I originally posted irregularly on a sub and when I asked a mod for help as to why my posts weren’t being approved, he randomly banned me from the sub without asking. I messaged and he said in the future I will be allowed again, he said 30 days.
When I logged out of my first account on my pc accidentally, I had to make a new one because I hadn’t written my password down.
On my second account, since the 30 days passed, I made a post on that sub. I woke up to seeing reddit saying I got permabanned for ban evasion, and they won’t reply to my pleas.
I found it really frustrating. I tried waiting 3 weeks after that and Making a new account. It got banned in 8 hours. Next week I make a new account, again banned in 8 hours.
I’m extremely disheartened that I got banned over a mistake and now I’m unable to use reddit at all.
Anybody else relate to this?
I use reddit for university subs as well so it’s very frustrating I can’t ask questions anymore.
The problem, though, is when so many companies are outsourcing their customer service to social media like Reddit. And communities, like OP’s school, which have nothing to do with the current situation on other subreddits. “Ban evasion” is nothing but a power trip if the ban was bullshit to begin with.
If all Reddit had was pictures of cats and porn, then getting banned would not be as big a deal. Now that it is public, being used for legit reasons, and has “money”, I am waiting for a bunch of people who are being banned for arbitrary reasons to file a class-action lawsuit. I might even join, even though I haven’t been back since the APIcalypse. I was banned from /r/funny years ago and to this day I don’t really know why. (In fairness, though, that might have improved my life…)
My advice against getting too deeply invested applies to those companies and communities as well.
It’s worth noting that investment in community isn’t the problem per se. People’s digital lives (indeed their digital personhood) are arguably more important than their corporeal ones now; the ability to sustainably organize online around everything from hobbies to political goals matters. The problem is we collectively keep picking the corporate-run shitware to build on, like Reddit - platforms over which we’re excluded from any sort of influence, where the only real currency is perverse incentive.