I lurked Reddit for a long time before creating an account which is now over 6 years old. I was a ‘Top Contributor’ and in the rewards program. 89k karma, never promoted violence or targeted any group, but I got a 7-day ban which was followed up hours later with a permanent ban. This is because of a comment criticizing Senator Radcliffe, trump, and Musk. The comment included profanity, (I called them hypocrites and cunts), but it wasn’t directed at any user or marginalized group. Just harsh political commentary.
Reddit initially issued a 7-day ban, which I appealed. That appeal was approved, the comment was restored, and they admitted it didn’t violate the rules. But the permanent ban still stands, and my follow-up appeals on that have been ignored. No explanation. No transparency. Just gone.
It’s made me realize how fragile “free speech” is on platforms like Reddit. You can insult regular users and get away with it, say horrendously racist, misogynistic, and homophobic things, but speak too plainly about powerful people and suddenly you’re promoting “hate.”
I combed through the Reddit rules, and nothing I have ever commented or posted violates them.
That’s the reason I’m here on Lemmy now. I’m trying to read more, scroll less, and engage with platforms that aren’t actively censoring political dissent. Who else is in the same boat? Is there anything that can be done to hold Reddit accountable or make people aware of they way they are censoring speech? This is my first Lemmy post. I marked it NSFW because of the profanity.
Welcome in from the cold. We have hot cocoa and blankets.
I got my 10+ year old account permabanned for saying “trans women are women”, which somehow went against their rules about promoting violence. No warning given or anything. Appeal went ignored.
I upvoted a comment that was just a gif of Luigi Luigi (from Nintendo) smoking a cigarette.
“Promoting/glorifying violence”
Fuck Reddit. Fuck Spez. Fuck Elon.
Got banned for antisemitism around the time the genocide ramped up in Gaza.
And I was just criticising Israel. Things got a bit heated for the other guy apparently, and then I got brigaded and reported. I didn’t defend Hamas or advocate violence, just criticised Israel.
i was banned from worldnews in '23 for seven days, i partially abandoned that account and went with an OLD one, which usually is more trusted. up until this year, where they decided a temp ban= we will check all the other accounts you made that participated in banned subs, and ban you for that, you this is pretty ridiculous. i think someone also mentioned your account is easily linked with a strangers if any of them get banned you get a indiscriminate ban too.
this time they said i reported too many times tech sub, something about trump so i recieved a 7day ban, then all my accounts were instantly banned, depesite the accts never going into those subs(until like 1-1years later). so they were routing out old accounts you havnt used in years. but thier bannings always increase when a GOP is in power, it was like severe version in 2017-19, now that trump is in power spez is somewhat afraid he will ge the wrath of MUSK.
I was already iffy about Reddit since the r/place #fuckspez whitewashing. I was never suspended - but when I learned Luigi was suddenly an “unperson” topic there, I realized that commercialized social media is inherently compromised.
I’m not swearing off FB/Insta entirely just yet, but every time I visit them I’m more and more vividly aware how tedious Meta channels are.
This Luigi?
my facebook account went away before my reddit account. After getting mo old account banned and then two new ones right after each other I deleted my accounts and just lurked, seeing a post of one of the ICE victims being disappeared and 5 or 7 comments were supporting the police sanctioned racists made me stop lurking as well.
I had my main and a business account permabanned during the election, after Trump said Liz Cheney should be shot. I said I didn’t really care or have any empathy, because Liz is a warmonger who’s called for violence against millions of people.
I didn’t say I agreed, and I didn’t say someone should do it. I simply said I didn’t care that she felt threatened by him. Permabanned.
Closed account myself because got tired asking to remove shadow ban for two months. I have no clue why I got shadow banned, only realized when I stopped getting replies that something is not right. Oh well, I guess it’s more useful to bookmark useful reddit links in any browser instead of being able to post and comment on a platform where nobody can even see your efforts because of shitty AI and incompetent admins. I was with them for over six years.
I suggested that the most appropriate way to deal with Nazis moving into your neighborhood was the traditional Scandinavian practice of hús-brenna. Apparently the admins dislike effective solutions.
It took me a few days to overwrite all of my comments from the prior 15 years or so, but I did it. Because fuck 'em, they don’t get to train their AI on my data.
I’m sure they kept copies of the data to train their AI on.
To be fair, what sounded like some northern European idea of just ignoring the person so much they have to leave did, on researching, lead to the Wikipedia article titled “Arson in Medieval Scandinavia” and was about burning people alive in their own homes.
Reddit still sucks and all and I wouldn’t be at all sad if this happened to quite a few of these fuckwads but I mean c’mon they definitely weren’t mad at the effectiveness of the solution.
They seemed to be upset that I was advocating for an effective and permanent solution. :)
I regret nothing.
they will probably ban talks of inglorius bastard, or Xmen first class someday.
I said McConnell looks like he should be dead. They banned a million sub moderator and 14 year old acct. they can suck a massive dick.
i always called him a lICH, and undead. they dont like dirty words.
Also here after a reddit ban. Mine was also politically motivated.
I watched admins remove a comment that was not violent, no profanity, nothing like that. The offense: the commenter described what “black-bagging” was, in reference to the immigrants being abducted around the country. Someone asked what “black-bagging” meant, he replied with one sentence just explaining the meaning of the term, comment nuked within five minutes.
I then told this story in another comment in another thread. Didn’t say shit about Musk or Trump. Just told the story of how reddit admins wouldn’t let this guy explain what black-bagging meant.
Permanent ban within one hour for “ban evasion.” Never been banned prior. It was my first and last reddit ban.
Fuck spez, fuck reddit, fuck the rest of em all.
looks like a they are quashing any anti-musk and trump sentiment on reddit, any attempts to report them can also result in a ban too. they definitely dont want what musk and trump are doing being discussed in reddit in serious manny, we can see a proportional response from reddit when trump and musk did something, and Musk also recently complained to reddit they need to censor people more.
It’s filled me with such joy (schadenfreude?) watching their stock drop the past couple months.
Not banned. Just close account!
Wiped out my 13 years of posts and comments and deleted my account when they started this crap. I thought the day they killed old reddit would be when I left but I can’t stand by while they censor free speech. The site has been a shit pile for some time though and not even a ghost of what it was in the good old days.
I was on reddit since around 2010. Had probably 500k karma in total? I was around before the apps. Still in the air of early internet vibes. It was a great place to find your community and chat.
I got my first ever temp ban a month ago for saying Luigi started a movement that our world needs. For billionaires need to be afraid of every day people.
Got a ban on r/news. Then shortly after a full ban.
I’ve been banned from plenty of right wing subs and it’s never been an issue. But one comment into their top corporate subreddit did it. So I left. Fuck em. There is no free speech there and to be honest. The quality of comments and community has dropped so heavily since 2016 that it doesn’t feel like a loss to me. Reddit community used to have standards and free speech for anyone. Now it’s no different from Facebook. Shitty joke comments on serious topics. Bots everywhere. It’s just a black hole now.
Couldn’t agree more with your assent. On one of my alts. I said we should collectively throw dog shit at Reddit HQ and they banned me. lol. It was a joke playing on the farmers that drive manure spreaders into the villages to fuck with council.
I really liked Reddit, getting a lot of value out of the content posted there by people. And I met some cool people through it.
I never got banned from it myself, but as time went on it was very clear that the company in charge of the platform was not steering things in a good direction, and was not responsible for the value I liked. They just captured the value by being the place where people posted. They really drove that point home when they locked off the API, and I completely quit Reddit at that point, migrating to Lemmy instead.
I definitely feel that Lemmy doesn’t have as much value collected on it yet compared to Reddit. There’s just not as many people posting and generating that value. But, it is free of that sort of draconian control that Reddit has. Not just temporarily free, as a favor from venture capital to draw people in. Permanently free. So, if we build up the value of Lemmy by having more people post here, we will be able to enjoy that value free from the corpo BS.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk. :P
I noticed a big difference after they cut off the API. I’ve only been on Lemmy a few days, but I feel the same way about the amount of content. Hopefully more and more people will migrate here as reddit continues their nonsense. It’s a shame to see what it has become.
I’ve been here since the third party app culling and it’s been steadily growing I think from my anecdotal feels when using it. It definitely has a long way to go to replace what reddit was, but hopefully it just keeps growing bit by bit. I see posts like yours frequently these days so you’re definitely not the only one leaving.
Been on Lemmy from Reddit for over a year. Really don’t miss it, except for a few niche communities.
I’d guess a good bit of us used to almost entirely browse reddit through a third party app (me with Sync) and for various reasons didn’t capitulate, been on Lemmy since and have vastly increased my time with Linux as a result xD
I was banned for saying I should have a legal right to punch Nazis, which I don’t think was “permanent ban” territory.
This to me says that Reddit is Pro Nazi
Funny. I commented on a picture of Indiana jones punching a Nazi which said “there’s never a wrong time to punch a Nazi” and boom! Encouraging violence/ban. 😂
That place is a fucking gong show.
Yep. That was my first ban. My last pan was saying T n E should face the gallows. I said fuck it and came here.
I was issued a permanent ban that I successfully appealed when all I said was always punch Nazis
I appealed but it was pretty much instantly declined, and you know, fuck em
sounds like it was an AI/BOT, i bet they randomly dont want to deal with the insane amount appeals, so they let the ai deny a bunch of them, and the reddit admins choose which ones to unban. hence thats why there are tons of bans that cant be appealed.
