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Tell HN: Reddit accounts cancellation/suspension caused by VPN usage

332 points by netfortius 5y ago

Posted earlier about an account of mine having been suspended with no apparent reason (at least of posting rules breaking), then other two which I had in the past, for testing. As I was/am traveling at present, I used VPN in a few places, and I tested the theory of this being the source: created a new account yesterday, used it fine with no posting or submissions, then used it again today with two different VPN exit points, and sure enough: "Your account has been permanently suspended from Reddit." If the Redit bozos do not comprehend the need for VPN, if *content* provided is of not harmful in any way, then I sure wish them good luck in keeping this service going ... Edit: PIA as VPN, with three major exit points, used interchangeably: France (local when there, public place), UK (local when there, public place) and US (employer specific requirement). Original account was 10K+ submissions and almost same for comments, with never close to questionable content - got suspended during my travel, with no apparent (at time) cause. Two older/test accounts I dug up in the immediate aftermath of first closed, with no submissions, got also suspended within the span of a few days of use (reading/access only). One "control" test account got banned today, after having been opened yesterday - this purposely used while "flipping" between VPN exit points. HTH

netfortius 5y ago
Found this BS, in dire contradiction with my test: https://reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/search?filter_by=knowledge_base&query=vpn&utf8=%E2%9C%93 https://reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/search?filter_by=knowledge_b...
- bibinou 5y ago
  this article talks about being locked for security reasons, not banned (suspended).
  - netfortius 5y ago
    Which the more so infers VPN not suspension driving...
azalemeth 5y ago
I've been using a VPN continuously since the UK introduced the "Snooper's Charter". VPN usage has risen hugely around the world and it's not uncommon to see (mis)advertising on TV from more disreputable companies like Sophos and NordVPN. Over time, these positions will become increasingly untenable. If everyone uses a VPN or lives behind CGNAT then these kack-handed approaches to "security" won't be seen as being plausible – the more real users they block or inconvenience the greater the harm to their product and I am sure this is going to go up over time. It's not like a real attacker can vary their ipv4 addresses willy-nilly at any rate...
- a_r41 5y ago
  Could you please elaborate on NordVPN being disreputable? This is the first I'm hearing of this.
captainmuon 5y ago
Can you disclose which VPN you are using? I sometimes use ExpressVPN + a different browser to protect my identity, but it would be annoying if I lost my account. The charitable interpretation is that Reddit got a lot of abuse from individual IPs, the IP didn't seem to be shared to them, and they just blacklisted it. I assume they don't generally blacklist IPs from abusive users, since otherwise university campusses would quickly have problems :-).
- netfortius 5y ago
  PIA
- Mindwipe 5y ago
  > The charitable interpretation is that Reddit got a lot of abuse from individual IPs, the IP didn't seem to be shared to them, and they just blacklisted it. They likely buy databases of IP addresses which have likelihood of fraud attached to them from third parties like Neustar or Geocomply or Digital Envoy. Being a VPN address is a great way to get a giant red flag on those databases (correctly).
staticelf 5y ago
Doesn't surprise me the slightest, Reddit is not like it used to be. It used to be the underdog where free speech flourished and today it's a chineese-owned propaganda machine. A few users controls the biggest subreddits and most deviating views get themselves either banned or restricted.
- pedro2 5y ago
  Chinese? I'd say Russian.
  - dorianmariefr 5y ago
    > Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.
  - sebow 5y ago
    I'm pretty sure a certain chinese company invested ~300M$ couple of years ago[0] if i recall correctly.However the platform became totally unusable and a sh*tfest way before that,think ~2014+, mainly because it was the turning point where no transparency was maintained or provided anymore, especially when it comes to moderation of users & their posts and management of subreddits.By early 2016 this was almost 'proved', but at that point this tactic resulted in creating echo-chambers, which drove up users and made it the "successful" platform it is today.Turns out nobody really cares about transparency and doing the proper job when the users and numbers are constantly exploding due to the forementioned created echo-chambers. By the way my guess why reddit was never russian-oriented or 'aligned' is because most russophile subreddits were actively targeted and shut down(for good reasons many times), whilst chinese subreddits, the 'official' north-korean (propaganda) subreddit, and many others, were kept up and almost treated as separate platforms from the mainstream website. [0] ( https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/11/reddit-300-million/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/11/reddit-300-million/ ) Indeed it was,once again, Tencent, the company famous for destroying MMOs, infiltrate the western gaming markets and pollute it with micro-transactions, cosmetics, etc.We're on the edge of touching politics and geostrategy here and I don't want certain people to jump telling me i'm a conspiracy nutjob.At this point the record is there, go look at it.
jamesy0ung 5y ago
It seems fine to me, had an account for 5+ years, 30k karma and use a VPN to access it at school daily.
- netfortius 5y ago
  Same VPN exit point? Maybe this is the difference between traveler like my case and someone protecting their comm over same infra path?!?
_joel 5y ago
I use a VPN and have had no issues, but that's just one data point.
djwinter 5y ago
I suspect I was banned from Instagram in the same way. No explanation was given. I use ProtonVPN. It wasn't until Spotify stopped working sometime later (403 Forbidden for all HTTP requests) that I narrowed it down to using VPN. Seems to be a growing thing. Thankfully, Spotify didn't do anything to my account, and it continued to work from regular IPs.
- miyuru 5y ago
  At work we got a login attack via VPN IPs and we blocked VPNs from login in via AWS WAF and 2 days later a major user was complaining that he cant login. We had to remove the rule. (developers were working on captcha in the meantime) I also used a tunnel when Spotify was not available globally. It did not create any issues. Using a Public VPN is double edged sword. If you really need it its better to setup a wireguard tunnel to a own server as the the Public VPN IPs as monitored by the security companies and also get abused all the time.
  - Monotoko 5y ago
    Can't you do a captcha with the WAF? I'm pretty sure that's an option on AWS
    - miyuru 5y ago
      the attack was to an api endpoint. which is queried via xhr on the main app. adding captcha to it would break the app to all users. the developers are now working on adding captcha at the application level and also signing the api endpoints.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > Can't you do a captcha with the WAF? I'm pretty sure that's an option on AWS You can. I know because our information security office did it to all of our web endpoints. Which are mostly API endpoints. Without telling anyone involved with individual apps, before or even, until specific complaints got to them, after doing it.
EMM_386 5y ago
What were you posting? I've used a VPN constantly and I have a Reddit account in the 15-year club, it hasn't been an issue.
- netfortius 5y ago
  No posts in the control account. Just VPN exit points "switching"
  - sdoering 5y ago
    But couldn't it be that this specific behavior triggered a spam warning? I have no insight into Reddit regarding security, but would expect new/fresh and empty accounts under special scrutiny and when an account like that hops from IP to IP this would - if I were to build a heuristic at least trigger an alarm/ban/temporary lock of voting/posting functions. Just an idea regarding your latest test. The part of the main account sucks - I am with you on that.
- tapland 5y ago
  I haven't seen any issues with my 10+ year old accounts. They are probably marked as safe and only newer accounts at risk.
  - StellarTabi 5y ago
    Probably my 10 years + verified email + MFA + never using a public VPN saves me a lot of grief in the abuse detection algorithm lottery.
amelius 5y ago
What is the most promising original-Reddit clone?
- est 5y ago
  There isn't any, unless someone solves the spam or bot account problem.
  - Intries 5y ago
    There are a bunch of them, but by far the largest problem with new networks like this comes with the network affect. In the beginning no users use the network, but if no users use it no body migrates to the platform and the circle continues. This is the reason why it is so hard to migrate your social circle away from FB Messenger or Whatsapp.
- stfu 5y ago
  the OG is 4chan
  - kibwen 5y ago
    4chan isn't the OG, it was long predated by Slashdot and Something Awful.
    - LinuxBender 5y ago
      And those were predated by Usenet which still exists but nobody has solved the spam issues.
  - StellarTabi 5y ago
    4chan is not like reddit
- Miner49er 5y ago
  Lemmy? https://join-lemmy.org/ https://join-lemmy.org/
dgellow 5y ago
Small tip for people reading comments: if you want to read Reddit anonymously you can replace the domain of any reddit URL with teddit.net. It's an open source, lightweight, web UI for Reddit focused on privacy: https://teddit.net/ https://teddit.net/. Git repo available here: https://codeberg.org/teddit/teddit https://codeberg.org/teddit/teddit.
- scim-knox-twox 5y ago
  Also: https://libreddit.kavin.rocks/ https://libreddit.kavin.rocks/
- jve 5y ago
  What a stupid domain choice. WARNING: It is not sufficient to replace first char in domain. You must also TLD.
  - scim-knox-twox 5y ago
    So? I have Privacy Redirect for that…
parhamn 5y ago
I wonder if it's feasible to make a VPN network where you peer with only _one_ other individual but that individual is selected somewhat randomly. As in, you offer your residential IP to one other person and one other person offers their residential IP to you. The only services I've seen involve a few people offering their servers as n-ary client exit nodes which obviously ends up with saturation problems like the tor network. Obviously the legal concerns are a big deal but if companies like Mullvad aren't liable for illegal web traffic, one might be able to get similar protections for people that install this VPN.
- dtech 5y ago
  That seems like a bad idea. When illegal activity is done on the internet the first thing law enforcement will do is go after you (by subpoena'ing your ISP for your information based on IP). You also have places like Germany where copyright representatives are very aggressive and will fine/settle you large amounts when downloading pirated content.
ebbp 5y ago
I’d guess it’s not the usage of a VPN that has triggered this, but rather a new account immediately presenting multiple IP addresses. I’d guess that would trigger abuse flags at most places (especially from known VPN IP addresses which tend to have a lot of malicious activity originating from them). This isn’t to defend them - it seems very odd to immediately permanently suspend accounts like that!
- sparkling 5y ago
  Yes. Most likely it is just a correlation, not the real cause. We have been using https://focsec.com/ https://focsec.com/ for detecting trial abuse in our products. People using VPNs (+ new free email accounts) to "restart" trial periods is something that is quite common, we found.
  - grumple 5y ago
    How resource intensive / business focused is your product? Lots of people use vpns for work or privacy, I think that method would have a lot of false positives. In cases where trial account usage costs you very little or nothing I'd err on the side of not blocking users.
    - lelandfe 5y ago
      > I think that method would have a lot of false positives What makes you think that? This is you saying that that detection service is not very good, FWIW.
    - ziml77 5y ago
      People don’t use public VPNs for work. The tunnel terminates in the same network that the physical office is on. And using a public VPN from a work machine for privacy is a very bad idea. That’s grounds for termination if they catch you and possibly an even worse issue if the company ends up under investigation for any reason. They’re going to take a very close look at anything of yours they can get access to since it won’t have ended up in normal audit logs.
ZiggyCrane 5y ago
Upvote bots use VPN all the time, so there might just be a chance that you managed to get IP from VPN that was perma banned by reddit (yes, its a thing).
jdkjs 5y ago
It seems obvious that this is the result of someone else having abused Reddit too much from PIA addresses. I also find blanket proxy bans reasonable: it’s akin to refusing service to those who wear a balaclava to a store.
- williamtrask 5y ago
  I see the analogy but there’s a pretty big difference between hiding your face and hiding your device’s IP address. The former is a social norm going back tens of thousands of years, the latter is an arbitrary and artificial artefact of man made technology in the last 30. A better analogy is sending mail with either proxy return addresses or none at all. Both are socially acceptable in most circumstances.
- robin_reala 5y ago
  In this case it’s like wandering in to a store with a balaclava on and receiving a permanent ban from the store.
- BLKNSLVR 5y ago
  I think the analogy is closer to "refusing service to those who refuse the rectal thermometer test upon entry to a store".
- GoblinSlayer 5y ago
  Why a store would ban a balaclava if the person fully authenticates himself and has a long good track record and does nothing wrong?
hassanahmad 5y ago
I don't think reddit accounts get banned by using VPN but it is more about what you are posting using your accounts.
- ridgered4 5y ago
  I've definitely created a new account recently over VPN, posted a single question in a linux forum and then found the account was shadow banned.
  - hassanahmad 5y ago
    You can always contact the reddit team and if your account is suspended wrongly, it would definitely be reinstated.
    - StellarTabi 5y ago
      Also important to note that if you didn't post a lot, many subs will auto-remove content from low karma users. So it's possible to have misidentified a global shadow ban with a few subreddit's low karma filter. One of my spammer adversaries regularly games FreeKarma4U and a specific star wars game subreddit until they figure out our low karma filter threshold then they go nuts with the spam.
- StellarTabi 5y ago
  It's really more about what kind of things people were posting from that VPN IP in the months/years before you. The abuse detection system will say "the tshirt spammer is back, flag this account" just because you used the same VPN as them.
tootahe45 5y ago
It can be even worse than suspending you, as early as 2018 i noticed they were shadow banning you based on VPN (PIA also). Meaning you could still post but not be seen, or have the ability to notify people you replied to. I've never since bothered to have an account there. Reddit's CEO, like Jack Dorsey, denies 'shadow banning', even though you can test it by getting -100 karma and watching your comments reach nobody. The negative karma shadow ban is why Reddit is the biggest hivemind on the internet, FYI.
- Monotoko 5y ago
  The -100 shadowban is mostly subreddit dependent, and done via automoderator by the mods of most larger subreddits. An actual admin shadowban does happen and they are employed, but I don't think they're particularly hidden. As a mod I see "User is shadowbanned" when they message us if they've been shadowbanned from Reddit by the admins.
  - kibwen 5y ago
    Yes, I would like to see the source that makes the claim that Reddit doesn't shadowban, because any mod of any subreddit can trivially refute that. I see shadowbanned users all the time, and Reddit calls them shadowbanned in the UI; it's not a secret. Nearly all of them are fairly new accounts, presumably having run afoul of some sort of automatic system. It definitely has plenty of false positives, but at the same time I also see essentially zero spam, so it's clear that they're trying to optimize for false positives rather than false negatives. It would be great if mods could at least approve a shadowbanned user for posting in their own subreddit, right now the only recourse is for them to make a new account and roll the dice again.
- ajkdhcb2 5y ago
  I was globally shadowbanned for using Mullvad VPN. Happened with multiple accounts. I usually posted in a subreddit where a mod would manually approve my comments, allowing me to get some hundred comment karma, but that still didnt fix it and the mod was getting tired of approving so i eventually gave up using reddit altogether
- 5y ago
actually_a_dog 5y ago
All is not lost if your account is mistakenly suspended due to VPN usage. They still allow you to: * Communicate with reddit admins via /r/reddit.com modmail * Appeal your suspension via https://www.reddit.com/appeals https://www.reddit.com/appeals with a permanently suspended account. See https://reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360045734911-My-account-has-been-permanently-suspended https://reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360045734911-My-acc...
- netfortius 5y ago
  Did that already, first for the original account, then the two older ones. Suspension reconfirmed almost immediately, on all three, indicative of an automated system in the backend. There is no Kimi (human intervention) behind this alleged appeal process.
  - Intries 5y ago
    This is sadly the case for may online platforms.
  - actually_a_dog 5y ago
    Did you try modmail to the global admins? That has to go somewhere that's read by actual humans.
- ja27 5y ago
  I was permanently banned last year, for no reason I could find. I do somewhat rarely run a PIA VPN at times so maybe that flagged me. I appealed the suspension, which sounded hopeless, but about 10 days later my account was restored.
jazzyjackson 5y ago
Tragedy of the commons, since PIA is popular, its naturally popular with people with actual sockpuppeting and webscraping to do. Switching VPNs to a less popular provider may provide temporary relief, if they are routing through IPs that are not infested with bots. To get around this and the other Captcha-related annoyances, PIA now offers dedicated IP as a $40-per-year add on: https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/vpn-features/dedicated-ip-vpn https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/vpn-features/dedicated...
EE84M3i 5y ago
Why does your employer require you to use a 3rd party VPN routed through the US?
- GoblinSlayer 5y ago
  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/23/nsa-director-defends-backdoors-into-technology-companies https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/23/nsa-director...
maxshm 5y ago
Thank you! Forewarned is forearmed
segfaultbuserr 5y ago
It's how the Reddit spam filter works. Once your account is flagged as spam by the system, it would be global shadowbanned automacially. At this stage, your account is essentially finished, it's basically impossible to talk to someone and get your account unblocked. Eventually the account would be deleted, all the post you've ever made would also be gone in the worst-case scenario, just like my previous account. My Reddit account was banned because I was posting from Tor. I've registered successfully via Tor and was able to use it without any problems for 6 months or so. One day, I was suddenly shadowbanned. I guess it was because the exit node I happened to be using that day was on a "kill on sight" spam blocklist. I always posted in good faith and never got into any flamewar, a few links I shared were well-received by the subs. Recently it almost happened again with my current account, but this time I was not global shadowbanned and it seemed to be just a local spam filter (many subreddits have their own anti-spam policies and auto-moderation queues). I sent a message to the Subreddit admin and I was able to post again. But after this incident I've completely stopped accessing my Reddit account via Tor.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- profmonocle 5y ago
  > At this stage, your account is essentially finished, it's basically impossible to talk to someone and get your account unblocked. Seems like they're following Google's strategy. Presumably, ad profit from each individual user is low enough that it's cheaper to accept false positives in their anti-abuse mechanism than it is to provide a functioning appeal process. Maybe if the user manages to go viral on Twitter or HN with their story they could get it reversed. Going viral with stories of false-positive bans is the primary way to restore a Google account, it probably works for Reddit too. Normal people have to suck eggs. At least losing a Reddit account is less life-disrupting for most people than losing their Google account.
  - eyeball 5y ago
    Is Google banning accounts just for vpn usage?
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
Setting up an at-home VPN is still a goal for me, so that I can connect to the internet from home - and more importantly, not reused by anyone with malicious intent - from anywhere.
dzhiurgis 5y ago
People shit on facebook but honestly how reddit is still pushing that redesign is unfathomable.
- core-utility 5y ago
  I find the Chat feature to be an awful addition as well. Sometimes when I'm trying to sell things, people will send a chat instead of an Inbox message and I end up not seeing it for days because there's not much of a notification and Apollo for iOS doesn't support chat (maybe no unofficial Reddit client does?)
- invalidusernam3 5y ago
  If it wasn't for the Apollo reddit client I would have stopped using reddit a long time ago. I used to use it mostly in the browser on my laptop/desktop, but it has become unusable even when using old.reddit.com (and plugins to force old.reddit.com). I now only use it as an app on my phone which has ruined a lot of the conversation because it's far more cumbersome to type on mobile, as well as stuff like switching between browser/reddit to copy a link or quote something on the web is a pain on mobile. I'm surprised there isn't a growing competitor to reddit at this point (that I know of)
  - jorams 5y ago
    > but it has become unusable even when using old.reddit.com Can you elaborate on that? From what I've noticed old.reddit.com has essentially not changed over the past years.
  - bigodbiel 5y ago
    I’ve been using old.reddit and RES and the UX, at least, has been consistent.
- ehnto 5y ago
  If old.reddit.com ever stops working that would be my cue to exit. The redesign is a case study in user hostile design and unusability.
- 5y ago
Faaak 5y ago
My account was suspended. However I didn't use a VPN. I realised that my IP is wrongly categorized in the Geo databases like Maxmind and thus is flagged as a VPN IP..
znpy 5y ago
The interesting takeaway here should be that if you want to take down somebody's reddit account, getting them to use your wifi access point while routing traffic through some of the cited vpns is enough. And you would never be discovered... Just blame it on reddit!
code_duck 5y ago
I periodically delete reddit accounts and start new ones, mainly to preserve anonymity and prevent harassment. 1 in 3 accounts I start are shadowbanned from the start for no apparent reason at all. I’ve never used a VPN. Same IPs and devices each time with no attempts at obfuscation or any activity that would reasonably seem suspicious.
- vero2 5y ago
  I create one with suffix "_month", post one comment, and wait for it to languish for a few weeks before using it 'regularly'. Otherwise it gets shadow ban.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  I also rotate periodically, partially to evade bans from moderators, and I’ve only run into trouble with IP bans on account creation. If you create the account from a clean IP you’re usually good, even if you use the banned IP later on. Reddit is ripe to be picked off by a more agile competitor, if someone could innovate in moderation. Monetization would also be a lot easier for a smaller startup, as Reddit more or less paved the way for a few different paths there that users now find acceptable. They abandoned the idea of making reddit gold a cryptocurrency, but it’s perfectly memey and would blow up a valuation if someone else could get it right.
waffle_maniac 5y ago
Reddit bans users for complaining about mods. Deleting my accounts and not looking back. Twitter is more free and people are generally less offended by criticism.
- vero2 5y ago
  This did happen to me once. I did once comment that code of one of mods was fact wrong (code snippet). The mod warned me about banning me from the sub. I just requested please see the code and you did type it incorrectly. Next day ban...
  - rvba 5y ago
    Arent you confusing mods with reddit admins? Admins are employees of reddit who can ban you globaly from the whole website. Mods are "random" people who created a subreddit or happen to moderate it. They are unpaid volunteers and can only ban you from the subreddit they moderate. There is lots of drama about people trading mod spots (there is that person/group of persons who modereated like 250 subreddits), hacking someone to become head mod - and then using a sub to push agenda, or straight out selling mod spots. You can earn a suprising big amount of money if you mod certain subreddits (e.g. related to cryptocurrencies or news). Reddit admins seem to not care at all who mods ban. Some time ago they introduced a process to remove mods who dont moderate a sub at all (remove illegal/against TOS conent) but that's that. If you are a mod you are a king of a sub, only other mod (of same subreddit, who was there ealier) can remove you. In theory admins could but they dont care, unless they have bad press. That's why there are many "splinter" subreddits with similar names.
    - vero2 5y ago
      Thanks for the reply Not sure how much power mods have? May be they are tag the account as spam/<threat> and some AI/ML automagically bans the account.
    - waffle_maniac 5y ago
      What can actually happen is the user is banned from a sub and goes to another sub and complains. The mod that banned them complains/reports to admins that this is target harassment and gets the user banned from the site. Complaining about top reddit admins will get you banned for targeted harassment as well. They can do whatever they want since it's their site. I just don't think I'm interested in engaging when I can setup my own blog.
bryans 5y ago
Both Reddit's admins and their future-employee mods are completely out of control, in a way that makes Facebook's intentional topic manipulation seem tame by comparison. These people go out of their way to ban people for no reason -- constantly, every single day -- in a way that can only be described as intentionally abusive. They appear to get some kind of sadistic pleasure in reading ban appeals and denying them, knowing full well that the bans are improper and the appeals are justified. In fact, they make a point of not properly responding to reports of harassment (including the sexual proposition of minors), but they will permanently ban well-known and popular accounts that never broke a single rule. They'll even ban people directly out of spite, or because they disagree with you. There is nothing too petty for them. They're even swindling advertisers in the most brazenly shameful way, and they've been banning live streamers to protect the lie[1]. Ultimately, Reddit's strategy is to simultaneously file their IPO and switch the design to be a TikTok clone with a web3 component attached to the awards system. They're going to tank rapidly, but it doesn't matter to them because they already got paid. The bans were a way to prevent rocking the investor boat until the IPO, but they got caught up in it, and now it's going too far. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29574786 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29574786
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  "They appear to get some kind of sadistic pleasure in reading ban appeals and denying them, knowing full well that the bans are improper and the appeals are justified." Or they get pleasure by making more money, in not paying enough people to manual review issues.
  - k8sToGo 5y ago
    I thought mods are unpaid?
    - darebak 5y ago
      Mods are not paid by Reddit, admins are paid but I think that some admins are also modding a few subs.
ddtaylor 5y ago
A few years back I started completely separating my Windows/gaming system from anything I care about, which includes any credentials. While I never really considered Reddit an "important" credential for my main account, I decided to avoid starting a slippery slope and created a separate account for my gaming system since I am usually reading subreddits related to the games I play and want to post comments. For the most part this worked great. Except one day I happened to post from my main account before a gaming session to a popular gaming subreddit while there was a controversial debate happening. The debate exceeded the mods ability to manage the discussions and so a large sweeping keyword temporary ban was put into effect and anyone who violated it received a 24 hour ban from the subreddit. Fine, whatever. However, before I even knew I was temporarily banned on my main account I was logged into the gaming system and posting unrelated normal comments about the game. After a few hours I noticed that I wasn't getting the replies I normally would and I thought it was strange. Eventually I logged I went to check my email and stuff on my real computer and noticed the temporary ban message. Then I started looking at my gaming account in private browsing and noticed none of my comments appeared: it was shadowbanned. Not just in that subreddit but entirely. You actually couldn't even load my profile page content. The account would "exist" but none of my content such as pinned posts, avatar or bio/description etc. would be present. I thought it was strange so I contacted Reddit. It was entirely automated I highly doubt a human was involved in responding to the message through their support channel. I got a canned message about how my account was circumventing a subreddit ban. My guess is that anyone using a VPN or Tor is also having this same problem - probably just with a lot more subreddits and a lot more accounts though =/
mik09 5y ago
i don't think you can post on 4chan using a vpn either.
m-p-3 5y ago
One of my reddit accounts was suspended because I exclusively use it within Tor. I contacted support about the matter and they restored the account once they saw it wasn't doing anything against the sitewide rules.
johndill 5y ago
I've gotten a 7 day ban just for being a member of a group. Never posted, never up or down voted. Just a member. Banned for 7 days. I'm Reddit user 2,200 or so, never had even a warning about anything. I'm lucky they didn't permanently ban my account
- knome 5y ago
  How would that even work? Moderators don't have access to any lists of users that have subscribed to their subreddits.
  - hajile 5y ago
    Don't forget that this is a company where the CEO can apparently go in and edit other user's posts for revenge and he was put in place and tolerated because he was somehow better than the person in charge before him. Just posting in the "wrong" sub can get you banned all across the platform (no matter what you actually said). Of course, this violates several of the Reddit mod TOS/guidelines, but Reddit doesn't care. Yesterday, one of the top stories in the default /r/news is the attempted assassination of a Mayoral candidate. Today, it turns out that the guy was a far-left BLM supporter and all mentions and threads have been retroactively scrubbed from the sub. It's just a large echo-chamber supported from the top down. Would it be exceptional to think that this information could "leak" into the hands of the echo-chamber mods?
    - blindmute 5y ago
      Worse than an echo chamber, it's an intentionally curated propaganda site. At least in an echo chamber you could scroll down to see the unpopular posts.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  That’s not a thing for the entire site, so you must be confusing a ban from a subreddit with a sitewide ban, and subreddit mods are (for some reason) allowed to do whatever toxic, evil thing they want, including banning people for subscribing to another subreddit.
qzx_pierri 5y ago
If you think Facebook is bad, just go to the reddit comment section on any post on ANY sub to see massive amounts of groupthink and suppression of any opposing ideas via downvotes. Forming any attachment to a Reddit account is useless because the post/comment you make will be either suppressed or accepted based on the popular opinion that exists within the subreddit to which you are posting. The issues outlined in this thread are exactly why I wipe my comment history every 2-3 months, export my subscriptions, delete my account, create new account & re-import my subscriptions. It’s tough though because people will call you a shill if you have a new account. But then again, people will claim you sold your account to a viral marketing company if you have an older account. It’s messy all around. Just wait until reddit acquires a ubiquitous hold on popular culture once Instagram finally dies off in 5-7 years. The problems discussed in this thread will amplify exponentially.
liara_k 5y ago
Likely because bots and troll farms are totally out of control, and they don't have a more accurate way of fighting it. IMHO, this is also the reason behind some of the heavy-handed moderation on some subreddits. AFAICT, as bad as it is already, this is only going to get worse as (1) NLP AI gets better and (2) there remains no positive defense against sybil attacks. Just curious... I'm assuming people have already thought of doing a pseudonymous web of trust--or is that somehow inherently impossible even ignoring the old spam-solution form checkbox for universal adoption?
- segfaultbuserr 5y ago
  > AFAICT, as bad as it is already, this is only going to get worse as (1) NLP AI gets better and (2) there remains no positive defense against sybil attacks. I strongly agree. The future of public discourse online looks dim. At that point, on one hand, platforms will certainly require more Personal Identifiable Information, which harms the privacy of regular users. Meanwhile, trolls and bots from various malicious actors will be able to dominate and control many conversations on an unprecedented scale. One would have neither privacy nor security, the web envisioned by digital utopianists as a free, open platform will be completely dead. 100 years ago, the pioneers of aviation believed the invention of airplanes would be a force to end all wars, because it breaks the power asymmetry in battlefields. But we get massive aerial bombardments on civilians instead. > It was an idea shared by many after the inception of flight. War would become practically impossible, the brothers thought, because the scouting done by aircraft would equalize opposing nations with information on each other's movements, preventing surprise attacks. > "We thought governments would recognize the impossibility of winning by surprise attacks," Orville said in 1917, "and that no country would enter into war with another of equal size when it knew that it would have to win by simply wearing out its enemy." > Two years before, he had declared: "The aeroplane will prevent war by making it too expensive, too slow, too difficult, too long drawn out." > "Yes, we thought it might have military use - but in reverse," said the 76-year-old inventor, whose brother had died at age 45 in 1912. "Because the men who start wars aren't the ones who do the fighting, we hoped that the possibility of dropping bombs on capital cities would deter them." 100 years later, the pioneers of the web believed the invention of the Web would be the force to a free society because it breaks the power asymmetry on information between individuals and the state. But we are now getting massive manipulations from all types of malicious actors. > "Information," Gage [John Gage from Sun Microsystems] answers, matter-of-factly. "What stopped the Vietnam War was that we told the truth about what was happening. Today, the truth-telling mechanisms that we can put in people's hands are a million times more powerful," he says, wending through the ghetto fringe of East Palo Alto. "And when every person on the planet has access to that power - which is what I'm trying to do - then watch what happens." Yes, many people now has access to that power, but some, like state actors (or just plain old advertisers), now have order-of-magnitude more power.
Hakashiro 5y ago
I believed in Reddit very strongly. I did. And then they started pulling off all these user hostile moves. "This community is better in the app" when I wasn't logged in. I understand why. They need to protect their investors' interests: which is collect as much data as possible. But if what you're doing is introducing friction to your own users then that seems like a clearly stupid move. Then again of course Reddit admins don't know if I'm a user because, after all, I didn't log in. But perhaps I just wanted to check out a specific posts in my phone web view without opening the post in the fucking app? So I deleted my account. And I don't miss it too much, I never really found actually interesting content on it. On the other hand I've regained so much time that I used to invest in mindless scrolling.
parasense 5y ago
I'd like to mention that in 2022 Reddit still does not have IPv6. The reason I was given back around ~2010, is how they block IP addresses. Allegedly, according to an admin (who shall not be named) is how Reddit blocks spam with IP filtering. Apparently the technology only works with v4, and somehow Reddit deeply integrated the tech into their stack. Also the idea that allowing v6 would allow circumvention, which to some extent is probably true. The TLDR is that Reddit is still not on v6 because they have a draconian IP filtering kit built into their technology stack.
14 5y ago
As others have said here reddit is seriously going to trash. The mods have ruined it and if you don’t agree with their narrative you will have your comments deleted or your account banned. r/Canada for example is utter trash now and won’t allow respectful open debate. It feels like it is state ran or shill ran and a narrative being painted. I hope to see reddit fall out of favour for something more open and free to discuss, respectfully, differences of opinion.
Gareth321 5y ago
Admins and mods are banning untold users every day for any and no reason at all. It is a really terrible place for discussion now, even if you somehow manage to find a small subreddit which permits nuanced discussion. It will inevitably be banned or the mods replaced with Reddit-approved mods and all nuanced discussion banned. I hope to see a Digg-like exodus soon.
- StellarTabi 5y ago
  > I hope to see a Digg-like exodus soon. Small problem with this. What enabled the Digg-to-reddit exodus was a strong competitor lying in the shadows. Nobody lying in the shadows behind reddit could handle an exodus. Most lemmy instances regularly go down anytime reddit so much as sneezes. I remember an exodus attempt to Voat took Voat down for at least a week, and in fact Voat never got back online until the entire exodus quit.
  - Gareth321 5y ago
    To be honest, I think there are strong alternatives now, but obviously none of them have the infrastructure necessary to sustain the entire Reddit community migrating overnight. Reddit's servers were flaky for years after the exodus, but we just lived with it because Digg sucked more. These days we have Kubernetes and commoditised hosting, so the infrastructure piece is largely solved. The question mark is around funding. Thankfully I'm seeing a lot more interest in funding for social platforms these days. VCs smell blood since Facebook signalled they're in decline. Twitter has decided any right leaning political views will be banned, so they're actively purging double digits from their user base. Alternative news and discussion channels like Substack are flourishing. This is the first real opportunity social has had for competition in at least a decade.
9387367 5y ago
HN is no different and will ban Tor accounts at will. You can try and see for yourself.
- FollowingTheDao 5y ago
  What??? Why is HN against privacy and encryption?
- jeffbee 5y ago
  Yes, I went through dozens of HN accounts before I finally figured out that the IP address at my ex-wife's house was on some kind of HN automatic kill list. Every time I went over there and glanced at HN, that account would get silently shadowbanned. HN doesn't have any moral authority to lecture Reddit on this topic.
throwawaynay 5y ago
Honestly I can't say that I don't understand them. It's so easy to make good bots, and spam/automated propaganda is a HUGE problem on any social network. Also posting good (stolen) content automatically to farm karma to then be able to spam everywhere for a few hours is a very common tactic If I had to run a free social media like reddit I would do the same, you have no idea how hard it is to handle that imo
kazinator 5y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30328120 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30328120
Roverlord 5y ago
There must be more to it than that. I use PIA VPN on reddit all the time (for at least the last 5 years or so), from various european endpoints, and I'm still fine there. I'm not shadowbanned as people do reply to my comments. The account is a decade old though so I assume that they factor account age into it as well. I've also resolutely ignored the email verification pop up for years so I'm kind of surprised I'm still on it.
bstrech 5y ago
Interesting topic. Not defending the social media platforms or forum websites, but they do need to defend against spoofing of accounts, bots, etc. This obviously isn't the way to do it, but it is the fastest way for them to do so. One analogy for us as the users: It's the same as callerID and numbers being flagged as spam. You would never route your outbound phone calls through a phone gateway which everyone used. VPNs have become the defacto way for people to manage privacy on the internet and it has already been shown that VPNs are not as bulletproof as people once thought. There are other solutions out there. DM me for more.
modshatereality 5y ago
F reddit and F the mods.

332 points by netfortius 5y ago

netfortius 5y ago

Found this BS, in dire contradiction with my test: https://reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/search?filter_by=knowledge_base&query=vpn&utf8=%E2%9C%93 https://reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/search?filter_by=knowledge_b...

bibinou 5y ago
this article talks about being locked for security reasons, not banned (suspended).
- netfortius 5y ago
  Which the more so infers VPN not suspension driving...

azalemeth 5y ago

I've been using a VPN continuously since the UK introduced the "Snooper's Charter". VPN usage has risen hugely around the world and it's not uncommon to see (mis)advertising on TV from more disreputable companies like Sophos and NordVPN. Over time, these positions will become increasingly untenable. If everyone uses a VPN or lives behind CGNAT then these kack-handed approaches to "security" won't be seen as being plausible – the more real users they block or inconvenience the greater the harm to their product and I am sure this is going to go up over time. It's not like a real attacker can vary their ipv4 addresses willy-nilly at any rate...

a_r41 5y ago
Could you please elaborate on NordVPN being disreputable? This is the first I'm hearing of this.

captainmuon 5y ago

Can you disclose which VPN you are using? I sometimes use ExpressVPN + a different browser to protect my identity, but it would be annoying if I lost my account. The charitable interpretation is that Reddit got a lot of abuse from individual IPs, the IP didn't seem to be shared to them, and they just blacklisted it. I assume they don't generally blacklist IPs from abusive users, since otherwise university campusses would quickly have problems :-).

netfortius 5y ago
PIA
Mindwipe 5y ago
> The charitable interpretation is that Reddit got a lot of abuse from individual IPs, the IP didn't seem to be shared to them, and they just blacklisted it. They likely buy databases of IP addresses which have likelihood of fraud attached to them from third parties like Neustar or Geocomply or Digital Envoy. Being a VPN address is a great way to get a giant red flag on those databases (correctly).

staticelf 5y ago

Doesn't surprise me the slightest, Reddit is not like it used to be. It used to be the underdog where free speech flourished and today it's a chineese-owned propaganda machine. A few users controls the biggest subreddits and most deviating views get themselves either banned or restricted.

pedro2 5y ago
Chinese? I'd say Russian.
- dorianmariefr 5y ago
  > Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.
- sebow 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure a certain chinese company invested ~300M$ couple of years ago[0] if i recall correctly.However the platform became totally unusable and a sh*tfest way before that,think ~2014+, mainly because it was the turning point where no transparency was maintained or provided anymore, especially when it comes to moderation of users & their posts and management of subreddits.By early 2016 this was almost 'proved', but at that point this tactic resulted in creating echo-chambers, which drove up users and made it the "successful" platform it is today.Turns out nobody really cares about transparency and doing the proper job when the users and numbers are constantly exploding due to the forementioned created echo-chambers. By the way my guess why reddit was never russian-oriented or 'aligned' is because most russophile subreddits were actively targeted and shut down(for good reasons many times), whilst chinese subreddits, the 'official' north-korean (propaganda) subreddit, and many others, were kept up and almost treated as separate platforms from the mainstream website. [0] ( https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/11/reddit-300-million/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/11/reddit-300-million/ ) Indeed it was,once again, Tencent, the company famous for destroying MMOs, infiltrate the western gaming markets and pollute it with micro-transactions, cosmetics, etc.We're on the edge of touching politics and geostrategy here and I don't want certain people to jump telling me i'm a conspiracy nutjob.At this point the record is there, go look at it.

jamesy0ung 5y ago

It seems fine to me, had an account for 5+ years, 30k karma and use a VPN to access it at school daily.

netfortius 5y ago
Same VPN exit point? Maybe this is the difference between traveler like my case and someone protecting their comm over same infra path?!?

_joel 5y ago

I use a VPN and have had no issues, but that's just one data point.

djwinter 5y ago

I suspect I was banned from Instagram in the same way. No explanation was given. I use ProtonVPN. It wasn't until Spotify stopped working sometime later (403 Forbidden for all HTTP requests) that I narrowed it down to using VPN. Seems to be a growing thing. Thankfully, Spotify didn't do anything to my account, and it continued to work from regular IPs.

miyuru 5y ago
At work we got a login attack via VPN IPs and we blocked VPNs from login in via AWS WAF and 2 days later a major user was complaining that he cant login. We had to remove the rule. (developers were working on captcha in the meantime) I also used a tunnel when Spotify was not available globally. It did not create any issues. Using a Public VPN is double edged sword. If you really need it its better to setup a wireguard tunnel to a own server as the the Public VPN IPs as monitored by the security companies and also get abused all the time.
- Monotoko 5y ago
  Can't you do a captcha with the WAF? I'm pretty sure that's an option on AWS
  - miyuru 5y ago
    the attack was to an api endpoint. which is queried via xhr on the main app. adding captcha to it would break the app to all users. the developers are now working on adding captcha at the application level and also signing the api endpoints.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Can't you do a captcha with the WAF? I'm pretty sure that's an option on AWS You can. I know because our information security office did it to all of our web endpoints. Which are mostly API endpoints. Without telling anyone involved with individual apps, before or even, until specific complaints got to them, after doing it.

EMM_386 5y ago

What were you posting? I've used a VPN constantly and I have a Reddit account in the 15-year club, it hasn't been an issue.

netfortius 5y ago
No posts in the control account. Just VPN exit points "switching"
- sdoering 5y ago
  But couldn't it be that this specific behavior triggered a spam warning? I have no insight into Reddit regarding security, but would expect new/fresh and empty accounts under special scrutiny and when an account like that hops from IP to IP this would - if I were to build a heuristic at least trigger an alarm/ban/temporary lock of voting/posting functions. Just an idea regarding your latest test. The part of the main account sucks - I am with you on that.
tapland 5y ago
I haven't seen any issues with my 10+ year old accounts. They are probably marked as safe and only newer accounts at risk.
- StellarTabi 5y ago
  Probably my 10 years + verified email + MFA + never using a public VPN saves me a lot of grief in the abuse detection algorithm lottery.

amelius 5y ago

What is the most promising original-Reddit clone?

est 5y ago
There isn't any, unless someone solves the spam or bot account problem.
- Intries 5y ago
  There are a bunch of them, but by far the largest problem with new networks like this comes with the network affect. In the beginning no users use the network, but if no users use it no body migrates to the platform and the circle continues. This is the reason why it is so hard to migrate your social circle away from FB Messenger or Whatsapp.
stfu 5y ago
the OG is 4chan
- kibwen 5y ago
  4chan isn't the OG, it was long predated by Slashdot and Something Awful.
  - LinuxBender 5y ago
    And those were predated by Usenet which still exists but nobody has solved the spam issues.
- StellarTabi 5y ago
  4chan is not like reddit
Miner49er 5y ago
Lemmy? https://join-lemmy.org/ https://join-lemmy.org/

dgellow 5y ago

Small tip for people reading comments: if you want to read Reddit anonymously you can replace the domain of any reddit URL with teddit.net. It's an open source, lightweight, web UI for Reddit focused on privacy: https://teddit.net/ https://teddit.net/. Git repo available here: https://codeberg.org/teddit/teddit https://codeberg.org/teddit/teddit.

scim-knox-twox 5y ago
Also: https://libreddit.kavin.rocks/ https://libreddit.kavin.rocks/
jve 5y ago
What a stupid domain choice. WARNING: It is not sufficient to replace first char in domain. You must also TLD.
- scim-knox-twox 5y ago
  So? I have Privacy Redirect for that…

parhamn 5y ago

I wonder if it's feasible to make a VPN network where you peer with only _one_ other individual but that individual is selected somewhat randomly. As in, you offer your residential IP to one other person and one other person offers their residential IP to you. The only services I've seen involve a few people offering their servers as n-ary client exit nodes which obviously ends up with saturation problems like the tor network. Obviously the legal concerns are a big deal but if companies like Mullvad aren't liable for illegal web traffic, one might be able to get similar protections for people that install this VPN.

dtech 5y ago
That seems like a bad idea. When illegal activity is done on the internet the first thing law enforcement will do is go after you (by subpoena'ing your ISP for your information based on IP). You also have places like Germany where copyright representatives are very aggressive and will fine/settle you large amounts when downloading pirated content.

ebbp 5y ago

I’d guess it’s not the usage of a VPN that has triggered this, but rather a new account immediately presenting multiple IP addresses. I’d guess that would trigger abuse flags at most places (especially from known VPN IP addresses which tend to have a lot of malicious activity originating from them). This isn’t to defend them - it seems very odd to immediately permanently suspend accounts like that!

sparkling 5y ago
Yes. Most likely it is just a correlation, not the real cause. We have been using https://focsec.com/ https://focsec.com/ for detecting trial abuse in our products. People using VPNs (+ new free email accounts) to "restart" trial periods is something that is quite common, we found.
- grumple 5y ago
  How resource intensive / business focused is your product? Lots of people use vpns for work or privacy, I think that method would have a lot of false positives. In cases where trial account usage costs you very little or nothing I'd err on the side of not blocking users.
  - lelandfe 5y ago
    > I think that method would have a lot of false positives What makes you think that? This is you saying that that detection service is not very good, FWIW.
  - ziml77 5y ago
    People don’t use public VPNs for work. The tunnel terminates in the same network that the physical office is on. And using a public VPN from a work machine for privacy is a very bad idea. That’s grounds for termination if they catch you and possibly an even worse issue if the company ends up under investigation for any reason. They’re going to take a very close look at anything of yours they can get access to since it won’t have ended up in normal audit logs.

ZiggyCrane 5y ago

Upvote bots use VPN all the time, so there might just be a chance that you managed to get IP from VPN that was perma banned by reddit (yes, its a thing).

jdkjs 5y ago

It seems obvious that this is the result of someone else having abused Reddit too much from PIA addresses. I also find blanket proxy bans reasonable: it’s akin to refusing service to those who wear a balaclava to a store.

williamtrask 5y ago
I see the analogy but there’s a pretty big difference between hiding your face and hiding your device’s IP address. The former is a social norm going back tens of thousands of years, the latter is an arbitrary and artificial artefact of man made technology in the last 30. A better analogy is sending mail with either proxy return addresses or none at all. Both are socially acceptable in most circumstances.
robin_reala 5y ago
In this case it’s like wandering in to a store with a balaclava on and receiving a permanent ban from the store.
BLKNSLVR 5y ago
I think the analogy is closer to "refusing service to those who refuse the rectal thermometer test upon entry to a store".
GoblinSlayer 5y ago
Why a store would ban a balaclava if the person fully authenticates himself and has a long good track record and does nothing wrong?

hassanahmad 5y ago

I don't think reddit accounts get banned by using VPN but it is more about what you are posting using your accounts.

ridgered4 5y ago
I've definitely created a new account recently over VPN, posted a single question in a linux forum and then found the account was shadow banned.
- hassanahmad 5y ago
  You can always contact the reddit team and if your account is suspended wrongly, it would definitely be reinstated.
  - StellarTabi 5y ago
    Also important to note that if you didn't post a lot, many subs will auto-remove content from low karma users. So it's possible to have misidentified a global shadow ban with a few subreddit's low karma filter. One of my spammer adversaries regularly games FreeKarma4U and a specific star wars game subreddit until they figure out our low karma filter threshold then they go nuts with the spam.
StellarTabi 5y ago
It's really more about what kind of things people were posting from that VPN IP in the months/years before you. The abuse detection system will say "the tshirt spammer is back, flag this account" just because you used the same VPN as them.

tootahe45 5y ago

It can be even worse than suspending you, as early as 2018 i noticed they were shadow banning you based on VPN (PIA also). Meaning you could still post but not be seen, or have the ability to notify people you replied to. I've never since bothered to have an account there. Reddit's CEO, like Jack Dorsey, denies 'shadow banning', even though you can test it by getting -100 karma and watching your comments reach nobody. The negative karma shadow ban is why Reddit is the biggest hivemind on the internet, FYI.

Monotoko 5y ago
The -100 shadowban is mostly subreddit dependent, and done via automoderator by the mods of most larger subreddits. An actual admin shadowban does happen and they are employed, but I don't think they're particularly hidden. As a mod I see "User is shadowbanned" when they message us if they've been shadowbanned from Reddit by the admins.
- kibwen 5y ago
  Yes, I would like to see the source that makes the claim that Reddit doesn't shadowban, because any mod of any subreddit can trivially refute that. I see shadowbanned users all the time, and Reddit calls them shadowbanned in the UI; it's not a secret. Nearly all of them are fairly new accounts, presumably having run afoul of some sort of automatic system. It definitely has plenty of false positives, but at the same time I also see essentially zero spam, so it's clear that they're trying to optimize for false positives rather than false negatives. It would be great if mods could at least approve a shadowbanned user for posting in their own subreddit, right now the only recourse is for them to make a new account and roll the dice again.
ajkdhcb2 5y ago
I was globally shadowbanned for using Mullvad VPN. Happened with multiple accounts. I usually posted in a subreddit where a mod would manually approve my comments, allowing me to get some hundred comment karma, but that still didnt fix it and the mod was getting tired of approving so i eventually gave up using reddit altogether
5y ago

actually_a_dog 5y ago

All is not lost if your account is mistakenly suspended due to VPN usage. They still allow you to: * Communicate with reddit admins via /r/reddit.com modmail * Appeal your suspension via https://www.reddit.com/appeals https://www.reddit.com/appeals with a permanently suspended account. See https://reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360045734911-My-account-has-been-permanently-suspended https://reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360045734911-My-acc...

netfortius 5y ago
Did that already, first for the original account, then the two older ones. Suspension reconfirmed almost immediately, on all three, indicative of an automated system in the backend. There is no Kimi (human intervention) behind this alleged appeal process.
- Intries 5y ago
  This is sadly the case for may online platforms.
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  Did you try modmail to the global admins? That has to go somewhere that's read by actual humans.
ja27 5y ago
I was permanently banned last year, for no reason I could find. I do somewhat rarely run a PIA VPN at times so maybe that flagged me. I appealed the suspension, which sounded hopeless, but about 10 days later my account was restored.

jazzyjackson 5y ago

Tragedy of the commons, since PIA is popular, its naturally popular with people with actual sockpuppeting and webscraping to do. Switching VPNs to a less popular provider may provide temporary relief, if they are routing through IPs that are not infested with bots. To get around this and the other Captcha-related annoyances, PIA now offers dedicated IP as a $40-per-year add on: https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/vpn-features/dedicated-ip-vpn https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/vpn-features/dedicated...

EE84M3i 5y ago

Why does your employer require you to use a 3rd party VPN routed through the US?

GoblinSlayer 5y ago
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/23/nsa-director-defends-backdoors-into-technology-companies https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/23/nsa-director...

maxshm 5y ago

Thank you! Forewarned is forearmed

segfaultbuserr 5y ago

It's how the Reddit spam filter works. Once your account is flagged as spam by the system, it would be global shadowbanned automacially. At this stage, your account is essentially finished, it's basically impossible to talk to someone and get your account unblocked. Eventually the account would be deleted, all the post you've ever made would also be gone in the worst-case scenario, just like my previous account. My Reddit account was banned because I was posting from Tor. I've registered successfully via Tor and was able to use it without any problems for 6 months or so. One day, I was suddenly shadowbanned. I guess it was because the exit node I happened to be using that day was on a "kill on sight" spam blocklist. I always posted in good faith and never got into any flamewar, a few links I shared were well-received by the subs. Recently it almost happened again with my current account, but this time I was not global shadowbanned and it seemed to be just a local spam filter (many subreddits have their own anti-spam policies and auto-moderation queues). I sent a message to the Subreddit admin and I was able to post again. But after this incident I've completely stopped accessing my Reddit account via Tor.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
profmonocle 5y ago
> At this stage, your account is essentially finished, it's basically impossible to talk to someone and get your account unblocked. Seems like they're following Google's strategy. Presumably, ad profit from each individual user is low enough that it's cheaper to accept false positives in their anti-abuse mechanism than it is to provide a functioning appeal process. Maybe if the user manages to go viral on Twitter or HN with their story they could get it reversed. Going viral with stories of false-positive bans is the primary way to restore a Google account, it probably works for Reddit too. Normal people have to suck eggs. At least losing a Reddit account is less life-disrupting for most people than losing their Google account.
- eyeball 5y ago
  Is Google banning accounts just for vpn usage?

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

Setting up an at-home VPN is still a goal for me, so that I can connect to the internet from home - and more importantly, not reused by anyone with malicious intent - from anywhere.

dzhiurgis 5y ago

People shit on facebook but honestly how reddit is still pushing that redesign is unfathomable.

core-utility 5y ago
I find the Chat feature to be an awful addition as well. Sometimes when I'm trying to sell things, people will send a chat instead of an Inbox message and I end up not seeing it for days because there's not much of a notification and Apollo for iOS doesn't support chat (maybe no unofficial Reddit client does?)
invalidusernam3 5y ago
If it wasn't for the Apollo reddit client I would have stopped using reddit a long time ago. I used to use it mostly in the browser on my laptop/desktop, but it has become unusable even when using old.reddit.com (and plugins to force old.reddit.com). I now only use it as an app on my phone which has ruined a lot of the conversation because it's far more cumbersome to type on mobile, as well as stuff like switching between browser/reddit to copy a link or quote something on the web is a pain on mobile. I'm surprised there isn't a growing competitor to reddit at this point (that I know of)
- jorams 5y ago
  > but it has become unusable even when using old.reddit.com Can you elaborate on that? From what I've noticed old.reddit.com has essentially not changed over the past years.
- bigodbiel 5y ago
  I’ve been using old.reddit and RES and the UX, at least, has been consistent.
ehnto 5y ago
If old.reddit.com ever stops working that would be my cue to exit. The redesign is a case study in user hostile design and unusability.
5y ago

Faaak 5y ago

My account was suspended. However I didn't use a VPN. I realised that my IP is wrongly categorized in the Geo databases like Maxmind and thus is flagged as a VPN IP..

znpy 5y ago

The interesting takeaway here should be that if you want to take down somebody's reddit account, getting them to use your wifi access point while routing traffic through some of the cited vpns is enough. And you would never be discovered... Just blame it on reddit!

code_duck 5y ago

I periodically delete reddit accounts and start new ones, mainly to preserve anonymity and prevent harassment. 1 in 3 accounts I start are shadowbanned from the start for no apparent reason at all. I’ve never used a VPN. Same IPs and devices each time with no attempts at obfuscation or any activity that would reasonably seem suspicious.

vero2 5y ago
I create one with suffix "_month", post one comment, and wait for it to languish for a few weeks before using it 'regularly'. Otherwise it gets shadow ban.
TameAntelope 5y ago
I also rotate periodically, partially to evade bans from moderators, and I’ve only run into trouble with IP bans on account creation. If you create the account from a clean IP you’re usually good, even if you use the banned IP later on. Reddit is ripe to be picked off by a more agile competitor, if someone could innovate in moderation. Monetization would also be a lot easier for a smaller startup, as Reddit more or less paved the way for a few different paths there that users now find acceptable. They abandoned the idea of making reddit gold a cryptocurrency, but it’s perfectly memey and would blow up a valuation if someone else could get it right.

waffle_maniac 5y ago

Reddit bans users for complaining about mods. Deleting my accounts and not looking back. Twitter is more free and people are generally less offended by criticism.

vero2 5y ago
This did happen to me once. I did once comment that code of one of mods was fact wrong (code snippet). The mod warned me about banning me from the sub. I just requested please see the code and you did type it incorrectly. Next day ban...
- rvba 5y ago
  Arent you confusing mods with reddit admins? Admins are employees of reddit who can ban you globaly from the whole website. Mods are "random" people who created a subreddit or happen to moderate it. They are unpaid volunteers and can only ban you from the subreddit they moderate. There is lots of drama about people trading mod spots (there is that person/group of persons who modereated like 250 subreddits), hacking someone to become head mod - and then using a sub to push agenda, or straight out selling mod spots. You can earn a suprising big amount of money if you mod certain subreddits (e.g. related to cryptocurrencies or news). Reddit admins seem to not care at all who mods ban. Some time ago they introduced a process to remove mods who dont moderate a sub at all (remove illegal/against TOS conent) but that's that. If you are a mod you are a king of a sub, only other mod (of same subreddit, who was there ealier) can remove you. In theory admins could but they dont care, unless they have bad press. That's why there are many "splinter" subreddits with similar names.
  - vero2 5y ago
    Thanks for the reply Not sure how much power mods have? May be they are tag the account as spam/<threat> and some AI/ML automagically bans the account.
  - waffle_maniac 5y ago
    What can actually happen is the user is banned from a sub and goes to another sub and complains. The mod that banned them complains/reports to admins that this is target harassment and gets the user banned from the site. Complaining about top reddit admins will get you banned for targeted harassment as well. They can do whatever they want since it's their site. I just don't think I'm interested in engaging when I can setup my own blog.

bryans 5y ago

Both Reddit's admins and their future-employee mods are completely out of control, in a way that makes Facebook's intentional topic manipulation seem tame by comparison. These people go out of their way to ban people for no reason -- constantly, every single day -- in a way that can only be described as intentionally abusive. They appear to get some kind of sadistic pleasure in reading ban appeals and denying them, knowing full well that the bans are improper and the appeals are justified. In fact, they make a point of not properly responding to reports of harassment (including the sexual proposition of minors), but they will permanently ban well-known and popular accounts that never broke a single rule. They'll even ban people directly out of spite, or because they disagree with you. There is nothing too petty for them. They're even swindling advertisers in the most brazenly shameful way, and they've been banning live streamers to protect the lie[1]. Ultimately, Reddit's strategy is to simultaneously file their IPO and switch the design to be a TikTok clone with a web3 component attached to the awards system. They're going to tank rapidly, but it doesn't matter to them because they already got paid. The bans were a way to prevent rocking the investor boat until the IPO, but they got caught up in it, and now it's going too far. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29574786 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29574786

hutzlibu 5y ago
"They appear to get some kind of sadistic pleasure in reading ban appeals and denying them, knowing full well that the bans are improper and the appeals are justified." Or they get pleasure by making more money, in not paying enough people to manual review issues.
- k8sToGo 5y ago
  I thought mods are unpaid?
  - darebak 5y ago
    Mods are not paid by Reddit, admins are paid but I think that some admins are also modding a few subs.

ddtaylor 5y ago

A few years back I started completely separating my Windows/gaming system from anything I care about, which includes any credentials. While I never really considered Reddit an "important" credential for my main account, I decided to avoid starting a slippery slope and created a separate account for my gaming system since I am usually reading subreddits related to the games I play and want to post comments. For the most part this worked great. Except one day I happened to post from my main account before a gaming session to a popular gaming subreddit while there was a controversial debate happening. The debate exceeded the mods ability to manage the discussions and so a large sweeping keyword temporary ban was put into effect and anyone who violated it received a 24 hour ban from the subreddit. Fine, whatever. However, before I even knew I was temporarily banned on my main account I was logged into the gaming system and posting unrelated normal comments about the game. After a few hours I noticed that I wasn't getting the replies I normally would and I thought it was strange. Eventually I logged I went to check my email and stuff on my real computer and noticed the temporary ban message. Then I started looking at my gaming account in private browsing and noticed none of my comments appeared: it was shadowbanned. Not just in that subreddit but entirely. You actually couldn't even load my profile page content. The account would "exist" but none of my content such as pinned posts, avatar or bio/description etc. would be present. I thought it was strange so I contacted Reddit. It was entirely automated I highly doubt a human was involved in responding to the message through their support channel. I got a canned message about how my account was circumventing a subreddit ban. My guess is that anyone using a VPN or Tor is also having this same problem - probably just with a lot more subreddits and a lot more accounts though =/

mik09 5y ago

i don't think you can post on 4chan using a vpn either.

m-p-3 5y ago

One of my reddit accounts was suspended because I exclusively use it within Tor. I contacted support about the matter and they restored the account once they saw it wasn't doing anything against the sitewide rules.

johndill 5y ago

I've gotten a 7 day ban just for being a member of a group. Never posted, never up or down voted. Just a member. Banned for 7 days. I'm Reddit user 2,200 or so, never had even a warning about anything. I'm lucky they didn't permanently ban my account

knome 5y ago
How would that even work? Moderators don't have access to any lists of users that have subscribed to their subreddits.
- hajile 5y ago
  Don't forget that this is a company where the CEO can apparently go in and edit other user's posts for revenge and he was put in place and tolerated because he was somehow better than the person in charge before him. Just posting in the "wrong" sub can get you banned all across the platform (no matter what you actually said). Of course, this violates several of the Reddit mod TOS/guidelines, but Reddit doesn't care. Yesterday, one of the top stories in the default /r/news is the attempted assassination of a Mayoral candidate. Today, it turns out that the guy was a far-left BLM supporter and all mentions and threads have been retroactively scrubbed from the sub. It's just a large echo-chamber supported from the top down. Would it be exceptional to think that this information could "leak" into the hands of the echo-chamber mods?
  - blindmute 5y ago
    Worse than an echo chamber, it's an intentionally curated propaganda site. At least in an echo chamber you could scroll down to see the unpopular posts.
TameAntelope 5y ago
That’s not a thing for the entire site, so you must be confusing a ban from a subreddit with a sitewide ban, and subreddit mods are (for some reason) allowed to do whatever toxic, evil thing they want, including banning people for subscribing to another subreddit.

qzx_pierri 5y ago

If you think Facebook is bad, just go to the reddit comment section on any post on ANY sub to see massive amounts of groupthink and suppression of any opposing ideas via downvotes. Forming any attachment to a Reddit account is useless because the post/comment you make will be either suppressed or accepted based on the popular opinion that exists within the subreddit to which you are posting. The issues outlined in this thread are exactly why I wipe my comment history every 2-3 months, export my subscriptions, delete my account, create new account & re-import my subscriptions. It’s tough though because people will call you a shill if you have a new account. But then again, people will claim you sold your account to a viral marketing company if you have an older account. It’s messy all around. Just wait until reddit acquires a ubiquitous hold on popular culture once Instagram finally dies off in 5-7 years. The problems discussed in this thread will amplify exponentially.

liara_k 5y ago

Likely because bots and troll farms are totally out of control, and they don't have a more accurate way of fighting it. IMHO, this is also the reason behind some of the heavy-handed moderation on some subreddits. AFAICT, as bad as it is already, this is only going to get worse as (1) NLP AI gets better and (2) there remains no positive defense against sybil attacks. Just curious... I'm assuming people have already thought of doing a pseudonymous web of trust--or is that somehow inherently impossible even ignoring the old spam-solution form checkbox for universal adoption?

segfaultbuserr 5y ago
> AFAICT, as bad as it is already, this is only going to get worse as (1) NLP AI gets better and (2) there remains no positive defense against sybil attacks. I strongly agree. The future of public discourse online looks dim. At that point, on one hand, platforms will certainly require more Personal Identifiable Information, which harms the privacy of regular users. Meanwhile, trolls and bots from various malicious actors will be able to dominate and control many conversations on an unprecedented scale. One would have neither privacy nor security, the web envisioned by digital utopianists as a free, open platform will be completely dead. 100 years ago, the pioneers of aviation believed the invention of airplanes would be a force to end all wars, because it breaks the power asymmetry in battlefields. But we get massive aerial bombardments on civilians instead. > It was an idea shared by many after the inception of flight. War would become practically impossible, the brothers thought, because the scouting done by aircraft would equalize opposing nations with information on each other's movements, preventing surprise attacks. > "We thought governments would recognize the impossibility of winning by surprise attacks," Orville said in 1917, "and that no country would enter into war with another of equal size when it knew that it would have to win by simply wearing out its enemy." > Two years before, he had declared: "The aeroplane will prevent war by making it too expensive, too slow, too difficult, too long drawn out." > "Yes, we thought it might have military use - but in reverse," said the 76-year-old inventor, whose brother had died at age 45 in 1912. "Because the men who start wars aren't the ones who do the fighting, we hoped that the possibility of dropping bombs on capital cities would deter them." 100 years later, the pioneers of the web believed the invention of the Web would be the force to a free society because it breaks the power asymmetry on information between individuals and the state. But we are now getting massive manipulations from all types of malicious actors. > "Information," Gage [John Gage from Sun Microsystems] answers, matter-of-factly. "What stopped the Vietnam War was that we told the truth about what was happening. Today, the truth-telling mechanisms that we can put in people's hands are a million times more powerful," he says, wending through the ghetto fringe of East Palo Alto. "And when every person on the planet has access to that power - which is what I'm trying to do - then watch what happens." Yes, many people now has access to that power, but some, like state actors (or just plain old advertisers), now have order-of-magnitude more power.

Hakashiro 5y ago

I believed in Reddit very strongly. I did. And then they started pulling off all these user hostile moves. "This community is better in the app" when I wasn't logged in. I understand why. They need to protect their investors' interests: which is collect as much data as possible. But if what you're doing is introducing friction to your own users then that seems like a clearly stupid move. Then again of course Reddit admins don't know if I'm a user because, after all, I didn't log in. But perhaps I just wanted to check out a specific posts in my phone web view without opening the post in the fucking app? So I deleted my account. And I don't miss it too much, I never really found actually interesting content on it. On the other hand I've regained so much time that I used to invest in mindless scrolling.

parasense 5y ago

I'd like to mention that in 2022 Reddit still does not have IPv6. The reason I was given back around ~2010, is how they block IP addresses. Allegedly, according to an admin (who shall not be named) is how Reddit blocks spam with IP filtering. Apparently the technology only works with v4, and somehow Reddit deeply integrated the tech into their stack. Also the idea that allowing v6 would allow circumvention, which to some extent is probably true. The TLDR is that Reddit is still not on v6 because they have a draconian IP filtering kit built into their technology stack.

14 5y ago

As others have said here reddit is seriously going to trash. The mods have ruined it and if you don’t agree with their narrative you will have your comments deleted or your account banned. r/Canada for example is utter trash now and won’t allow respectful open debate. It feels like it is state ran or shill ran and a narrative being painted. I hope to see reddit fall out of favour for something more open and free to discuss, respectfully, differences of opinion.

Gareth321 5y ago

Admins and mods are banning untold users every day for any and no reason at all. It is a really terrible place for discussion now, even if you somehow manage to find a small subreddit which permits nuanced discussion. It will inevitably be banned or the mods replaced with Reddit-approved mods and all nuanced discussion banned. I hope to see a Digg-like exodus soon.

StellarTabi 5y ago
> I hope to see a Digg-like exodus soon. Small problem with this. What enabled the Digg-to-reddit exodus was a strong competitor lying in the shadows. Nobody lying in the shadows behind reddit could handle an exodus. Most lemmy instances regularly go down anytime reddit so much as sneezes. I remember an exodus attempt to Voat took Voat down for at least a week, and in fact Voat never got back online until the entire exodus quit.
- Gareth321 5y ago
  To be honest, I think there are strong alternatives now, but obviously none of them have the infrastructure necessary to sustain the entire Reddit community migrating overnight. Reddit's servers were flaky for years after the exodus, but we just lived with it because Digg sucked more. These days we have Kubernetes and commoditised hosting, so the infrastructure piece is largely solved. The question mark is around funding. Thankfully I'm seeing a lot more interest in funding for social platforms these days. VCs smell blood since Facebook signalled they're in decline. Twitter has decided any right leaning political views will be banned, so they're actively purging double digits from their user base. Alternative news and discussion channels like Substack are flourishing. This is the first real opportunity social has had for competition in at least a decade.

9387367 5y ago

HN is no different and will ban Tor accounts at will. You can try and see for yourself.

FollowingTheDao 5y ago
What??? Why is HN against privacy and encryption?
jeffbee 5y ago
Yes, I went through dozens of HN accounts before I finally figured out that the IP address at my ex-wife's house was on some kind of HN automatic kill list. Every time I went over there and glanced at HN, that account would get silently shadowbanned. HN doesn't have any moral authority to lecture Reddit on this topic.

throwawaynay 5y ago

Honestly I can't say that I don't understand them. It's so easy to make good bots, and spam/automated propaganda is a HUGE problem on any social network. Also posting good (stolen) content automatically to farm karma to then be able to spam everywhere for a few hours is a very common tactic If I had to run a free social media like reddit I would do the same, you have no idea how hard it is to handle that imo

kazinator 5y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30328120 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30328120

Roverlord 5y ago

There must be more to it than that. I use PIA VPN on reddit all the time (for at least the last 5 years or so), from various european endpoints, and I'm still fine there. I'm not shadowbanned as people do reply to my comments. The account is a decade old though so I assume that they factor account age into it as well. I've also resolutely ignored the email verification pop up for years so I'm kind of surprised I'm still on it.

bstrech 5y ago

Interesting topic. Not defending the social media platforms or forum websites, but they do need to defend against spoofing of accounts, bots, etc. This obviously isn't the way to do it, but it is the fastest way for them to do so. One analogy for us as the users: It's the same as callerID and numbers being flagged as spam. You would never route your outbound phone calls through a phone gateway which everyone used. VPNs have become the defacto way for people to manage privacy on the internet and it has already been shown that VPNs are not as bulletproof as people once thought. There are other solutions out there. DM me for more.

modshatereality 5y ago

F reddit and F the mods.