Reddit

Well, it may be a “tale as old as time” but here I am… 8 year Reddit veteran with 660K karma as of last week. I had a hella shock a couple of mornings ago when I refreshed the home page only to see a big red banner saying “this account has been permanently banned from Reddit, see your inbox.”

I check my inbox, and there is nothing there. Great.

OK, I’ve had some experience with weird Reddit moderation over the years. I’ve appealed sub bans and been reinstated, or not bothered. I’ve been permabanned from at least one group for saying sarcastic and critical things about Israel (not about Jewish people per se, about Israel the nation state under its current regime). I’ve waited out a week ban without complaining because I did use intemperate language late one evening, or carelessly broke a rule like “all top comments must include a link to a published paper”.

But a permaban from the entire platform?? That came as a real shock. And there was no explanation. I could see that one of my comments from the evening before had been deleted, but I have no memory of the content of that particular comment; I think I was saying something angry or critical about the US/Israel attack on Iran, but I don’t recall it being particularly fiery or profane.

A day or so later the message finally landed, telling me that my account had been banned because of “repeated violations of policy by other accounts that you own.” (Emphasis mine). This was really baffling — I have never had any other Reddit accounts, just the one I’ve been using these 8 years. I tried an appeal, explaining that I was bewildered and had no alt accounts. The appeal was flatly denied w/in 24 hours. So that was that. No other recourse. I have been excommunicated.

This raises all the usual questions about Reddit governance. It feels very arbitrary and opaque. There is no due process, no jury of one’s peers, and evidence is destroyed (comments deleted rather than just hidden from everyone other than mods and the original commenter). There is no proper explanation of what caused the ban, no debrief. It’s a bit like the cops arresting you because of something they say they found in your car, but they’ve removed and destroyed the thing they claim to have found :-). And you can’t remember every single bit of junk you kept in your car so you have no idea what it was that triggered the arrest.

Anyway, kissing g’bye to 8 years of content — and karma that I earned the hard way, 5 and 10 and 100 upvotes at a time, not by karma farming — is hard, like losing a carefully crafted RPG character after putting in hundreds of hours of campaign. I have enjoyed Reddit over the years and it’s oddly saddening to be thrown out so abruptly and with no explanation.

If anyone’s still reading at this point :-) I’d like to know whether other people have had this same experience. If you have not been posting racist/misogynist/homophobic drivel, threats, obscenities, scams etc — and yet you suddenly got axed for no clear and explicit reason, then we’re in the same boat. Are there any theories about why/how this happens? Is this the malice of specific humans, or some kind of automodding gone badly wrong?

I’m kinda done with Reddit at this point because of this incident. I don’t see the point in creating a new account (which I guess is technically a rule violation in and of itself) only to have to walk on eggshells wondering at what point some random statement of my opinions is going to get me exiled to Siberia again. Hence I’m giving Lemmy a try. The community is much smaller but several of my interests are represented and … perhaps… it’s a more transparent and sensible moderation model?

An investigation into the AI bots that appeared on Reddit after they partnered with OpenAI.

Key points:

• The bots post a lot of links to products and services which appear to be adverts but are not marked as such.
• Many of these links are for Sam Altman’s World ID.
• Reddit added terms on AI advertising to their business page around the time the bots appeared.
• The bots also make up stories about dead mothers, depression, drug addiction, eating disorders, medical conditions and mental health issues.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/43953278

After spending multiple hours on reddit putting up with karma limits and a 1 comment/10 minutes limit, I discovered I was shadow-banned for using a VPN the whole time!

I've also had some quite unfair removals of posts (in my pov) and bans after trying to re-post it without the part that is supposedly against their rules. Ex: making a post about 'y medication causes side-effect x', post gets removed for misinformation, because the moderator doesn't believe it's caused by the medication. Even after I provide some supporting studies. I re-word the post to 'I had this side effect x from this medication y, it could be rare and might not happen to you', and post it again. I get permanently banned for spam.

Felt like he couldn't accept that he is in the wrong/ that it's a possible side-effect of his beloved medication.

I was utterly frustrated at the time, since I wanted to warn others about the serious side-effect and be heard and not dismissed for what happened to me. I PM the mod about how he is a power-abusing (/power-hungry), egotistical (and possibly dumb, since he might not have understood how the medication can cause such side-effects even after explaining it to him, lol) person for not being able to admit that he is in the wrong. Because instead of discussing it and replying to the evidence I provided, he deleted the post. And also deleted any subsequent remakes that would "follow the rules better". No profanity outside of the insults I outlined here.

Stupid decision, I know, lol. But I just, in the heat-of-the-moment, wanted to stick it to him.

I also went (unwisely) to rant some about it onto a few other subreddits. I get a site-wide temp ban. Feeling frustrated I go on an alt a good while later to make a post that is worded very differently. Well, I end up site-wide permabanned for evasion (who would have guessed?). Stupid choices, I know, in hindsight.

But yeah, I don't have the motivation anymore to suck up to these mods and the system. Having to put so much effort into gaining karma at first and then having to tiptoe around and make sure you don't offend the mods. Having to follow such strict rules in each subreddit when you are trying to help other people benefit from your own experiences. And reddit freely using all the content you post for their own goals of data-scraping, profiling etc. anyway. Just taking any effort you put in and not valuing you at all for it. Also, the echo-chamber nature of it all.

I don't want to put up with it anymore. (For now at least, lol)

I understand why I got the penalties I got, now in hindsight. But I still think it's pretty unfair to get such harsh penalties so quickly for a situation that seems so nuanced.

Reddit feels almost like an abusive relationship at times. Where you are not being listened to and often not respected, but are expected to follow a huge number of changing rules, tiptoe around, and please the abuser and their whims. Lmao

Rant over

Edit: Oh, and I forgot to mention, they've removed all the subreddits or channels for any complaints against moderation on reddit. There used to be subreddits like r/moderationmediation and others where you could complain about and try to get help against (bad) moderation. But all those channels and subreddits have been banned! But of course there are tons of subreddits and channels for moderators themselves to got to for help and support, that are still very much up and running, a ton of them! r/modsupport, some subreddits for new moderators, for discussing moderation cases and 10's more! And these definitely have basically only one viewpoint represented, from the moderator side.

Edit 2: Also, if you think that I deserve the bans or just acted foolishly on my end, please do tell me and explain why etc. I just ask you to be respectful. I'm completely open to that after balancing out from the emotions.

Reddit has quietly removed nearly all avenues for users to provide direct feedback to the platform. Traditional support channels, appeals, and human contact points have been replaced with automated systems, and even r/RedditFeedback is no longer monitored by Reddit staff. This shift reflects a broader trend in large platforms moving toward automation over user communication, raising concerns about transparency, accountability, and long‑term community trust.

Reddit has quietly removed nearly all avenues for users to provide direct feedback to the platform. Traditional support channels, appeals, and human contact points have been replaced with automated systems, and even r/RedditFeedback is no longer monitored by Reddit staff. This shift reflects a broader trend in large platforms moving toward automation over user communication, raising concerns about transparency, accountability, and long‑term community trust.

I sold my shares a while ago as it seemed like it was in Vibe territory. Most people seem to think it was going to be some sort of AI super trainer. I was\am a little more skeptical.

Any way after today's permaban I'm even taking it's ticket off my watch list lol

I’m honestly confused about what Reddit is doing with their AI filters now. I tried posting in r/help a while back because I needed actual help, and the post got removed instantly. The mod message said something about “AI‑generated content,” even though I wrote it myself.

So I rewrote it in my own words, shorter, more casual. Removed again.

Tried one more time. That time I got banned and muted from the subreddit. No human review, no appeal, nothing. Just “you’re banned.”

The rules didn’t say anything about AI. I wasn’t breaking any rule. I wasn’t spamming. I wasn’t being rude. I literally just wanted help. And now I’m permanently banned from the one place that’s supposed to help people.

Has anyone else had Reddit’s AI moderation just nuke everything you write, even when it’s your own words? Is this normal now?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/43509766

Just curious. I think the odds have gone up quite a bit, and if that happens, we'd potentially see a glut of people. I'm sure they must be watching this.

Everytime I try to waste my time on Reddit I am quickly reminded why I don't waste my time on reddit. That is all 🫡

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/43229202

I made this comment:

The executions of top Republicans are a necessity: Nuremberg 2.0. Not enough Confederate officials were punished as traitors.

It was removed and I was given a warning. On a whim I decided that "the system" might actually work so I made a straightforward argument that:

Arguing for Congress to initiate an inquisition as to who has failed the country and when, with the capacity to institute the death penalty, is within legally mandated freedom of speech.

And very quickly, my comment's removal was overturned.

The federal government has been usurped by a minority of White evangelical christians around a nazi-style fascist.

Not enough confederates were put to death. We have to stop making the mistake of failing to hold these people accountable.

Trump raped children.

Frankly I wish I had saved the text I used to submit the appeal. Oh well. It's my reddit cake day and I'm still in favor of burning reddit to the ground but that doesn't mean there isn't work available there for the enterprising shitposter.

I had two Reddit accounts for 10+ years, never received a ban on either account, even a temp ban. One was only for NSFW, weed and music discussion, the other was used much more broadly.

In the last few months I got banned on my primary account 3 times, twice for 3 days and once for 7 days.

All of the comments I was banned for were 100% factual, not specifically directed at any user, short and to the point but anti-Nazi/ICE/Fascism/Trump/Pedo in their content.

Reddit claimed I incited violence and harassed individuals, ultimately claimed because I had two accounts I was participating in ban evasion.

After this happened I created another account using a different internet connection, device, email, browser type, and VPN, it was banned in <5 hours for… ban evasion!

So fuck Reddit, they are complicit in all the nonsense going on and banning people for commenting about it.

DHS is expanding its use of administrative subpoenas, which don't come from judges.

https://xcancel.com/indexsy/status/2022524431005024499#m

Sometimes I find old Reddit posts on search engines, and when I look at them the top commenter's account is deleted. This has happened many times, and I was curious about the general statistics of this.

I made a small analysis of Reddit.

I searched some random words with top posts: "minecraft, people, help, science, google, amazon, funny, colorful."

I didn't just choose the top one; I chose 10 old posts and summed up the total users in comments (top posts hierarchically).

Results;

total 1,947 users, 451 deleted, 23.1%

btw this is for users who deleted their accounts; maybe there are many more abandoned

this is just a small research I did; the real stats may be higher or lower - I don't know

So at least in my research, 23% of top commentator Reddit users chose to delete their accounts; some of them also deleted their comments, and some obfuscated their comments (to poison LLMs)

But 23% of top commentors is a really big number. These guys made Reddit the Reddit, but they chose to leave

Via Subreddit Drama.

Crossposted from https://lemmy.world/post/43109622

I not only got an account banned for trivial reasons, they pre-emptively nuked every account registered with that email. Most were accounts I forgot I had to comment on video games, TV shit, etc.

The reason for my ban was actually in retrospect kind of funny and ironic.

My Otter_empire account got banned on the redscare sub for this comment

https://archive.is/piyWv

Ehh, a lot of the shift is due to libtards acting shitty tbh Something I've noticed between disagreements with libtards and wingnust is the wingnuts will just kind of disagree with your rants (ie I've made pro china, pro palestine comments with some of em) without considering you an enemy, whereas a large amount of libtards begin to actively police what you say and threaten to cut you off, not to mention hate you

So being if you want to have some wild/dissident opinions as a political hipster, it's really only more permissible in the right unfortunately

I'd say it's easier to be a pro choice right-winger, than it is to be immigration/trans skeptical left-winger

Edit: I got banned from the sub for this post apparently. Don't understand how it's particularly offensive or rule breaking, but ok

So keep in mind that was 3 or more months ago. Since that initial ban, I hadn't cared about going to the sub as I considered it already useless.

However; something that reached me in my news feed (whether reddit or X) was about a case with the "Dundee axe girl" in England being vindicated, as the folks harassing her and her sister turned out to be actual predators.

This stuck out to me because I had specifically remembered expressing doubt to some libtard while arguing over the topic.

In my mind, for whatever reason this case and it's narrative defenders reminded me of the Maxwell/Epstein types, in that predators were going for low hanging fruit (ie working class rough around the edges english girls) with a PR narrative ready to go, ready to demonize the victims, etc.

I switched accounts from Otter_empire to BoniceMarquiface because I was trying to search my own reddit comment history to find an argument chain of comments I recalled making several months ago, where I was arguing with a libtard trying to demonize the girl, while I was arguing the potential predators story made no sense to me.

Ironically I didn't need to switch accounts, I finally found the OP which was from otter_empire

https://archive.is/1RbLk

There is still barely any information available and you're already jumping to a debunk conclusion based on nonsense. Since you mention how oppressed Mossad figures and traffickers feel like, I'd remind you that Epstein and Ghislane were also a couple, so maybe relax with your nonsense victimization narrative.

This young girl appeared to feel harassed, desperate, and made a threatening display while de escalating (leave me alone, moving away).

The "couple" in question otoh were making recordings of their hostile interaction with two young girls that seemed selectively edited, and even then didn't show them being harassed. So what gives?

I got in a very long winded argument at the time.

So when I came back trying to search my own comment , I got this thrown in my face

https://www.reddit.com/r/redscarepod/comments/1qxqrm0/i_grudgingly_admit_the_2nd_wave_feminists_were/

I grudgingly admit the 2nd wave feminists were right: most men would fuck a teenager if they could

That post made me annoyed. A bunch of morons doing a PR narrative spin, changing the optics to a generic "men in general" thing. It was just as absurd to me as the fact Epstein himself claimed to support "timesup". Yes when things turn into a bullshit culture war, gatekeeping narrative, rather than helping people who are powerless against victimizers in general, it's way easier to do.

In response to that post I made a snarky reply of "this sub was literally defending actual pedophiles harassing children a few months back", out of instinct (the only comment I had made since my other account was banned months back), and that is what resulted in some sort of escalation to a reddit suspension for both accounts.

I could on some level understand the "ban evasion" thing (it wasn't true, but at least made sense) if I went to the same sub within a few days of my ban, but that's not what happened.

What is amusing is I believe every single warning I've ever gotten was somehow pedophilia related. I made a comment on Jeffrey Epstein implying him dying was a good thing, and that got me a warning.