Okay maybe I'm just being salty over it because I got permabanned a week ago but the mod-mob has been an issue for a long time now. And ever since I got banned, I've tried to create two accounts, and both of them have been immediately shadowbanned by reddit.
I'll be more specific. The subreddit in question is r/Islam. There was absolutely nothing malicious about the comment I made on the post that got me banned. I know this because the comment was, “Do you have some kind of proof to back your claim?” I used to have two accounts on my reddit app and this comment was made through an alt account. A few minutes later I switched back to my main account and kind of forgot about it. I also used to engage with r/Islam through my main account so after a comment I made on a different post, I got the message that my account was permanently banned from reddit. I switched to my alt and there it was. The first message of how because of my comment, my account was banned from that sub and because I used my alt account, reddit flagged it as ban evasion and evoked a site ban. I appealed of course and tried my best to explain how there was a mistake while still being apologetic. My appeal was denied of course and the permabanned remained in order. The next day, my wife tells me her account was banned as well. She said she tried to make a new account but was shadowbanned immediately. I tried to create a new account through first my office wifi but same device and then on a different device on my home wifi. Got shadowbanned immediately both times. When I made an appeal, I believe their words were, and I'm paraphrasing here, “When we ban you permanently, we don't ban your account, we ban the person.”
This got me thinking. How would reddit even know I was the one making those accounts later? Surely they collect much more information than they let on? Device fingerprint for example, IP and/or mac address. Either way, I guess that's the end of my journey on reddit. And it got me into thinking how many subs I've been banned from for no apparent reason at all. Mods will just ban you for amusement sometimes, while other times they'd just do it as a power move. It's becoming the next Facebook with each passing day.
The problem is that they're likely to get new users from their sale of data to Google. That's constantly pushing new people to reddit. And if those people didn't leave during the protest or because of the influx of bots, they're not likely to leave en masse over this.
My guess is that reddits death will be very slow.
Yeah. I figured as much. But I guess a slow and painful death has it's own merits. Damn, even as I type this I realise I'm still very much bitter about it.
I left during the protests when it became clear that they weren't going to change their mind about shutting down third party apps. I still miss some of the communities there, and I'm a little bitter myself over the whole thing. But to me it's better to continue to protest by not going back.
I'm a little late to the party but better late than never, right? I've officially said my goodbyes to reddit.
True. At this point people should probably not give the company any more free data.