Being Permanently banned from Reddit

Reddit took the world by storm many moons ago, effectively replacing forums with the "subreddits" that the community can set up. As such with any effort in community policing, it often draws criticism due to the unpaid volunteer nature of a Fortune 500 company.

Subreddits can cover a massive amount of topics. You can have one dedicated entirely to PC Gaming, Makeup, Pop Culture, Politics, Regional Politics, Local Politics, Alien Politics. The list goes on. Someone being banned in one of these subreddits usually just means they can't take part in that specific community any more. So if the moderators of /r/ukpolitics decide that you bridgaded from /r/scotland, despite that being a country that exists within the UK, and makes no logical sense how you can attack a community you are already defacto a part of. Then you're starting to see the problem generally with reddit moderation. I don't think I've spoken to a single person that is happy with the current system, even the moderators.

Subreddits allow the admins, somehow, to remain out of the drama that comes around them. They proclaim that if you aren't happy with a certain set of moderators, just create your own. As has been done with examples such as the Edinburgh subreddit and the Edinburgh2 subreddit.

What did I do?

My issue, as with anything, comes with being political. The nature of commenting in certain subreddits, even to refute someone, can lead to you being banned in a multitude of other subreddits. For example, say you comment on /r/politics you might get banned from /r/example_sub.

If you have another account, stumble upon /r/example_sub in the /r/all section of the platform, comment on something in there, you are now effectively done for ban evasion. This is a reddit admin enforced bit of action. So "Just making another subreddit" doesn't cut it, because you're now perma banned from the platform entirely.

This is what I did, and because it's pretty hard to see what subreddit you are on these days, it was entirely an accident. If they just banned me again from that community, I wouldn't have minded. Due to the nature of how /r/all works, posts on communities show up, even if you're banned. Numerous times I've seen a headline, read an article, wanted to discuss it, went back just to find out I was banned from the place originally.

This can get especially annoying for niche interests that congregate around Reddit. As said previously, forums are on their way out. Twitter is a hell hole. Discord is impossible for thread based communications, discord doesn't even show up on Google. How do you know what communities to join? And then it has the exact same problem reddit has with the individual communities being far too powerful for their areas of interest.

Permabanning

I've often held a stance against permabans. I've got one myself from my days JTAGing Xbox consoles and having fun pushing and prodding back in the day. Does that mean, that 15-year-old me, should not get access to Microsoft services even at age 50? I think that's a nonsense argument. I'm absolutely not the same as I was when I was a teenager.

The same goes here. 29-year-old me, being very political and angry at the system, might be pretty chill at 60 when fascists have lost, and we're back on the normal road again. A lot of service providers simply don't agree and put an effective black mark against your name. If you had a "social credit score" so to speak, other companies could look you up, see the reddit infraction and just not give you access to their social media either.

My History

I've been on reddit for well over 14 years. I've had multiple different accounts for the different "brand" usernames I've had over the years, from my actual name, to brawhammer, which is also banned, and I think that's genuinely because I simply set up a new account to see if I could even join back again. (the answer was no).

To get another account, this time it was brawdev, I had to clear my IP, ensure my device ID was different, and it seemed to work. Used a VPN for a while but eventually then stopped and it never seemed to matter. Things were genuinely looking up. I was on reddit for 2 years with this account, 70k Karma. It was suspended because my password was apparently compromised. I was to reset my password, which involved needing an email sent to me, but since I used a 10 minute mail I had no access to the inbox. Couldn't change the email either. This account was effectively lost. So I created another (tahcom).

BrawDev was suspended from the interestingasfuck subreddit for I believe commenting on a political subreddit. They had a post hit the front page, which I responded to as tahcom, I forgot entirely I was banned from that subreddit to be honest. My post was actually removed for being too new. So I didn't think much of it, woke up today banned and unable yet again to access the platform.

What do I do now?

Well, I've gotten the hint. Reddit as a company clearly doesn't want me on their platform. I need to accept that as an adult and just move on. It's a curse that I have on this lifetime. Going forward I won't be using Reddit anymore and I'm going to try get out of my routine of constantly checking it. I don't know what other platforms to use though. I'll post an update if I figure out a new social media strategy but right now I'm pretty annoyed and might just stay out of the whole thing.

You care way too much

I'm half expecting this to come up, but as someone that has utilized social media since I was about 14, it's a massive part in my life. I have odd interests and hobbies. Talking politics 24/7 is what I love to do, and doing that with your friends IRL is a sure fire way to never get invited to a party anymore. So I've used platforms like Reddit as an outlet for that. Sure I can just not do it any more, but I'm killing a part of myself if I do that. It's also a pretty fundamental educational tool. I take part in the programming, PHP, Game Dev subreddits and I love them all. Now, I can't. Ever. You can hand wave away the gaming and politics stuff, but for my career not being able to talk to other individuals in the space, ever again in my life, via Reddit is pretty insane.

But yeah, maybe I care too much that a moderator - probably younger than me, has decimated a 14-year social media stint over an automated rule break, and the admin that reviewed it just doesn't care.

And I know they don't care because the appeal form only allowed 250 characters for you to make your case.

Appealing

Because I've done some googling on this and am sure this will come up. Yes, I did try contacting the moderators of the original subreddit I was banned from to find out why I was banned. I actually sent them a message soon after on September on the original account asking what subreddit I'm not allowed to post in. I never had a response back.

So, to confirm, this is the timeline...

Post on Subreddit
Get banned
Send an appeal, asking why I was banned
Get no response
1st Account gets locked due to security issues
Make a new account
Mistakenly comment on a post on /r/all that was part of the subreddit I was originally banned from
Get site banned
Appeal
Get denied

If you can read the above timeline, and think this is how this policy/tools were meant to be used? I just don't see how you can have that view, honestly.