Sorry for the rant, I don’t know if it belongs here, I’m new. But I am just super disappointed and want to maybe help people in the future experiencing something similar so we can cope together.
So, a few days ago, one of my random alt accounts on Reddit gets sitewide banned for harassment because I called someone dumb in the comments (literally no more than that) as a joke on a shitpost a few years ago. I laugh the random account ban off and delete the account and return to my normal Redditing.
Now, I’ve been a daily commenter and poster on Reddit for several years at this point. You could call it addiction. But I also use it for updates and questions at my local university, so it’s also made its way into my personal life, too.
So, after the ban, I figured I was fine and I could continue to use one of my many other accounts. I was wrong.
Nope. A few hours later, ALL of my accounts over the last decade or so get permanently banned for ban evasion. I did not know Reddit bans were global like that. So, obviously I try to appeal the bullshit original ban, but I DELETED the account so I couldn’t.
I try to appeal on the alts, but I get the same generic “your request has been denied” message. Over and over again across all of them, same message.
So, I figure that they banned me for having my other accounts on the same device. Really shitty all my accounts were gone but I was reluctantly fine to start over by removing them all and deleting the app.
Those accounts got banned too.
Okay, looks like it’s by IP and device. Cool. I’ll… use the browser version on Brave and use a VPN when I want to post on Reddit. Super inconvenient but I’ll do what I have to do.
All accounts created or largely used on a VPN get shadow banned and appeals are ignored.
Okay, VPNs don’t work. I’ll delete all my account info on all my devices, reset my router to change my IP, use a new device, and not sign into any accounts other than Reddit and that should be good!
It works for a few hours. Perfectly fine. But, as I scroll more and more, I start to see communities that I recognize from my old accounts. No big deal, they probably recommend those communities to a lot of new users.
But, as I scrolled more and more, even smaller communities showed up that I used. Smaller, smaller, and even smaller, until eventually these were subs under 5k members even though I didn’t interact with he vast majority. They caught me, again, on a brand new device with a different IP.
Well fuck. Reddit is going to be the biggest inconvenience ever to use again. But I had one last trick up my sleeve.
A special VPN that uses the network of its users to reroute internet so websites are extremely unlikely to ban each individual server. A fucking virtual linux machine. Brave browser with the most secure settings.
It went well for longer this time, a few days, but the same Orwellian shit happened. More and more tiny subs until I saw ones with mere single digit upvotes on all the posts on subs with just a few thousand members. And then, just a day or two after my account creation, boom. Permanent ban there, too.
There is literally nothing you can do to get back on Reddit if you’re banned and want to use it in even a slightly normal way. I have submitted an appeal on the reddithelp form, but this is also extremely unlikely to be accepted even though the ban was bullshit; they haven’t responded yet. I don’t think I can ever use Reddit again because their system uses the most advanced AI to detect evaders I have ever seen. They’re definitely spending tens of millions monthly on computer costs and research SOLELY to catch evaders and it fucking works.
So, I guess I’m a Lemming from now on. Super upset, Lemmy doesn’t have subs for my favourite games and even the more popular games are super inactive. But, there is nothing I can do. Sorry for the rant but I know I started reading ban posts like these for hours when I first got banned, so I hope I can help people in the future realize they’re completely done for unless their appeal gets accepted.
TL;DR: Even with a completely unrelated device, IP, and a virtual machine, Reddit’s AI will detect what types of posts you like until they are slightly confident it’s you. Then, permanent ban. You cannot avoid this. I’m super bummed out.
Edit: For peoples who have had site-wide bans doomscrolling about it in the future like I was, I’m not saying evading a ban is impossible. If you really want to get back on don’t give up hope, I’m just saying it’s going to be very difficult. But definitely consider contributing to the awesome Lemmy community. I know it’s missing a lot, but it does help scratch the itch. I recommend the Blorp app as it’s the most similar to Reddit’s UI.
This is a fairly interesting story, how do they manage to identify you with (high enough) certainty. People should shudder at the possibilities here. Maybe they track your screen resolution mouse-movement speed and even typing anomalies to detect you.
Yeah, at some point the well was poisoned. Reddit’s systems aren’t sophisticated enough to do something particularly complicated.
Something as simple as an IP that they bounced to being banned, because disposable IPs are one of the major uses of user-based vpns, is more likely.
It’s been ages since I’ve used a Reddit account. I wonder if account creation involves subreddit suggestions and OP fell into the exact same ones every single time. Like finding the Buddha, but instead of samsaric destiny, you’re banned
Reddit banned my indie game studio account because my coworker logged in on the same computer I was using to comment on our latest trailer.
They said I was switching accounts to boost my post. Then banned my company account, and all the accounts for all my employees.
The more you look into Reddits community rules, the more generic they become so they can make up any excuse to ban you.
There’s a currency subreddit that also banned an alt I created years ago for me saying the word “crypto” despite that not at all being listed in their rules. I asked a mod why, and his response was that it was considered “vulgar” language.
So yeah. Reddit will just ban you for any reason, even if you are an active community member or contributer. The site will be unusable in 5 years as the CEO will have IPOd it for max profit and left by then.
I think it’s useful in conversations like these to distinguish between bans made by Reddit admins, and bans in individual subreddits due to the actions of moderators (even if sometimes, poweruser mods will sometimes mass ban across all subreddits they are a mod for — this is still distinct from the admin bans).
I find the ban of your indie game studio account to be the thing that annoys me most in your post — that ban is bullshit, and such indiscriminate application of policy that it ends up undermining the stated goal of such moderation policies.
Whilst the bans from individual communities do also annoy me, that feels like a less useful thing to get annoyed at — for as long as there have been people, there will have been people who, upon gaining a modicum of power, abuse it in trivial, ego-serving ways. I think this human propensity is especially apparent on the internet. It sucks, but I also think that the most productive thing to do is to acknowledge the tendency and try to think of ways that we can make communities more resilient to the abusive actions of individuals.
The moderator/admin distinction is one such way, and this is especially apparent on federated social media like Lemmy. Whilst heavy handed admin level moderation is probably fine for smaller instances (such as if someone spins up a server for their friend group), it isn’t really viable when things get larger. The best approach seems to be for admins to have an extremely light hand in the day-to-day running of things, rather like a King in a constitutional monarchy.
This inevitably means that sometimes, communities can experience a toxic shift in the culture of the space through the petty actions of moderators, but in theory, people have the power to create a new community, whether on the same instance or otherwise. In practice, this doesn’t necessarily happen, because inertia is powerful (plus even when there is the need for a mass migration, such as if the original community is literally no longer available, not everyone ends up switching over to the new space). Power tripping moderators make online spaces worse, and it’s not viable to expect admins to regularly step in — if we want the admins to be able to act as a safety net for severe problems (such as the moderator team violating the policies of the instance), then it’s useful to preserve the separation between admin and moderator.
One of the reasons I like Lemmy is that it makes me think about problems like this, because the problem of “some mods are power tripping bastards — what should we do about that?” isn’t going away any time soon.
Theyre issuing site wide bans solely at subreddit mod’s discretion.
I commented on a post by u/babylonianweeb (the mod who’s taken over r/anime titties) he was posting as a regular user, without mod flair, and said something to the effect of ‘spain should just nuke israel’ (over a development in the Gaza flotilla saga) I commented that was a bad idea, and not likely, as spain does not have nukes.
I got a notice saying I had a temp sitewide ban. A couple hours later, this was upgraded to a permanent one for ‘promoting violence.’
that is really incredible. I actually mod several groups there and have NEVER asked Admins to site wide ban anyone.
yea the temp bans are pretty bs now, since they permaban as soon you finished a temp ban. its usually reddit that sitewide bans you, the admins. also mods can contact admins to issue the shadowban/sitewide ban on thier behalf, mods cant ban you sitewide themselves.
If you are a group mod and ban someone from your group why would you give a fuck about a user continuing to use reddit. The other trend is asshole group mods going through a users history and banning them from their group because “they don’t like” the other groups that you have joined. They are total douchebags with empty lives
seems the reddits AI moderation has pretty much eclipses mod bans now. most of its done by reddits filter itself. sub bans arnt a problem, as long as you dont try to engage in the same community again with another account. shadowban/sitewide bans are pervasive.
they also dont like the sudden switching of a browser to another browser they are not used to like a fork of chrome or firefox. because some of them have anti-fingerprinting, so once they detect yout account on another browser or a device they started banning people.
Reddit already went through an IPO.
That’s why it’s past tense “IPOd” He’s now in the maximizing profits phase. Which is replacing people with bots and bad actors that all guide advertisements.
I think I missed “will have” and read it as “will”
I wonder how many calories your brain burned trying to get back into the crackhouse that is Reddit. I’m impressed by the sheer height of that wall of text alone.
TLDR; tho
Reddit doesn’t want you. They want bots – lots of bots – and bland people who will absorb what the bots tell them. Reddit thinks it will make money that way. Maybe they’re right, who knows? All I know is they don’t want us there.
once reddit went public it was writing on the wall at the point. funny they block the mention of the word facebook, because reddit resembles it now.
Blorp dev here. Welcome to Lemmy! Let me know if there is anything I can do to improve your experience. PieFed is also worth checking out. You’ll see all the same content as Lemmy, and PieFed has post flairs. Blorp lets you login to PieFed and Lemmy at the same time.
Thanks for making Blorp, it’s my favourite Lemmy app I’ve tried! And the lack of post flairs is something I’ve noticed, so I might try PieFed out.
If you want feedback on some more (very minor) things I would love to be fixed, here’s a list of things I’ve noticed:
I posted on the Blorp community yesterday about wanting a “read all” button for notifications (mostly because this post got a lot) so that would be really nice.
Other than that, it’s mostly just tiny things. Apparently Lemmy has a backend way to see user karma, so maybe seeing that would be nice to add as an option?
Maybe a button to copy and paste a post’s body text on mobile like on Reddit, or even a “save image/video” button? This is really minor.
And maybe an easier way to see the upvote/downvote ratio? (like 87% upvoted as an example)
Maybe this isn’t possible for some reason, but would a way to create a community inside of Blorp be possible? I don’t know if Lemmy works like that.
Thanks again for making this app, especially the fact that it’s on iOS. I hope it’s not too much of a time/financial burden because it’s great.
(All of this is from iOS by the way)
I started working on mark read. I’m also going to take this as an opportunity to improve marking read/unread in general.
I don’t think Lemmy supports karma or intends to support karma. It might be possible to stitch something together, but it would be kinda sketchy. Since you’re new to Lemmy, I would just embrace the lack of karma and see in a month or two if you still miss it. I think PieFed has a way of labeling a user’s “Attitude”, so maybe that could replace what you’re looking for.
Copy is interesting. I’ll think about how I would add that.
I was thinking maybe long press to peak at ratio. I would have to see if that’s possible. I should also add an option to always show upvotes and downvotes separately.
I would love to eventually support create community in Blorp. For now, this is low priority since you might do this only a few times ever. On the other hand, things like moderation will happen daily. So I would add more moderation features before adding create community.
It’s not a burden! I feel financially privileged. At least compared to others my age. Building Blorp is my way to give back. Though I have been trying to make more time for my other hobbies lately, so I’ve been a little slower than usual.
Anyway, thanks for the kind words! Nice to see a fellow iOS user, as most Lemmy users aren’t.
I wouldn’t even bother, I used the site for 15 years mostly just answering software and tech questions and talking about music gear and they banned me in seconds for one anti trump comment earlier this year. It’s fucked. Now I wish I would have stopped using it when they allowed The_Donald subreddit to fester on their site.
when r/technology was getting astroturfed with trump news i was commenting as other people are, about antitrump stuff, temp ban. then suddenly all old accounts were hit with the same permaban. they also fish out old accounts you might not have used in while and ban those, if at any time(on the same device or ip address) you commented on a sub you were banned in.
The Reddit of old is long gone. The Mods on most subs are petulant cellar-dwellers. Censorship is off the charts. No thanks.
VPN accounts typically get shadowbanned quickly in my experience. You need residential proxies. There’s also a warm up period for accounts where they are soft locked out of certain features like modmail, commenting, creating a community, etc. You won’t be told of these limitations, simply shadowbanned if you try to use them.
I’m not sure about Reddit’s use of device fingerprinting or user behavior heuristics when it comes to detecting evasion.
We are at war. I create accounts daily to send out modmail within my rights. We shouldn’t let admins or even mods sleep. I found it funny one time they blackholed an account so hard it couldn’t even be logged into anymore, then banned the entire username prefix “yoyoyopo” all at once, thinking it would stop me.
We are at war.
Are you ok?
We shouldn’t let admins or even mods sleep.
Are you opposed to all content moderation or just reddit specific implementation?
one time they blackholed an account so hard it couldn’t even be logged into anymore
Isn’t that just a regular ban?
No you still can log into banned accounts. Just can’t participate.
i heard about the proxies, you would have to use it with anti-detection browser to make full use of it, there sa forum where you can purchase private proxies that way reddit doesnt detect the most common or abused ones. warmp up includes human behaviour otherwise they might see your account as a bot.
they seem to trust google email accounts or, the browsers chrom or Firefox. if you are on any of the other forks, they might consider flaggin the account.
Reddit died for me on the day that they banned me within minutes for saying I should be allowed to punch Nazis, you know in an Indiana Jones kind of way. Or a Captain America way if you prefer. I’m pretty sure the thread had something to do with Captain America so it was relevant
reddits kinda worst now. i sitll browse reddit, even though my account was shadowbanned. and people were saying they cant say certain things now that were very common, and its now bannable by reddits filter.
You did the right thing
Same thing happened to me (shortly before the IPO, of course). Reddit had been enshittifying for years, and the blanket ban was the nudge I needed to stop giving a fuck about it anymore.
Being banned from reddit was a huge leap for my mental help. Glad they did me the service
Start your own instances for those that dont exist, we will grow slowly !
I got permabanned for reporting someone else for calling me slurs and threatening me. My appeal was rejected. Everyone in my household was also banned alongside me.
Since then, I’ve moved to a different country and gotten all new devices. I tried making another account to connect with people in the new area, using a new email address. A few hours later, before I’d made any posts, comments or joined any of my old subs, I was permabanned again for ban evasion. (I had, in fact, only visited subs I’d never been to before, where the majority of posts were even in a different language from what my original account viewed…)
I honestly have no idea how they tracked me, or if that’s what actually happened. (Maybe they have some AI that autobans a portion of new accounts now, just in case?)
Your OS shares info, likely android?
They banned my alts for just lurking. I never commented a thing. All i ever did was upvote and bookmark on VPN and use the account to access other sites. Such bs
Reddit’s AI will detect what types of posts you like until they are slightly confident it’s you. Then, permanent ban.
This seems extremely unlikely. There is most likely another explanation for what you experienced.
I’ll take Things that make your fingerprint unique, Alex:
- Cookies
- Rare browsers
- Local/Session storage/IndexedDB
- Browser extensions
- Your mouse patterns
- Your browser’s timezone
- Your browser canvas
- Other fingerprint techniques…
Chameleon is a nice browser extension (it does some nasty things on sites that do try to assert that you are human, or that is it truly you, and you can get banned or blocked so use it with that in mind) that tries to hide some of those things, but maybe they look for it in your browser and default to other techniques… I understand this has been son effort on your part and that some of the things I listed do not apply to you in your last attempts, but maybe some of the others do. Or maybe this is a signal for you to leave that cesspool, maybe.
If you want to see how big your fingerprint can be: https://amiunique.org/
hey that really worked. Great link
even the more popular games are super inactive.
Due to the lower userbase, activity happens in more generic communities.
There’s
Then genre communities
It’s obviously not as busy as Reddit, but it’s still a busy enough place.
!newcomers@piefed.zip if you have questions
