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There's a network of Dutch subreddits, 99% of which are managed by the same clique of mods. Recently I noticed comments I had posted in those subs over the las

by krono 5y ago

There's a network of Dutch subreddits, 99% of which are managed by the same clique of mods. Recently I noticed comments I had posted in those subs over the last few months had completely been ignored. It turns out I have been shadowbanned, and not just on the primary /r/thenetherlands sub, but on every single one of the communities they manage. There is no apparent reason for them to have done this to me. My messages to the modteam are being ignored and Reddit support won't help because "moderators are free to run their communities as they see fit". I have been locked out of engaging with the communities I was most interested and active in, for no apparent reason and likely forever. And this is just one of many reasons for why having so few moderators control so many communities, is such a bad thing. Allowing them to operate without oversight or accountability is not helping the situation either.

actually_a_dog 5y ago
> I have been locked out of engaging with the communities I was most interested and active in, for no apparent reason and likely forever. Just make a new account. Screw their "ban circumvention" rule. What are they gonna do, ban you again?
lloydatkinson 5y ago
How do you check if you are shadowbanned?
- kubb 5y ago
  Look at your posts from a different account?
- krono 5y ago
  When a moderator deletes one of your posts, it will show up normally for you, but as having been deleted for everyone else. Easiest way to check is opening your posts in context after logging out or in an incognito window. If many of your posts show as deleted, the subs mods have likely added you to their automoderator blacklist.
- JohnWhigham 5y ago
  View the thread in a new private window. If you don't see your post, now you know why.
- rhaksw 5y ago
  Check https://www.reveddit.com https://www.reveddit.com . It can indicate site-level or subreddit-level shadow bans.
supperburg 5y ago
This is the most un-dutch thing I’ve ever heard of. How could actual dutch people behave like that?
- stavros 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Dutchman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Dutchman
- stefantalpalaru 5y ago
  > How could actual dutch people behave like that? "The Netherlands as a narcostate and the emergence of a methamphetamine industry" - https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/field-report-netherlands-narcostate-and-emergence-methamphetamine-industry https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/field-report-netherlan...
huibf 5y ago
I don't know why you're going through all that effort instead of just creating a new account.
- read_if_gay_ 5y ago
  Obviously your opinion is not wanted there. So why go the extra mile? Just move on.
  - huibf 5y ago
    Moderators do very rarely speak for the community they moderate.
    - read_if_gay_ 5y ago
      True, but they are the ones with all the power. I think you’re fighting not just an uphill but an impossible battle. With very little upside to you if you win.
      - adar 5y ago
        It takes about 10 seconds to create a new Reddit account so it's the moderators who'd be fighting the uphill, impossible battle to keep someone banned.
        throwaway6734 5y ago
        Reddit provides tooling to identify people on new accounts that have been banned in the past. I think you'd need to couple this with a VPN
        intended 5y ago
        VPNs dont matter anyway. Just make a new account. Unless you have some topic you constantly focus on, or have a tag line you repeat, you will be invisible.
float4 5y ago
/r/thenetherlands is a joke. So many comments are being removed in order to "maintain community standards". I once posted a genuine question there: "Do you think /r/thenetherlands is an echo chamber?" "[Your post was removed for being off topic]" Oh well. Now I just don't use reddit anymore. My life is better because of it.
- johnnywasagood 5y ago
  It is funny to read this because of so many redditors will comment on every facebook related post how good their life become after ditching that social network. And they are immediately forgetting about other social network (reddit) they currently use.
  - hajile 5y ago
    Reddit seems more like an antisocial network.
    - johnnywasagood 5y ago
      I would say it more like site that has some sort of glare of anonymity. That sort of anonymity ables person to be a bit of antisocial (e.g. not everyone would be happy to connect their real life identity to reddit account) but still it is social network.
      - jobigoud 5y ago
        But there is no network of users on reddit, HN or other similar forums.
- apexalpha 5y ago
  I actually like /r/thenetherlands. You're question does seem too meta and pointless. It's just a sub about Dutch news and stuff.
  - input_sh 5y ago
rowanG077 5y ago
Same. The dutch subreddit mods will ban anyone that doesn't align with them on tiny things. So if you want to keep contributing to that community you must swim with the majority or they will ban you.
- code_duck 5y ago
  /r/portland is like this too. You have to adhere to their politics precisely or they might just start deleting everything you post with no warning.
- radicalbyte 5y ago
  I find that quite amusing, since The Netherlands was for much of its (short) history the place where everyone with non-standard opinions fled to.
  - engineeringwoke 5y ago
    Polder culture is very much about swimming with the majority, doesn't surprise me that the subreddits would reflect this
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  Damn near every sub is like this with the exception of some joke/meme/video subs that are too small and who's mods DGAF about anything.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  I often go against the flow in thenetherlands and I haven't gotten banned. You get downvoted to oblivion if you dare go against the progressive, young, left-leaning narrative of the sub, but the same is true on any network. I don't think the "tiny things" will get you banned from the Dutch subreddits, though; it's mostly broad strokes (just post that you've considered voting on one of the "wrong" parties once and you'll get flack). It's a pretty bad situation, but it's the same situation you find on any platform. HN has some very clear biases that you simply must subscribe to if you don't want your comment to be downvoted. It's clear that people here have certain stocks and don't like certain companies to be put in a negative light, for example. I don't think my account suffers the problems from this too often, but I've seen plenty of comments here at the bottom of the comment section simply because they disagreed with the status quo or because they asked an uncomfortable question. Every now and then, I also see shadowbanned people here, who continue to make nearly invisible posts for a while and then just leave, seemingly caught by some kind of automatic filter or punished severely for a dumb comment weeks ago.
CyberShadow 5y ago
I was under the impression that shadowbanning was a moderation technique reserved for the admins, and unavailable to subreddit moderators; IIRC, it also applied to the entire website.
- code_duck 5y ago
  Some moderators do a soft shadowban where they simply delete every post you make in their sub with no notification. The is functionally like a shadowban - you can see the post in your history and have no way of knowing it was deleted without signing out or using a different account, other than a suspicious lack of votes or replies.
  - rhaksw 5y ago
    > you can see the post in your history and have no way of knowing it was deleted without signing out or using a different account, other than a suspicious lack of votes or replies. Reveddit [1] or its accompanying extension [2] can alert you when this happens. I'm the author. You can see the behavior yourself on r/CantSayAnything [3] or read more in the FAQ [4]. [1] https://www.reveddit.com/about/ https://www.reveddit.com/about/ [2] https://www.reveddit.com/add-ons/direct/ https://www.reveddit.com/add-ons/direct/ [3] https://www.reddit.com/r/CantSayAnything/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CantSayAnything/ [4] https://www.reveddit.com/about/faq/ https://www.reveddit.com/about/faq/
    - code_duck 5y ago
      Good to know, thanks! I use /r/shadowban currently. Providing more resources in this area is definitely appreciated.
- oauea 5y ago
  Mods can set up automoderator with a shitlist of users whose messages are deleted the very moment they're posted, as the moderation system is built into reddit now. So it's not a true shadowban, but any posts you make on subreddits who have shitlisted you will get deleted instantly. And of course when a post of yours is deleted on reddit by a mod, reddit does not tell you this or indicate it to you in any way.
ecmascript 5y ago
The same is true for swedish subreddits. /r/sweden for example is also heavily pushed by Reddit as all new users from swedish ips automatically is subbed to that subreddit. I stopped using Reddit because of the increased amount of censorship and bans for thinking the incorrect stuff and as someone else said my life is better for it. Reddit was once a beacon of freedom of speech and today it is a tool to supress freedom of speech and thoughts that go against the mainstream.
- lloydatkinson 5y ago
  I’ve started using saidit
- zibzab 5y ago
  Not sure what your issue is. I find r/sweden pretty okay, not perfect but tolerable. They don't allow outright hate speech which is btw illegal anyway. Misinformation is usually not deleted but often called out and down voted by members. I am 100% okay with that. r/sverige on the other hand is run by a really angry uncle who probably doesn't like most people. r/okpolarncp is basically incels and nazis. It is too promoted to front page...
  - brigandish 5y ago
    It sounds like they dissent from those opinions and you don't so you're fine with it and they're not. As Chomsky said "Everyone is in favour of freedom of speech for speech they agree with". Since I'm quoting people, J.S. Mill wrote down what the problem is for all of us when this happens: > If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
agumonkey 5y ago
Social networks rediscovering society. Isn't that pretty
- dvtrn 5y ago
  (Social) Nature is healing...?
raverbashing 5y ago
For real, one of the most glaring fault with Reddit is the power disconnect between admins and moderators. It's like going to a restaurant and finding out the FOH are there because they're big fans of the food. Oh and they can also dictate how the cooks do their job. There needs to be people on Reddit's payroll watching over the moderators of big/default subs.
BiteCode_dev 5y ago
I'm suspecting that PR firms have understood for some times now how influential those social networks were to reach people that traditional in-your-face propaganda works ineffectively on. If you want to touch the heart of geeks, artists, activits and passionate people, you need to do it in a format that they will accept, and because they are very active on the world, those are important targets. For things like HN or imgur, I assume there is a way to pay them to get the com you want in a way that appears to be organic. That's the best way to make money for those kind of sites after all. Want to make a billionaire a hero? Suddenly, comments everywhere say how much the guy is great, links to articles of his achievements raise to the top and critics are down voted, or/ and counter answered elaborately by what has all the signs of a long time user account. Want to sell a new movie or a political program? How about some "fan-made" memes or technical article that everybody seems to love? Even better for those firms, why pay if you can avoid it? In reddit, work patiently to have a lot of accounts that are mods in topics you care about, and you basically own the system for free. Even better, now others will pay you to do com targeting those communities. In that sense, I think facebook and twitter are at least more honest about how they influence society because they are explicit about their paid communication offers.
cblconfederate 5y ago
Same with the europe subreddit, it's the same old national mods. They just don't want to give up power
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
cableshaft 5y ago
It might not be forever. I had an admin shadowban me once across the entire site for daring to post on r/indiegaming and r/gaming, two subs I commented on constantly, a single link to a video game I made over six months (well at least that's the best reason I can come up with, I was never told a reason why, I know certain subreddits are super anti-self-promotion for some reason though). I didn't even notice for six months until a moderator PM'ed me and told me he had been manually approving my posts for months in one sub (the rest of the subreddits I posted to I just thought I had suddenly stopped being interesting to people). I tried to appeal the shadowban and heard nothing from the admins. Anyway I stayed away from Reddit for a while but eventually created a new account to talk about board games. A few years later I decided to check my other account again, and discovered it wasn't shadowbanned anymore (you can tell by going to your user page in incognito mode, it won't show up like other accounts do if it's shadowbanned). And so now I'm using that old account again. Although I'll never talk about anything I've ever made on that site ever again, which seems kind of stupid to me, but whatever. Reddit's rules are crap (and new UI, I only use old.reddit), but I do enjoy checking and commenting in a few of the subreddits still.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  Honest question: Why would you continue using a site that treats you like this? I would go find something else to share my limited attention with. I remember getting banned on Fark (remember them?) and I simply never went back. If you don't want me participating, I won't add free content to your business. I was even a paying subscriber there, and dropped the subscription immediately. People need to start cutting ties with companies that treat them badly. How many times have you seen this conversation: "A: Company Xyz took my money and screwed something up and can't be contacted. B: That's fraud--Just do a credit card chargeback. A: But, then they'll ban me!" Why the hell do people want to continue using, let alone continue giving money to, a site or business that treats you this way? On a related note, I seem to be back in that HN purgatory where you can only post a few times a day. As usual, with no indication of what triggered it. <sigh> Getting really close to throwing in the towel here, too.
  - sk2020 5y ago
effingwewt 5y ago
There are auto-ban lists that will ban you from all subs that mod has control over, just for being subbed to a sub that mod doesn't like and is on their 'list',you don't even necessarily have to post to the 'offending' sub. When the ban waves were happening and subs shut down, people tried going to voat. reddits favorite phrase was 'if you dont like it, leave' so we did. But the mods followed us, especially the infamous mod 'She'. All the mods we tried to get away from bought their way into the voat subs and turned it into the cesspool you see today. See, no one cares about the bans or shadowbans until it affects them, but by then it's too late.
ajay-b 5y ago
Why not create a new account?
HyperLinear 5y ago
I can conform this, because I want through the same process. It was all fun and games until May last year and all my posts were automatically shadowbanned. Fired of a message to the mods and got no reply, hung out on their Discord but by al measures it didn't seem a fitting place. Since I received no notification about the shadowbans nor any warnings about ban evations I ended up creating a new account and continued to interact with these communities again.
winternett 5y ago
I make music and music videos, and used to enjoy posting the work to reddit very much. About 2 years ago the tone of posting on reddit changed to a ban on self promotion. I really never understood how that was supposed to be a valid policy, and saw certain accounts break that rule without any sort of intervention at any time they wanted to. The fact is that reddit is really an undercover "upvoted for profit" front-site now. After they were done building the community from democracy, it changed to something else, a place where corporate and paying interests now are what push mediocre and triggering content to front pages... They banned me permanently based on my IP. and stripped all 3 of my accounts from access to my subreddit that I spend a lot of time building, and while I could easily get around that, I realized that it's simply easier and better to just work on my own web sites and not have to keep posting to gain traction for sharing my original work. The same is happening on many social sites that have massive user bases but high overhead... It's not sustainable in the long run, because they will never be able to make everyone succeed no matter how much they pay. We're reaching a new plateau/failure cliff for large-scale social media, and so many creators and talented people have been chewed up and spit out by the false promises those platforms once made. Now the focus is to go back to real organic growth by starting locally, and cutting losses with social sites... Myspace is gone now, a neat and tidy profit for good ole Tom, remembered fondly by most... I'm not sure that modern social sites will have the same fate, nor be able to offer the same value to a large community as Myspace once did.

by krono 5y ago

actually_a_dog 5y ago

> I have been locked out of engaging with the communities I was most interested and active in, for no apparent reason and likely forever. Just make a new account. Screw their "ban circumvention" rule. What are they gonna do, ban you again?

lloydatkinson 5y ago

How do you check if you are shadowbanned?

kubb 5y ago
Look at your posts from a different account?
krono 5y ago
When a moderator deletes one of your posts, it will show up normally for you, but as having been deleted for everyone else. Easiest way to check is opening your posts in context after logging out or in an incognito window. If many of your posts show as deleted, the subs mods have likely added you to their automoderator blacklist.
JohnWhigham 5y ago
View the thread in a new private window. If you don't see your post, now you know why.
rhaksw 5y ago
Check https://www.reveddit.com https://www.reveddit.com . It can indicate site-level or subreddit-level shadow bans.

supperburg 5y ago

This is the most un-dutch thing I’ve ever heard of. How could actual dutch people behave like that?

stavros 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Dutchman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Dutchman
stefantalpalaru 5y ago
> How could actual dutch people behave like that? "The Netherlands as a narcostate and the emergence of a methamphetamine industry" - https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/field-report-netherlands-narcostate-and-emergence-methamphetamine-industry https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/field-report-netherlan...

huibf 5y ago

I don't know why you're going through all that effort instead of just creating a new account.

read_if_gay_ 5y ago
Obviously your opinion is not wanted there. So why go the extra mile? Just move on.
- huibf 5y ago
  Moderators do very rarely speak for the community they moderate.
  - read_if_gay_ 5y ago
    True, but they are the ones with all the power. I think you’re fighting not just an uphill but an impossible battle. With very little upside to you if you win.
    - adar 5y ago
      It takes about 10 seconds to create a new Reddit account so it's the moderators who'd be fighting the uphill, impossible battle to keep someone banned.
      - throwaway6734 5y ago
        Reddit provides tooling to identify people on new accounts that have been banned in the past. I think you'd need to couple this with a VPN
        intended 5y ago
        VPNs dont matter anyway. Just make a new account. Unless you have some topic you constantly focus on, or have a tag line you repeat, you will be invisible.

float4 5y ago

/r/thenetherlands is a joke. So many comments are being removed in order to "maintain community standards". I once posted a genuine question there: "Do you think /r/thenetherlands is an echo chamber?" "[Your post was removed for being off topic]" Oh well. Now I just don't use reddit anymore. My life is better because of it.

johnnywasagood 5y ago
It is funny to read this because of so many redditors will comment on every facebook related post how good their life become after ditching that social network. And they are immediately forgetting about other social network (reddit) they currently use.
- hajile 5y ago
  Reddit seems more like an antisocial network.
  - johnnywasagood 5y ago
    I would say it more like site that has some sort of glare of anonymity. That sort of anonymity ables person to be a bit of antisocial (e.g. not everyone would be happy to connect their real life identity to reddit account) but still it is social network.
    - jobigoud 5y ago
      But there is no network of users on reddit, HN or other similar forums.
apexalpha 5y ago
I actually like /r/thenetherlands. You're question does seem too meta and pointless. It's just a sub about Dutch news and stuff.
- input_sh 5y ago

rowanG077 5y ago

Same. The dutch subreddit mods will ban anyone that doesn't align with them on tiny things. So if you want to keep contributing to that community you must swim with the majority or they will ban you.

code_duck 5y ago
/r/portland is like this too. You have to adhere to their politics precisely or they might just start deleting everything you post with no warning.
radicalbyte 5y ago
I find that quite amusing, since The Netherlands was for much of its (short) history the place where everyone with non-standard opinions fled to.
- engineeringwoke 5y ago
  Polder culture is very much about swimming with the majority, doesn't surprise me that the subreddits would reflect this
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
Damn near every sub is like this with the exception of some joke/meme/video subs that are too small and who's mods DGAF about anything.
jeroenhd 5y ago
I often go against the flow in thenetherlands and I haven't gotten banned. You get downvoted to oblivion if you dare go against the progressive, young, left-leaning narrative of the sub, but the same is true on any network. I don't think the "tiny things" will get you banned from the Dutch subreddits, though; it's mostly broad strokes (just post that you've considered voting on one of the "wrong" parties once and you'll get flack). It's a pretty bad situation, but it's the same situation you find on any platform. HN has some very clear biases that you simply must subscribe to if you don't want your comment to be downvoted. It's clear that people here have certain stocks and don't like certain companies to be put in a negative light, for example. I don't think my account suffers the problems from this too often, but I've seen plenty of comments here at the bottom of the comment section simply because they disagreed with the status quo or because they asked an uncomfortable question. Every now and then, I also see shadowbanned people here, who continue to make nearly invisible posts for a while and then just leave, seemingly caught by some kind of automatic filter or punished severely for a dumb comment weeks ago.

CyberShadow 5y ago

I was under the impression that shadowbanning was a moderation technique reserved for the admins, and unavailable to subreddit moderators; IIRC, it also applied to the entire website.

code_duck 5y ago
Some moderators do a soft shadowban where they simply delete every post you make in their sub with no notification. The is functionally like a shadowban - you can see the post in your history and have no way of knowing it was deleted without signing out or using a different account, other than a suspicious lack of votes or replies.
- rhaksw 5y ago
  > you can see the post in your history and have no way of knowing it was deleted without signing out or using a different account, other than a suspicious lack of votes or replies. Reveddit [1] or its accompanying extension [2] can alert you when this happens. I'm the author. You can see the behavior yourself on r/CantSayAnything [3] or read more in the FAQ [4]. [1] https://www.reveddit.com/about/ https://www.reveddit.com/about/ [2] https://www.reveddit.com/add-ons/direct/ https://www.reveddit.com/add-ons/direct/ [3] https://www.reddit.com/r/CantSayAnything/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CantSayAnything/ [4] https://www.reveddit.com/about/faq/ https://www.reveddit.com/about/faq/
  - code_duck 5y ago
    Good to know, thanks! I use /r/shadowban currently. Providing more resources in this area is definitely appreciated.
oauea 5y ago
Mods can set up automoderator with a shitlist of users whose messages are deleted the very moment they're posted, as the moderation system is built into reddit now. So it's not a true shadowban, but any posts you make on subreddits who have shitlisted you will get deleted instantly. And of course when a post of yours is deleted on reddit by a mod, reddit does not tell you this or indicate it to you in any way.

ecmascript 5y ago

The same is true for swedish subreddits. /r/sweden for example is also heavily pushed by Reddit as all new users from swedish ips automatically is subbed to that subreddit. I stopped using Reddit because of the increased amount of censorship and bans for thinking the incorrect stuff and as someone else said my life is better for it. Reddit was once a beacon of freedom of speech and today it is a tool to supress freedom of speech and thoughts that go against the mainstream.

lloydatkinson 5y ago
I’ve started using saidit
zibzab 5y ago
Not sure what your issue is. I find r/sweden pretty okay, not perfect but tolerable. They don't allow outright hate speech which is btw illegal anyway. Misinformation is usually not deleted but often called out and down voted by members. I am 100% okay with that. r/sverige on the other hand is run by a really angry uncle who probably doesn't like most people. r/okpolarncp is basically incels and nazis. It is too promoted to front page...
- brigandish 5y ago
  It sounds like they dissent from those opinions and you don't so you're fine with it and they're not. As Chomsky said "Everyone is in favour of freedom of speech for speech they agree with". Since I'm quoting people, J.S. Mill wrote down what the problem is for all of us when this happens: > If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

agumonkey 5y ago

Social networks rediscovering society. Isn't that pretty

dvtrn 5y ago
(Social) Nature is healing...?

raverbashing 5y ago

For real, one of the most glaring fault with Reddit is the power disconnect between admins and moderators. It's like going to a restaurant and finding out the FOH are there because they're big fans of the food. Oh and they can also dictate how the cooks do their job. There needs to be people on Reddit's payroll watching over the moderators of big/default subs.

BiteCode_dev 5y ago

I'm suspecting that PR firms have understood for some times now how influential those social networks were to reach people that traditional in-your-face propaganda works ineffectively on. If you want to touch the heart of geeks, artists, activits and passionate people, you need to do it in a format that they will accept, and because they are very active on the world, those are important targets. For things like HN or imgur, I assume there is a way to pay them to get the com you want in a way that appears to be organic. That's the best way to make money for those kind of sites after all. Want to make a billionaire a hero? Suddenly, comments everywhere say how much the guy is great, links to articles of his achievements raise to the top and critics are down voted, or/ and counter answered elaborately by what has all the signs of a long time user account. Want to sell a new movie or a political program? How about some "fan-made" memes or technical article that everybody seems to love? Even better for those firms, why pay if you can avoid it? In reddit, work patiently to have a lot of accounts that are mods in topics you care about, and you basically own the system for free. Even better, now others will pay you to do com targeting those communities. In that sense, I think facebook and twitter are at least more honest about how they influence society because they are explicit about their paid communication offers.

cblconfederate 5y ago

Same with the europe subreddit, it's the same old national mods. They just don't want to give up power

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

cableshaft 5y ago

It might not be forever. I had an admin shadowban me once across the entire site for daring to post on r/indiegaming and r/gaming, two subs I commented on constantly, a single link to a video game I made over six months (well at least that's the best reason I can come up with, I was never told a reason why, I know certain subreddits are super anti-self-promotion for some reason though). I didn't even notice for six months until a moderator PM'ed me and told me he had been manually approving my posts for months in one sub (the rest of the subreddits I posted to I just thought I had suddenly stopped being interesting to people). I tried to appeal the shadowban and heard nothing from the admins. Anyway I stayed away from Reddit for a while but eventually created a new account to talk about board games. A few years later I decided to check my other account again, and discovered it wasn't shadowbanned anymore (you can tell by going to your user page in incognito mode, it won't show up like other accounts do if it's shadowbanned). And so now I'm using that old account again. Although I'll never talk about anything I've ever made on that site ever again, which seems kind of stupid to me, but whatever. Reddit's rules are crap (and new UI, I only use old.reddit), but I do enjoy checking and commenting in a few of the subreddits still.

ryandrake 5y ago
Honest question: Why would you continue using a site that treats you like this? I would go find something else to share my limited attention with. I remember getting banned on Fark (remember them?) and I simply never went back. If you don't want me participating, I won't add free content to your business. I was even a paying subscriber there, and dropped the subscription immediately. People need to start cutting ties with companies that treat them badly. How many times have you seen this conversation: "A: Company Xyz took my money and screwed something up and can't be contacted. B: That's fraud--Just do a credit card chargeback. A: But, then they'll ban me!" Why the hell do people want to continue using, let alone continue giving money to, a site or business that treats you this way? On a related note, I seem to be back in that HN purgatory where you can only post a few times a day. As usual, with no indication of what triggered it. <sigh> Getting really close to throwing in the towel here, too.
- sk2020 5y ago

effingwewt 5y ago

There are auto-ban lists that will ban you from all subs that mod has control over, just for being subbed to a sub that mod doesn't like and is on their 'list',you don't even necessarily have to post to the 'offending' sub. When the ban waves were happening and subs shut down, people tried going to voat. reddits favorite phrase was 'if you dont like it, leave' so we did. But the mods followed us, especially the infamous mod 'She'. All the mods we tried to get away from bought their way into the voat subs and turned it into the cesspool you see today. See, no one cares about the bans or shadowbans until it affects them, but by then it's too late.

ajay-b 5y ago

Why not create a new account?

HyperLinear 5y ago

I can conform this, because I want through the same process. It was all fun and games until May last year and all my posts were automatically shadowbanned. Fired of a message to the mods and got no reply, hung out on their Discord but by al measures it didn't seem a fitting place. Since I received no notification about the shadowbans nor any warnings about ban evations I ended up creating a new account and continued to interact with these communities again.

winternett 5y ago

I make music and music videos, and used to enjoy posting the work to reddit very much. About 2 years ago the tone of posting on reddit changed to a ban on self promotion. I really never understood how that was supposed to be a valid policy, and saw certain accounts break that rule without any sort of intervention at any time they wanted to. The fact is that reddit is really an undercover "upvoted for profit" front-site now. After they were done building the community from democracy, it changed to something else, a place where corporate and paying interests now are what push mediocre and triggering content to front pages... They banned me permanently based on my IP. and stripped all 3 of my accounts from access to my subreddit that I spend a lot of time building, and while I could easily get around that, I realized that it's simply easier and better to just work on my own web sites and not have to keep posting to gain traction for sharing my original work. The same is happening on many social sites that have massive user bases but high overhead... It's not sustainable in the long run, because they will never be able to make everyone succeed no matter how much they pay. We're reaching a new plateau/failure cliff for large-scale social media, and so many creators and talented people have been chewed up and spit out by the false promises those platforms once made. Now the focus is to go back to real organic growth by starting locally, and cutting losses with social sites... Myspace is gone now, a neat and tidy profit for good ole Tom, remembered fondly by most... I'm not sure that modern social sites will have the same fate, nor be able to offer the same value to a large community as Myspace once did.