So I stopped generally using Reddit after the whole API thing but my husband still does and we talk about stuff since Lemmy gets the job done.
One thing he likes is to hop on r/freecompliments and participate there.
Well, today he got permanently banned. Why? Because a bot dredged his profile and found that he sometimes participates in porn subreddits. Usually to complement people there, never posting himself. He’s pretty ace, so it’s rarely, if ever, sexual. But that was enough for the bot to ban him.
They sent a message about how they are sfw subreddit and don’t allow users to participate in NSFW subreddits.
He’s heartbroken about it. He really likes to be nice to people and it makes his day when they respond to him. Now he can’t do that in a sub that’s meant for it.
I feel like the site rules have opinions about banning like this, but it’s not like the admins give a fuck. So fuck those mods and their puritanical bullshit making at least once persons day worse, for the low cost of a user that was participating in good faith.
And since I’m on a roll, fuck spez
I tried posting this to trueoffmychest to dredge some sympathy for him, since that seemed appropriate and he was good with it, but they don’t allow ‘anger’ or ‘impersonal’ posts and that got quietly removed immediately. So fuck them too. I didn’t realize how far down the shitter reddit has gone.
One time, I received a message from some mods that I had been permabanned and muted from some random sub where I barely participated. I had been banned because I made a comment in a thread I found in r/all. Apparently the thread was from a differen sub dedicated to some kind of bigotry, and making a single comment calling them bigots was enough to get me auto banned from an unrelated sub.
That was years ago, and I don’t think it’s gotten any better.
I was lurking on askhistorians for many years using my current lemmy username, until one time I thanked somebody for their contribution and got instantly permabanned for having a rude username. 🤷
I think I got banned from there, too, because I responded regarding a topic I know quite well, but I’m not a credentialed historian. I think they let me off with a warning, but I just blocked the sub. Wouldn’t want to accidentally talk about history.
I got banned like this too. They told me I could swear I’d never participate in /r/conservative again and they’d remove the ban.
I told them to kiss my ass.
It bummed me out, but I wasn’t about to make that stupid promise.
I hardly ever paid attention to which sub I was in when I was browsing. It always bugged me when mods would come up with their own rules and then enforce them with an iron fist. Like I’m supposed to remember that /r/generictopic doesn’t allow any mention of dogs or some other bullshit.
So when I got banned for something esoteric, I just blocked the sub and moved on with my life.
There were a few bans I contested, like when one sub banned me for hate speech. I responded “What hate speech?” And they said “We can read between the lines.” and then they muted me for 30 days. So every 30 days I set a reminder to respond to their conversation. That went on for a few months, because I had nothing better to do with my time.