this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2023
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I have been supporting Lemmy recently a lot and made posts about Lemmy that got big reach. Today, sadly the reddit account through which, I moderated a lot of subs and spent time on, comes to an end. The reason was because I spammed according to reddit, but the reality is that they have censored me because I was hurting Reddit.

Asking multiple third-party app devs consider Lemmy + Made the same post here as well

I never thought this would happen, not that I didn't completely expect it (but maybe not this soon and sudden), after all Reddit is known for censorship, and the fact that Reddit admins have absolute power over this website makes this believable. But part of me, misses that reddit account, it has been special to me, as I've spent countless of hours spending my personal time to moderate and improve communities that helped Reddit thrive. I moderated as many subs as over 25, many of them had atleast over 1k people, some as many as 200k if not more.

Before this happened, suspiciously, they banned r/LemmyMigration today early morning,

it remained banned for a few hours and returned back to normal (not weird at all). I thought that was a mistake, as the sub was back to normal unbanned, but it seems like the Reddit admins realized if they banned my sub, that would prove how they censor it, it can work against them. Now, it seems like they have realized that bringing my account down would be more effective, and stop me from possibly sharing how they censored my sub on other subs for example.

It's a shame, and part of me is sad, everything I worked hard for was taken away by them all of a sudden. I wanted to bring some of my communities here, now everything is gone, and it feels more like starting from scratch (Or discuss with mods I am still in contact with, and get help to bring communities I was planning on bring here, but it certainly makes things harder, not giving up anyways, especially not after this).

BTW I have filled an appeal, but I don't expect this to be reversed, this was planned by the Reddit admins and all they have to do is ignore my appeal, there is nothing more I can do to get my account back, and they just got rid of someone who was pinpointing some of their biggest flaws and potentially dangering their platform's dominance in the "aggregation and discussion platforms" market.

A note to all refugees and ex-redditors here, or those who are planning to join Lemmy - See the power a centralized corporation like Reddit holds. With a decentralized alternative like Lemmy, you can host your own instance or join another one if you get censored, with lemmy, we can put more power back in the hands of the people.

I don't have much else to say, moving on I will have to work with mods left that I do know through external platforms like Discord and try to bring some communities here. I hope this does not happen to any other moderator who have spend countless of hours helping Reddit in-directly like I did, somehow escaping such a suspension.

EDIT: There is some controversy in the comments if I actually spammed, I don't think I spammed at all, I only made a post on r/ApolloApp, it became a hit so I cross-posted it to other third-party app subs, just so that it can hopefully reach out to the respective developers for them to possibly consider Lemmy in the wake of new reddit API changes.

I was also certainly not the only one mentioning alternatives like Lemmy on the r/Apolloapp or any other third-party app sub, in-fact many people were mentioning alternatives, though I was banned, also my community r/LemmyMigration as mentioned above was called spam (and was temporarily banned, but was weirdly brought back up just to put my account down later today afternoon) when it only had 2 posts today morning. To me, "spam" seems like it is only used as a cover up by Reddit, the real reason is that my posts, just like r/LemmyMigration, was about Lemmy, a competition to Reddit.

Also if it was really spam, as soon as I cross-posted my post from r/apolloapp to the other subs, the mods would have removed it well before they got a lot of attention, why didn't they?

EDIT 2: A user called @danke has been spreading misinformation about me in the comments:

Just as you did on your newly created reddit alt, you’re painting this lie that you were banned for your tiny no-name subreddit and not for spamming this garbage on 11 different mobile app subreddits in quick succession. It’s truly like clockwork for sitebanned users to lie and omit these massive details.

This is a blatant lie, I mentioned about the cross-posts right IN THIS post: "Asking multiple third-party app devs consider Lemmy + Made the same post here as well"

As you can see, I made the post right here and on reddit, i never missed any details.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

So, this might or might not provoke the Streisand effect? At either case it's important to post links to your alternative accounts on different platforms on your bio and put it in archive.org + archive.today for ban reasons. Anyone on any platform can get banned, it's important to have a plan for that. Hope you can recover at least partial/full of what was banned.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

Shameless promotion of my new community: SNOOcalypse. I created it so people can discuss Reddit's downfall, as it's kind of off-topic for /c/opensource, and plus I want to see some activity coming from people who want to get rid of Reddit.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

hahaha holy shit

I wonder if "cross-posting about /r/LemmyMigration to a bunch of other subs" triggered an automatic spam filter in a way that a bunch of different people saying "hey have you heard about Lemmy" does not. There's a certain level of slack I'm willing to cut for people trying to moderate something as huge as Reddit or Twitter or whatever; it's what happens in the next few days that's really going to be worth reacting to.

Good luck with the appeal. <3

(Update, a week later: yeah Reddit's CEO completely blew through all that slack I was willing to cut him, and then some.)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yeah, my appeal has been nothing but ignored, as if it never existed, not even a single reply from them backing their decision.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

I believe I got shadow-banned as well for trying to promote the instance I host, oh well 🤷

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

To be fair, they didn’t remove other posts which was posted 3 days ago such as these from r/datahorder and r/apolloapp

https://reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/13yigdh/a_proposal_message_to_mods_do_you_want_to_have_a/

https://reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13xy42u/now_that_reddit_has_become_greedy_with_its_api/

Based on a comment here, you were aggressively cross posting. I believe this was the reason for banning you.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Why would you work for free to help reddit, when you know what they are? Is it because you still have hope the site will go back to how it was when you started?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I stopped when I realized and started supporting FOSS projects like Lemmy, in-fact that's why I posted about Lemmy, and in-turn got banned for mentioning reddit's competitor, and most probably making reddit admins feel in-secure.

I kind of gave away everything I did at Reddit for Lemmy, and somehow it was something I was expecting might happen, I was willing to take the risk anyways, this proves the disadvantages of relying on a platform like Reddit.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

They are filtering all the links that conduce to lemmy instances, and anti-spam bots are limiting the lemmy links and (auto) banning comments related.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (9 children)

Just as you did on your newly created reddit alt, you're painting this lie that you were banned for your tiny no-name subreddit and not for spamming this garbage on 11 different mobile app subreddits in quick succession. It's truly like clockwork for sitebanned users to lie and omit these massive details.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (8 children)

I literally mentioned about this in this post. Can you stop lying and spreading misinformation about me?

EDIT: Looks like posts from my account can’t be seen, but anyways, I have mentioned my cross-posts of my post on r/ApolloApp to the other third-party app subs right here “Asking multiple third-party app devs consider Lemmy + Made the same post here as well” in this post.

So no, I have mentioned all details in this post, I have not missed anything, this person is spreading misinformation about me.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

In simple words, I cross-posted what I posted on r/ApolloApp to the other third-party app subs, that is not "spamming", if it was ever considered against the rules, the moderators of these subs would have taken down my posts at the time, well before they grew.

EDIT: Looks like posts from my account can't be seen, but anyways, I have mentioned my cross-posts of my post on r/ApolloApp to the other third-party app subs right here "Asking multiple third-party app devs consider Lemmy + Made the same post here as well" in this post.

So no, I have mentioned all details in this post, I have not missed anything, this person is spreading misinformation about me.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (8 children)

Yeah reddit sucks but this was a reasonable ban. I saw OP posting that all over the place and pinging devs to the point it looked suspiciously close to self promo. I'm surprised the ban didn't happen earlier. It was pretty blatantly spam.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Other users x-post like this all the time (cough e-girls cough) and literally nothing happens because it helps drive reddit viewership and ultimately ad views. If this violates anti-spam rules, then this is quite the conveniently selective enforcement.

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