3d ago

Permabanned from Reddit?

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.

89 comments

Consider it a nudge in the right direction.

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.
- 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.

I'm here because reddit is now a useless NFT cash grab and 80% of reddit mods are authoritarian pieces of trash.
You're not missing much. You could even find a mastodon community you like and start spreading your positive messages there.
Welcome to the future. Welcome to the resistance.

Reddit has been actively hostile for a while.
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.
Anyway, welcome home / make it your home.
Peace
- Other things I like:
  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.
- Here it feels like you have to really make an effort to get banned. Mods mainly stick to deleting rule breaking comments.
  
  There's plenty of bans to go around, but mostly spam and the odd pathetic bigot.
  When I discovered lemmy... I thought it was nice just being able to browse and not be immediately assaulted by several popups to login, cookies, or the classic "download our app" bullshit.
  I know people love their apps, but the web UI works. Browsers have great features already like tabs, bookmarks, adblockers, etc.

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.

I was randomly banned for no apparent reason. They gave zero fucks. Sorry that this happened to you too.
- Well, I'll just consider this being in good company, then!
  
  Still Ted Lassoing. I love it.

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.

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.

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.
  
  We're still a little small so you may need to make community you wish to see.
  
  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!

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.
- So much for being a forum for open discussion. I guess we should stick to memes and shitty puns.
  
  As long as you stick to the list of approved memes!

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.

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

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.

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 !
- I got banned from a bunch of subreddits because I left a critical comment on an anti-vaxx subreddit. The lazy mods all used bots to automagically ban any username in the comments. So even though I was critical of them I was banned for having the temerity of showing up in it.
- Yup.
  If I need to hop on Reddit for anything, usually to lookup how to fix a technical issue or something, I use RedReader and I don't login.

Seriously fuck Reddit, it’s gone to shit

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!
- It definitely stinks of automated moderation. At this point when I feel the urge to participate I remember how poorly managed it is and the low quality of most of the subreddits so the urge passes.

Contact user support...oh right there is none

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?
  
  My skills as a raccoon are debatable
- Making a new account doesn’t work, even using VPNs doesn’t seem to get around their ban if you create a new account. It will be permabanned in like a day.

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.

You can only repay them in the same currency: Never give a damn.
Never give a damn about redit karma or anything they do, or promise. Never give a damn about how mods want you to be.
Make a new account in such a way that they cannot detect it, then go on with your life as if nothing happened.
Details: Use a new nickname, new IP address, no real name/age/location, a different app (or browser), a new mailaddress, subscribe a different set of subs (at the beginning). For the future: create your next account(s) before the current one gets banned.
- Please note that you cannot use the same mobile phone number ( cell phone ) as that gets automatically picked up. No need to ask how I know. VPNs only hide your data and there's nothing one can do to hide your phone number.

Which LLM are you?

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.
- From my own personal experience:
  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.

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
  
  Yeah, that's your sign.
  Furries get a slightly different vision:
  
  Just switch from Mario Kart to Tux racer and you’ll be OK.

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.

I just met you and I already love you OP. I’m sorry you got banned from Reddit but I’m glad you’re here.

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.

I got permabanned for suggesting too many times that we should eat rich people (was joking, obviously.) They also permabanned my wife and her cousin who lived in our basement, I assume because we were on the same wifi? We all appealed and never got any response about it. I don’t really care about my ban, and my wife never posted and neither did her cousin so they didn’t care much, but it’s like bro, that’s not fair that they got banned as well.
- When I say we should eat the rich I'm not joking, I'm just not being literal.
  
  Yeah I wasn’t really joking either. But I’m here now and they don’t seem to care as much about silly little things like talks of Revolution and cannibalism.
  
  Nationalizing oligargach's stakes in mega corpos would be a nice snack 🐸
- I think it's time to let your wife and cousin out of the basement now.
  But hey, sorry to hear about those bans. Yes it affected your basement dwellers due to the same IP. You can get a decent VPN for about $50 per year which hides your IP address.
  
  Yeah but now their devices are coded into the ban too. We’ve since moved to a different city, but I haven’t tried making an account on a different device because I just don’t care. I like Lemmy better.
- we should eat rich people (was joking, obviously.
  Was u tho?
  Hmmm
  
  Oh, no, I definitely deserved that ban if we’re looking at it strictly from a terms and services violation standpoint. Also they 3 day banned me several times and warned me. My fault for sure.

Yes. Reddit is obsessed with banning and censorship to an unhealthy and stupid degree. Like even 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.

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.

What's a ted lasso? Is it different from a rope lasso?
- 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?
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olPLvuvMcSE
  
  I have never heard of this. I haven't watched TV in years. I watched the clip. I can't express to you how fundamentally repellent I find this man.

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.

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