Hey all. I’m here to tell you about my experience getting “shadow-banned” on my 8-year-old Reddit account. Short alike others: https://lemmy.today/post/49087735, https://lemmy.today/post/48784920, https://lemmy.today/post/47876190, https://lemmy.today/post/47779751

Almost smart

I basically stopped using Reddit 3 year ago around the whole “Reddit’s killing Thirdparty APPS” but, got sucked back in to a niche health/lookmaxing style Sub that I helped Mod for 10 months.

The day of

About a week ago I’m making posts, commenting, Moding, etc, and interactions stop working strangely lets of red error popups, and the “Important Information About Your Reddit Account” notification, saying “after detecting some technical irregularities on your USER_NAME account, we took the extra precaution of locking your account. To unlock your account, reset your password now.”

Figuring it out

So, I reset it via my email and log back in. Worried, but it seem top be working… then a few hours later the same red banner errors when I try to interact with users. So, I view my account on a logged out browser and it says “account suspended”

What to-do?

After filling out both https://www.reddit.com/appeal & https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=360000600232 I waited for an email, Reddit notification… And got nothing about it.

Now, the current non-signed in status is “This account has been banned” & all posts/comments are removed (Mods can still see them as from u/deleted & manually approve them)

When signed in:

  • No banner on my account or reason for being banned.
  • All public interactions fail with a Red popup error, and my entire history of posts and comments says “Sorry, this post was removed by Reddit’s filters.” or “Removed by Reddit”

Why?

What did I do wrong? Only reddit knows that! We can speculate, but, there is no point really. Reddit’s TOS allows them to!

How I feel about it

I feel disrespected, gaslit, lied to, and discriminated against. Sad, angry, depressed, etc… :( You all know the stages of grief.

Reddit pretending there’s a technical issue to me, but banning me without even saying it, and removing all my past posts & comments is very disheartening. From my personal experience, Reddit has proven to be largely a waste of time, and very much uninvestable.

Moving forward

Well, I’m not gonna make another Reddit account just for the same thing to happen, that would be me participating in (as I see it) a toxic relationship. I still get other random Reddit notifications (modmail, streak messages, etc) I can’t do anything with. It’s like Reddit is teasing me now. This guy has a good point https://lemmy.today/post/47176601/22123471

A little help?

Anyway, I know there is a lot of hate for conservative/Christian views around here, so any TIPS on where to find a ‘safe space’ to be me & express my self, and how to limit/block toxicity would be appreciated.

Maybe this is a sign from God, that my time is better offline.

    • Reddit_refugee7834@lemmy.todayOPEnglish
      1·
      5 days ago

      U seem to misunderstand the whole point of this type of platform.

      https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy

      Lemmy is similar to sites like Reddit, Lobste.rs, or Hacker News: you subscribe to forums you’re interested in, post links and discussions, then vote, and comment on them. Behind the scenes, it is very different; anyone can easily run a server, and all these servers are federated (think email), and connected to the same universe, called the Fediverse.

      For a link aggregator, this means a user registered on one server can subscribe to forums on any other server, and can have discussions with users registered elsewhere.

      It is an easily self-hostable, decentralized alternative to Reddit and other link aggregators, outside of their corporate control and meddling.

      Each Lemmy server can set its own moderation policy; appointing site-wide admins, and community moderators to keep out the trolls, and foster a healthy, non-toxic environment where all can feel comfortable contributing.

      • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
        2·
        4 days ago

        And yet if you use this platform for 10 minutes you’ll know Nazis aren’t welcome here. Nazis are hated here. As they should be, here, and everywhere else.