I lurked Reddit for a long time before creating an account which is now over 6 years old. I was a ‘Top Contributor’ and in the rewards program. 89k karma, never promoted violence or targeted any group, but I got a 7-day ban which was followed up hours later with a permanent ban. This is because of a comment criticizing Senator Radcliffe, trump, and Musk. The comment included profanity, (I called them hypocrites and cunts), but it wasn’t directed at any user or marginalized group. Just harsh political commentary.
Reddit initially issued a 7-day ban, which I appealed. That appeal was approved, the comment was restored, and they admitted it didn’t violate the rules. But the permanent ban still stands, and my follow-up appeals on that have been ignored. No explanation. No transparency. Just gone.
It’s made me realize how fragile “free speech” is on platforms like Reddit. You can insult regular users and get away with it, say horrendously racist, misogynistic, and homophobic things, but speak too plainly about powerful people and suddenly you’re promoting “hate.”
I combed through the Reddit rules, and nothing I have ever commented or posted violates them.
That’s the reason I’m here on Lemmy now. I’m trying to read more, scroll less, and engage with platforms that aren’t actively censoring political dissent. Who else is in the same boat? Is there anything that can be done to hold Reddit accountable or make people aware of they way they are censoring speech? This is my first Lemmy post. I marked it NSFW because of the profanity.
If you are banned permanently, are you still able to edit or at least delete your existing comments or is it too late for that?
I got permabanned for criticizing Israel. The final comment that got me permabanned was literally ‘No, just the problems they deserve blame for’ to a zionist who accused all Lebanese of blaming all their problems on Israel.
Likewise.
My first offense was recommending that we bring back the guillotine.
My second offense was saying that MTG and fElon needed to get punched in the face after they said that Sesame Street was woke trash that needed to be canceled.
Fuck those vile pieces of shit!
Over 13 years and a quarter million karma later, it has come down to this.
I upvoted every guillotine post I saw. Must by why my account was banned too.
Also here after a reddit ban. Mine was also politically motivated.
I watched admins remove a comment that was not violent, no profanity, nothing like that. The offense: the commenter described what “black-bagging” was, in reference to the immigrants being abducted around the country. Someone asked what “black-bagging” meant, he replied with one sentence just explaining the meaning of the term, comment nuked within five minutes.
I then told this story in another comment in another thread. Didn’t say shit about Musk or Trump. Just told the story of how reddit admins wouldn’t let this guy explain what black-bagging meant.
Permanent ban within one hour for “ban evasion.” Never been banned prior. It was my first and last reddit ban.
Fuck spez, fuck reddit, fuck the rest of em all.
I really liked Reddit, getting a lot of value out of the content posted there by people. And I met some cool people through it.
I never got banned from it myself, but as time went on it was very clear that the company in charge of the platform was not steering things in a good direction, and was not responsible for the value I liked. They just captured the value by being the place where people posted. They really drove that point home when they locked off the API, and I completely quit Reddit at that point, migrating to Lemmy instead.
I definitely feel that Lemmy doesn’t have as much value collected on it yet compared to Reddit. There’s just not as many people posting and generating that value. But, it is free of that sort of draconian control that Reddit has. Not just temporarily free, as a favor from venture capital to draw people in. Permanently free. So, if we build up the value of Lemmy by having more people post here, we will be able to enjoy that value free from the corpo BS.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk. :P
My 11 year old account got banned and I’m not even sure why. I posed a lot over the years. They said I was banned, pointed to a deleted comment. When I asked what the comment said they replied the reviewed the ban and now I’m banned.
I believe it was for a comment about how America would be in trouble if they invaded Canada (I’m Canadian). I stated some basic facts that Canadians look like Americans and they will attack America on American soil. It was matter of fact, not promoting any sort of violence.
Whatever. America is dying. I suppose services hosted on American soil die right along with it. We’re actively avoiding as many US products and services as possible, so Reddit can kick rocks.
I discovered Lemmy, it suits my needs and I like it better.
First permaban was for asking: “Any updates on Mitch McConnell? I could use some good news.” Mod appeal denied
Then on another account a year later (bc I got so many death threats from Nazis on Reddit), I forgot I had a ban on that sub and said, “We should spend money feeding our kids instead of spending it to blow up someone else’s kids.” And that was an IP ban.
Crazy, I’ve seen literal Nazis on there not even get comments removed. We live in dark times.
I get banned from reddit all the time for saying things against Israel.
Just clear browser cache and poweroff your cable modem for 15 min, should get ya new IP.
Don’t use reddit mobile app, app will track unique device identifier and new account will still be banned.Firefox+ ublock on desktop and mobile is your friend.
source: reddit permabanned many times
I got banned for saying a woman was a monster. Yes free speech really must be protected by all sides, we can too easily lose it.
I was banned for saying I should have a legal right to punch Nazis, which I don’t think was “permanent ban” territory.
This to me says that Reddit is Pro Nazi
Funny. I commented on a picture of Indiana jones punching a Nazi which said “there’s never a wrong time to punch a Nazi” and boom! Encouraging violence/ban. 😂
That place is a fucking gong show.
I upvoted a comment that was just a gif of Luigi Luigi (from Nintendo) smoking a cigarette.
“Promoting/glorifying violence”
Fuck Reddit. Fuck Spez. Fuck Elon.
I got shadowbannned after posting about politics.
I never called for or celebrated violence, didn’t upvote pictures of Luigi (which they have a STRANGE hard-on for) or any of that. I just posted neutrally-worded opinions.
Shadowbanning is an abusive behavior and Reddit has been about that for well over a decade. On Twitter, you do something they don’t like, they just tell you, “you have to delete this tweet and wait 12 hours” or whatever. On Reddit, your account just gets “weird” with strange error messages. You have to go digging for information on the phenomenon because they don’t display a message or send an email about it.
The cute little aliens are there to paper over the fact that Reddit’s leadership has no concept of user advocacy. You’re just rows in a few tables to them. You’re the product that’s being sold, and as far as they’re concerned that gives you the same rights as any other product on a shelf.
They are still sending me emails with cute little aliens in them, even though my account is hosed. This is how disjointed they are.
Someone else wrote that on Reddit, the users and admins hate each other. I think that’s true.
uusually they shadowban people for being repeat ban evaders, now they are doing it for any reason. thier filters also caught innocent in the crosshairs too.
I doubt that because I’m shadow banned too with just one account. You can look on the shadow ban page (only page shadow banned people can post on) dozens of people get shadow banned every day. I had never been banned before.
All I can do is extend my sympathies, and tell you that you’re better off in the long run. Most people here don’t like corporate social media because of situations like yours.
Don’t worry about profanity. People swear all the time and don’t mark their posts.
I find it kind of psychologically interesting how many reddifugees self censor, either directly or through obscuring names and events. That site’s moderation is seriously screwing people up.
i had to self-cesor race before and after covid. apparently calling someone black, or Demographic was justification for a ban, they think calling african americans a different name what it suppose to be is racist. its so sensitive now, other sites are doing this(forums)
My leaving was originally from the api cost changes, I had payed for a 3rd party reader years ago and all of a sudden my lifetime of no ads was gone and I had to pay. This change was admittedly after reddit decided to follow twitters api cost changes. I am supprised at how close Elon and spez seem to be, given that I don’t know of any photos of the two of them, they they probably only know each other as CEO’s.
they are in cahoots with each other, since spez have openly love how elon “moderates” twitter, make sense why it resembls it now.
I wish more people would travel here. We need people to build up the communities and interact with content. It’s refreshing to see comments under limited moderation, or moderation that actually targets the right kind of hate speech: the powerful punching down.
I only visit Reddit when someone here links to it, since I’m assuming the comments are relevant, or if I’m doing a Google search and the answer is in a Reddit comment.
Reddit is dying from the top down. People migrating away would show billionaires that they don’t control us.
This is my first comment to say I am also a reddit refugee!
its clear reddit is allowing right wing/russian trolls to astroturf left leaning comments, any criticism is usually met with an increased sensitivity of thier “comment removal, karma, spam filters” its funny they encourage reporting, but hate responding to these reports if you do it too many times, it was instant temp ban which cascaded in banning in all accounts.
