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Has anyone else had their Reddit account Kafka'd? How did you solve the issue?
I recently got a message that my Reddit account was banned, with the following message:
>Your account has been permanently banned for breaking the rules.
>This account has been permanently banned due to multiple, repeated violations of Reddit's Content Policy on your other account(s). For more information about what rules you broke and how to appeal, check your account inboxes.
>If you feel like this account was banned in error, visit our Help Center to learn more how to file an appeal.
Neither of my accounts had done this, and neither of my accounts received "information about what rules you broke and how to appeal"
When I filed an appeal stating the above: that I only have two accounts, neither has repeatedly violated the content policy, and I appear to have been lumped in with another user who uses the same wifi I do.
(I don't have a big data plan -- I usually use the wifi at coffee shops etc rather than pay for data)
I chalked it up to an algorithmic error, and figured if I just do as I was before... post in a wholesome and engaging way, and avoid logging in over Tor or VPN, it wouldn't happen again.
Today I got the same message on a brand new account: I'm banned, check my "other" account for information on how to appeal.
This is extremely troubling -- Reddit is a resource for legal, medical, and technical advice. Not being able to spin up a throwaway and ask a programming question, get insight on a dispute at work, or otherwise engage in civil society has a huge chilling effect.
Has anyone else on HN dealt with something like this?
I understand HN has a very different culture -- the admins prefer one nym forever, but on Reddit it's fairly accepted to use a nym.
IMHO it echoes the founding fathers, who published anonymously.
I may sometimes express controversial opinions, but I'm not a troll in the sense of doxing, threatening, or otherwise crossing the lines that would cause someone to nuke my accounts from orbit when they're created.
I know Reddit is a private site and can theoretically do whatever they want, but given their colored history[1] I'm surprised that someone like myself who isn't trading CSAM, expressing hatred towards women, or doing other extreme things would suddenly be targeted in this manner.
I spoke with a friend who's a journalist who said it might be an algorithm gone awry but if true... where do I go from there?
I feel like the main character in "The Trial"[2]
>The Trial (German: Der Process)[A] is a novel written by Franz Kafka in 1914 and 1915 and published posthumously on 26 April 1925. One of his best-known works, it tells the story of Josef K., a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor to the reader.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20121012213707/http://gawker.com/5950981/unmasking-reddits-violentacrez-the-biggest-troll-on-the-web
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial#Development
- add-sub-mul-div 2y agoReddit turned to trash as Twitter did last year and neither deserves your content or your traffic.
- kafkad 2y agoSadly, I think you do need something other than just RSS to surface interesting content. HN is good for technical stuff but Reddit and Twitter are the only ones that seem to do this well RN -- alternatives for both simply don't have enough users. For now I'm using Twitter more -- I had left but I'm rebuilding my lists.
- brokenmachine 2y agoI've been permanently banned on reddit as well for no apparent reason before. I also sometimes express controversial opinions, but I try not to be rude. You will eventually get banned from Reddit if you express anything that doesn't align with the hive-mind. If you disagree you are banned. Expressing dissent will get you banned. The rules don't actually matter. If you post in a subreddit that the subreddit you are posting in does not like, you are banned. That's the most ridiculous thing in my opinion. It's literally mods denying users access to other parts of the site. The only way to stay unbanned is to not engage. Downvote and move on. That's not a great way to create interesting conversation and a useful site though... Reddit is still a great resource, but it's shooting itself in the foot. It's too big. There's no dang keeping an eye on everything and keeping things civil.
- kafkad 2y ago>If you post in a subreddit that the subreddit you are posting in does not like, you are banned Yeah but that's usually individual subreddits, not the whole site. The larger subs are trash fires, but I've found several where you could actually discuss things. Subreddits for shows, technical topics, etc tended to have less drama.
- al_borland 2y agoBut an individual subreddit can impact your ability to use the whole site. I was banned by one sub for having a different opinion from the hivemind, and having the audacity to try and discuss it. A year later I decided I wanted to start over with Reddit, not because of any bans, but because I wanted to revamp my sub list and it seemed easier to start over. Browsing /r/all, I saw a post and made a comment. It happened to be on the sub I was banned from with the other account (the sub was often on the front page). They took this as me making an account to get around the ban (which wasn’t my motivation) and banned me from the whole site. So one sub can kill all your access. Coming from /r/all, I didn’t even realize I was commenting there until I got the perma-ban. The comment I made wasn’t even provocative, it just matched the IP of the other account. The thing is, there is no way to know what subs you’re banned from. I would have been more than happy to hide/block all those subs on my new account so I never saw them, but what are they and how can I actually do that? Those features don’t exist. So users get banned because they lack the information and tools needed to follow the rules. I agree that the small subs are generally more chill. I’d often run out of stuff to look at on subreddits I was subscribed to, so I’d head to /r/all to see what the site as a whole was up to. I had 30-40 subreddits hidden from /r/all to clean it up and get rid of the stuff that would always leave me as a contrarian, but I guess that wasn’t good enough.