly fine to me. I read it and it immediately thought you were telling someone they were doing something that was going to put their kids at risk. “Enjoy the obvious consequences of your actions” is a perfectly valid thing to say in my book.
i had 3-7 from r/tech for criticizing or mentioning something about TRUMP, which everyone else was doing too, but somehow mines was picked out of all of them. and then i noticed i was recieving multiple reddit notifications, they were other account bans. i know they were cleaning house of criticism against trump/musk, so they can astroturf the new ones.
Also new users also gett shadowbanned on the regular too.
My first site-wide ban was for a joke involving committing a murder with a gun, then melting it down into a knife to hide the evidence, and then melting the murder-gun murder-knife into bullets to defend yourself from the police. Not a great joke, but also very obviously not calling for violence. Appeal denied.
My next site-wide ban was for saying it’s funny when conservatives die from listeria from drinking raw milk. Still not calling for violence. Appeal denied.
My permanent ban was for saying Ann Coulter is racist, because I somehow promoted identity-based hate or attacks. That appeal was actually approved! Aaaand I’m still banned for some fucking reason.
That’s frustrating to read. So much stupidity on the part of reddit.
How’s Lemmy been treating you?
I realize that talking to strangers on the internet has been my main way of socializing since I had a dial-up BBS. I was worried that it just didn’t exist anymore outside of reddit. I can do Discord, but that’s just kind of a weird way to communicate and I think my attention span my simultaneously be too short and too long for it.
Off-topic rant: I recently made a new account and man, reddit fucking sucks now. Like obviously it always did, but at least there was decent conversation to be had in the smaller communities. My front page is littered with morons who can’t read. Imagine trying to play Kerbal Space Program, testing one rocket, then taking to Reddit to ask what to do next. Fly, you fool. “How do I get to orbit?” Youtube. The phrase “what mods should I install” should get users permanently banned.
“Hey Stardew valley community. I’m 7 minutes into the game. Is this really worth sinking a lot of time into?” I don’t know dude, play it and find out.
I was on a music education sub and so many of the comments were “what’s the best first instrument” with almost no context; meanwhile there was a faq with all the information. I once decided to troll the sub and made a post, “what’s the best instrument? i mean, in general?” and lots of people chimed in–some with jokey ones, but others really earnestly wanting to help someone profoundly lazy…
The flip side of that is subs where people are just sick of beginner questions and heaven help you if you can’t find your answer online because of enshittification.
One day in the not so distant future, every comment on reddit will be “bacon” or “this”.
Anything else will get you banned.
I bet you could still get banned by commenting “bacon” on any thread about the police.
Are they still doing bacon? I think that was a thing 15 years ago.
Probably not. I was being sarcastic, but it seems like their dumb in-jokes tend to continue long after a normal expiration period. It’s also funny to me that most of the IRL people I know still talking about reddit are middle aged or older. Not sure what their real demographics are, and probably wouldn’t believe their self reported ones. They need the shareholders to believe the bots are engagement KPIs.
Maybe you’re not talking to enough 14-year-olds to capture a fair sample of reddit’s population?
Meh, I was permabanned years ago, after about 7 years on their platform.
I wasn’t banned for anything obscene, gory, threatening, etc. Oh no…
I was banned for mentioning Elon Musk, his Boring Company, and that “Not a Flamethrower” contraption they made that is totally a short distance flamethrower and looks like a fucking kid’s toy.
Obligatory FUCK SPEZ!
And fuck Elmo too, I was banned from Reddit a couple years before Elmo even bought Xhitter…
Damn, congrats bro! I kind of imagine that being anti-Zionist puts you on the fast-track to all of your comments getting reported… whether it changes how reddit addresses you is a different question.
Just checked out this HILARIOUS line from their harassment policy:
This policy is designed to protect people from targeted personal abuse, not to shield ideas, beliefs, organizations, or public figures from criticism, even if it’s harsh.
In my case, they shielded the public figure of Bill Maher, the beliefs of Zionists, and the subreddit mods–so 0/3 at actually honestly enforcing their policy.
I posted the Blursed Torso of Elon Musk and it got shadowbanned, then reversed, and I never found out what that was about… but there was plenty of Musk-hate to go around on reddit, but I think you may have been an early adopter. I was an active on a hilarious ironic sub making fun of Musk and Muskheads, but it quickly lost its sense of humor; because I’m a craftsman who takes his art seriously and respects his audience, I refused to /s my comments and almost all my comments fell victim to Poe’s Law. Very annoying.
reddit kinda stepped back on sitewide banning aggressively, when they were purging for months, they realize they did it too many to lower engagement, instead they are just shadowbanning people instead, people often don’t know they are banned, reddit is likely able to see stuff being posted from a shadowbanned account, so its still valuable datamining to them.
My first site-wide ban was for criticizing Gina Carano, it was a permaban. Turns out her fanboys massreported my post for threatening violence against her. Thankfully I was able to appeal it, as once they saw no such threats were made they reinstated me
My second and final ban was for getting into an argument with this New Atheist douche about religion, he kept getting really insulty and accusing me of being a Christian (I am also an atheist), so I reported him for trolling. I was told this was “Abuse of the report button” and perma banned
The appeal for this was never approved nor denied, eventually I gave up and just had my account deleted.
I did get a warning once for merely agreeing with someone who said he wanted to punch Nazis.
Silly Reddit, Nazis aren’t people.
Yours is the most surprising ban so far. “Abuse” for reporting once for behavior accussing you of being a different religion? Just absolutely bizzare.
I think I can still edit my comments. Might be time to redact 20 years of contributions.
its likely like some users/bots can mass report you if you are in a sub that is pretty much controversial. its not specifically by 1 or multiple person. but a horde of bots doing it. i visit the modhelp sub a couple times, they were pretty much in cahoots the way the filters/bans were going.
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