Banned from Reddit for posting John Oliver

RonSijm@programming.dev to Reddit@lemmy.world – 117 points –

Context:

/r/ProgrammerHumor/ closed for a couple of days, then - "because mods have to listen to the community or otherwise they get replaced by more /u/Spez compliant mods" opened up again, and held a voting which new rules to enforce. The sub opened up with the new rule allTitlesMustBeCamelCase.

I made the first post about 15 minutes after the sub re-opened (because I'm in their discord, I was aware it opened up again, it wasn't announced yet, I think) - and of course I just make a shit-post about John Oliver since it's the /r/pics (and a bunch of other) subreddits way to protesting the API changes.

It wasn't even that good of a post to be honest, it got temporary taken down by the subs' mods since they mentioned "it's only anecdotally related [to programmer humor]" - but after messaging them explaining the context they put it back up. So it's basically approved by the moderators of the subreddit. And not against the content policy of the sub

It got like 3k upvotes in about an hour, so I got a message from some bot that I was on the frontpage of /all/ as well. At the end of the day it had 13.5k upvotes

About 48 hours later I got an automated message:

Your account has been permanently suspended for breaking the rules. This account is permanently suspended due to violations of Reddit's content policy

I posted an "appeal" basically just asking "Lol you banned me for posting John Oliver?"

And the only response I got was:

Thanks for submitting an appeal to the Reddit admin team. We have reviewed your request and unfortunately, your appeal will not be granted and your suspension will remain in place. For future reference, we recommend you to familiarize yourself with Reddit's Content Policy. -Reddit Admin Team This is an automated message; responses will not be received by Reddit admins.

I posted another "appeal" yesterday asking "Could you clarify which Content Policy rule I broke?" To which they haven't responded yet.

It's the only post I made in the last 2 weeks, so there wasn't any other reason to suddenly ban me besides this post...

My reddit account was 12 years old at this point. I was going to leave anyways because the Reddit client I use (sync) already announced it would be shutting down June 30 - so I don't care that much that they banned me - just though it was a pretty weird approach from the Reddit Admins to start banning people for getting John Oliver on the front-page

102

By the way, sync for Lemmy is coming ;)

But why use a proprietary app when there are awesome people making Free and Open Source applications? For example Jerboa or wefwef.app. Anyone can audit their source code and make sure they don't spy on you or do anything malicious.

Because the developer has years of experience in crafting a near perfect app for Reddit, much of which applies to Lemmy as well.

Over the years this dev definitely earned the community's trust and I see no reason to assume he will pull sneaky shit now.

FOSS is awesome, but I kind of dislike the militant push towards it here on Lemmy. As soon as someone does not release their source code people go "But have you thought about open source?", "Why not open source?", "No source, no install" and the likes.

Over the years this dev definitely earned the community’s trust and I see no reason to assume he will pull sneaky shit now.

The fact that he puts you in a position where you have to trust him makes him not trustworthy. There is no place for trust in computer security or privacy. If you have to trust something, it is bad for you. For example it would be ridiculous if encryption relied only on trust and nobody could verify that it's actually secure. I'm not saying the developer is malicious, but he should know better than this (all programmers should).

FOSS is awesome, but I kind of dislike the militant push towards it here on Lemmy. As soon as someone does not release their source code people go “But have you thought about open source?”, “Why not open source?”, “No source, no install” and the likes.

Why do you dislike that? Do you not want to have control over your own devices and software that runs on them? Free and Open Source software gives you the freedom to study the program, modify it and distribute the original and any modifications you make to it. This way not only we can verify what the program does, but we can also change it to fit our needs. But also this makes it impractical to implement any malicious functionality, because users can easily remove it and share the modified version with others. So instead of the developer having power over users, the users are the ones in control. They can have privacy and security, which is impossible with proprietary software. That's why proprietary software is unethical.

That is an awful way to go about it. Have you verified your bank's computer systems? What about the servers your health data is stored on? I hope you use an Android AOSP ROM with a public source code. Do you even trust your microwave to not send death rays because of a malicious programmer?

I don't dislike it in general, I just think that FOSS is not a good fit for every project. A good and recent example: I work as a software engineer in a pretty niche market and my team and I have developed what we believe is a really neat algorithm for a pretty niche problem. There are already other players trying to replicate the solution, but thankfully they are falling short compared to our approach so far.

Suppose instead of keeping the library proprietary we would make it open-source (and free). Well, now every competitor in the market just needs to look at our GitHub, and months of R&D budget would be basically wasted while at the same time, our competitors would get our IP handed on a silver plate.

I'm pretty sure that Sync for Lemmy will have a pro version priced similarly to the Sync for Reddit pro version (~ $4.99 one-time). The dev would be stupid to release it as FOSS, if he intends to make money on premium features, when literally anyone with a computer and two brain cells could just compile the premium app from a public GitHub.

Now take good examples of FOSS: Blender, Gimp, Inkscape, and the likes. The main difference is that there is no obvious monetization happening besides donations and sponsorships and for such passion projects FOSS is absolutely the way to go as you can pool in the knowledge of the community if your project generates enough traction. Blender wouldn't be what it is today without all the volunteer devs contributing to it.

I'm using Jerboa now and it's pretty good. A few hiccups here and there, but all in all not bad.

I'm not so sure about that...

I've been nagging /u/ljdawson (the sync dev) to comment on whether he'd open-source sync or whether he'd make it compatible with Lemmy: https://www.reddit.com/r/redditsync/comments/145vvjg/reddit_clients_can_support_lemmy_just_by_changing/jnog4ag/?context=3

The news so far is

No plans to open source right now but potentially lemmy

ReVanced has patched sync to be compatible with any reddit API key, in case /u/ljdawson nukes it. And people have been working on decompiling sync and making it compatible with lemmy, and then recompiling it, but that's not a long term solution. Making large changes on decompiled source is not ideal in the long run. Best case scenario would be for sync to become open source

Edit: Apparently I was wrong and the actual reddit sync dev is making a "sync for Lemmy". The context here for preferring an "open source reddit sync" was that - if there wouldn't be an official app - it would make it a lot easier for the community to port reddit sync to Lenny from open-source, instead of having to do it from a decompiled closed-source."

How is open source related to Sync for Lemmy being an option? It was announced already: it's coming.

Something being open source or not may be a reason for some to use or not use something but generally it isn't an issue for the mainstream. (Exhibit A: Windows and MacOS hold around 85% of regular home users).

He also wouldn't nuke Sync for Reddit.. the key he uses will stop on July 1st since he won't pay for it.

Oh ok, my bad. I wasn't aware the actual sync dev was working on an "official sync for lemmy" - I suppose I missed the official announcement

As far as I was aware "reddit sync" would be abandoned and "sync for lemmy" was going to be an un-official port from the closed-source version by volunteers decompiling the closed-source version of reddit-sync and replacing the reddit API layer with a Lemmy one. - Which wouldn't be ideal for long term support.

That was the context for the initial "I’m not so sure about that…" comment

What is the problem with it being closed software? I mean it is his decision after all.

The problem is not knowing what the program does on your device (if it spies on you or if it shows you what you want to see instead of what the developers want you to see). It's his app, but your device and you deserve to have control over it. The author doesn't think so apparently, but fortunately other Lemmy developers have better standards.

True.. But are people reviewing open source software and code to make sure they aren't malicious? I'm not. I haven't looked at the Lemmy code once, just saw there was a repo.

I think the bigger issue is what motivates the dev. If it's freeware, then the project probably isn't backed by greed VS passion. In saying that, I paid $3 for an android music app (Symfonium) and it's closed source. I absolutely love it way more than plex Amp and the dev is active. I have no issues with closed source unless development halters.

Yes, people look at software's code all the time, if it's popular enough. Lemmy seems to have multiple people contributing right now and each of them knows some portion of the code. You don't have to do that yourself to benefit from this. When a program is Free and Open Source, it doesn't automatically mean that it's secure and private, but it can be. With proprietary software that's not possible at all, because it's very difficult to verify what the program does and when authors do add malicious features, the users can't do anything about it.

With Free and Open Source software, users can study what the program does, make changes to it and share their modifications with others. It wouldn't make sense to add malware to such program, because users can easily remove it.

Isnt the logic in the case lemmy kinda flawed? Sure the main instance is open source but you never know if any other instance may added tracker and such stuff since you cant directly verify what it runs.

you never know if any other instance may added tracker and such stuff since you cant directly

Technically, because of the AGPL license that Lemmy users, instance owners have a legal obligation to disclose any changes they made to the source code upon request. But you are right that we can't verify what is running on somebody else's server. There is no reason why you shouldn't be able to verify what runs on your computer/phone though and that's more important.

Reddit is really not backing down, huh? Welp slaps knee i guess I'm leaving for good.

I had kind of already started detaching from Reddit (moving it from my bookmarks so I don't click by habbit, uninstalling on phone, etc).

Really liking Lemmy so far, especially with all the recent/ future improvements.

I'm going to join you, just deleted my account of 9 years. Felt great tbh.

I'm sure Reddit will remain for many years, but I seriously hope this is the beginning of a major shift in peoples approach to large sites like them. Many smaller communities can only be a good thing for the internet. Lemmy/Beehaw are exactly what I hope become more commonplace. Mega social media platforms all need to go.

My reddit account was 12 years old at this point

I'm guessing that's a big reason why. You know what Reddit used to be like, and that's not where they want it now, so you're more of a liability than an asset. They'd rather grow their userbase with millions of new users who will adapt to whatever shitty platform they're continuing to morph into.

Your comment just game me an idea but what if we make posts discussing how reddit has become a shithole but word the posts in a search engine optimised way

I think mine is 13. Might have to try to get banned myself! Wonder if there's a pic of John Oliver holding a ban hammer.

I like how they permanently banned your account, it's against their rules to make a new account to circumvent a ban, then said "for future reference please read our comment content policy".

Arbitrary enforcement of the rules is the main problem here.

Reddit can be thought of as a three tier hierarchy, in decreasing order of power:

  1. Layer 1 is the admins
  2. Layer 2 is the subreddit mods
  3. Layer 3 is the users.

Now, the admins have the interest of having the mods and users work for them for free to generate contents. To do that, their best interest is to have Layer 2 and 3 constantly in conflict with each other so they won't turn their attention to what's going on in Layer 1, and they can just step in as needed as "the good guys" when things get out of hand.

(Don't say the name of the book please)

The way they did that, is of course, by making a "Layer 1.5", the so called powermods, and promises them arbitrary powers that they can abuse (delete and then repost other's content, blatant karma farming) to have the attention and the hate from Layer 2 and 3 on them instead of Layer 1, and so they can get away with whatever they want for flimsy excuses. (closing source code, shadowbans for real people, quarantine, awards, NFTs, new reddit, etc.)

Previous attempts at leaving reddit (Pao, controversies surrounding other various hate subs) failed because only Level 3 and a few lower member of Level 2 were responsive to the problems, most people are just indifferent and want to have reddit the way it is now, so Layer 1 can just pled ignorance and have people move on.

So, what's different this time? This time both Layer 2 and 3 are collectively moving against Layer 1 for the very first time, and to maintain the illusion of normalcy would require more direct interventions from Layer 1 since playing dumb is no longer an option. Of course, powermods (all around bad person awkwardtheturtle, for example) outlived their usefulness as distraction, so they can now be arbitrarily disposed of as well.

Now do the economy!

Easy! Level 3 is everyone one problem away from being homeless and anyone worse off than them. 2 is the middle class all the way up to some movie stars and athletes. 1.5 is the ridiculously over paid stars/ athletes all the way up to the very richest individuals. 1 is all the families that have their wealth spread out enough so we don't talk about it, but have the real financial weight to get what they want done. I know, you think Elon musk and Jeff bozos should be in layer 1, but if they were, they wouldn't be showing their dumb faces in the news to us IMHO.

I don't know what you are talking about, I'm just here to promote my new movie "Barbie".

I think you just described every political and economic system in the western world

That's fucking ridiculous. Maybe we should all start posting this meme and get ourselves banned.

Reach out to The Verge, they've been covering the Reddit debacle pretty well and I bet they'd love to hear from you.

I'm hoping they're still going to respond to the appeal, as my first appeal wasn't really a real one, just basically a "lol wtf?" one... Considering maybe it was just one random "hardcore" rogue admin on a banning spree for things they didn't like. - And that if I just submitted an appeal another admin would see it and unban me. But that didn't go as expected

So I'm hoping they at least answer the second appeal asking to give me a reason. I'm curious if they're going to admit it's for the John Oliver post, or if they're going to pull something from the history and be like "2 years ago you said something mildly problematic we just discovered" - or most likely, just keep it vague and say I violated the content policy without explanation

send us the meme so we can post there too

If reddit doesn't reach out in a reasonable time do still reach out to news media outlets including the verge that are likely to cover the story

Or at least they'll combine it with other incidents into a bigger story.

We have reviewed your request [...] This is an automated message

Schrödingers appeal

This. Reddit got invaded. They lost it. Half of it is Hamas propaganda now.

Time to request full gdpr info. Also they don't delete your posts if you request account deletion and tell you to do it yourself.

After the request tell them through an E-Mail to delete every single comment with remotely identifiying info for you since you dont have access.

Yep, I submitted a GDRP request for all my data as well. After they've complied with my data request I intent to submit a delete request

I practically work as devops / sysops so know the GDRP rules since I had to deal with them myself...

After my account was suspended I can no longer do any "write" actions on reddit; upvote, downvote, delete posts/comments. "Luckily" my username is/was RonSijm - which is also my real-life name, therefore everything I've posted falls under GDRP. So they'll have to comply with my request to nuke everything. "do it yourself" is not an option

If this is true it's insane.

That post is actually funny IMO, how thin skinned do you have to be to suspend people permanently for that? It obviously doesn't break any rules. If it was ambiguous whether it did, a warning would be more fitting.

Yes I can see it's not directly about programming, but close enough IMO.

If this is true it’s insane.

It's true. Since my account is suspended, I'm unable to delete or edit any post or comment. So anyone is completely free to Doxx my account, find it on a waybackmachine or any another other reddit archive and see if I posted anything even mildly problematic, or prove that I'm lying or leaving out details for no apparent reason or whatever

If it was ambiguous whether it did, a warning would be more fitting.

When something is ambiguous whether it fits a specific subreddit or not - is up to the mods to decide, and they deemed it ok. Sub-offtopic stuff just gets your posts removed by the mods, and normally wouldn't get you side-wide ban

Are you not allowed to get everything deleted through GDPR or something similar?

I read somewhere that even if you don’t live in Europe you should try to ask to delete everything through GDPR because it’s an automated process and some companies don’t check where you live. It’s worth a try

I doubt they check.

Because any mistake would be fairly expensive.

Reddit is amassing such a clusterfuck of bad decisions lately... 🤦🏻‍♂️

Yep, i was permabanned a week ago because i was all in on this boycott/ Fuck u/Spez. Not looking back, i hope Reddit crashes and burns. They are treating the users like garbage and not needed when we are what makes the site what it is.

Yeah I’m permabanned from Reddit too for similar stupidity. Nothing of value was lost for me though.

Holy shit! That's a great story, what a way to go out!

Instead of deleting my Reddit account, I’m editing my posts/replies there to all say, “edit: //I’ve moved to lemmy //” By doing this you’re:

  1. Denying Reddit your content
  2. Telling everyone where you went and
  3. Your post Karma stays the same, so a highly upvoted comment of yours stays in the same place in the comment thread.

Is there a script or something out there that can automate this? I'd love to do the same but I have something like 12000 comments.

Fair warning: if you use a script or bot to edit comments, most of your subreddits will ban you for doing so. They apparently either have tools to detect this, or else the users left behind are sensitive to it and are reporting it.

Source: I did this, and am now banned from my favorite communities on reddit.

Upside: I don't care, because I'm not going back, anyway, and now most of my comments have been overwritten.

Downside: The script I used missed editing TONS of comments, so I ended up editing and deleting hundreds of comments by hand anyway. (I commented a LOT, apparently! 🤣)

I don't know if there is. I'm limiting myself to posts that have more than 50 or so upvotes. That cuts down on typing a lot. :)

It's tempting to do this, but I have a lot of posts that people might find filled with valuable emotional support. Someone in the future googling what to do about (insert one of the hundreds of emotional traumas I've had) and finding "haha lmao I'm on lemmy now and this content is gone forever" is kinda rude. I can't do that to them.

Why not append that to those valuable comments and delete the rest?

I like how instead of banned they say permanently suspended

Yeah doesn't a suspension literally mean it's temporary. "It will resume again after the suspension."

A similar thing happened to me about 3 weeks ago. Yet I have no clue as to why I was banned... just "boke content policy rule" with no explanation of what rule... So I moved on.

At least they told you you were banned. I was shadowbanned and didn't figure it out for a week.

How do you know/realize you are shadow banned?

  1. People not responding to your comments or posts, or not voting, even though it's a post that you may reasonably expect a lot of engagement with. Not an obvious way to tell, but if you've made a ton of comments or posts for a week and there's no engagement with anything, you may get reasonably suspicious.

  2. Log out of reddit or use another account to check your original comment. If nothing comes up, it's been shadow deleted. You might figure it out this way if you have multiple accounts or if you share your posts with a friend. If every one of your posts has been shadow deleted, you're almost certainly shadowbanned

No one commented or voted on my comments for a few days. So I logged out and ran a search for my username, and got told I didn't exist.

That’s extra-absurd considering it is related to programming and is actually funny. They must be feeling very sensitive over there these days.

I posted an Oliver pic, maybe I'll get that account banned. Reddit bans are pretty stupid. One of my accounts, the oldest one, is permabanned for telling off a racist. I didn't even cross a line, I just told them that if they're gonna be racist, that's all they're going to be and anything else they have to say doesn't matter.

I've been saying this a lot over the last few weeks: Reddit is a tool. Just use it on your own terms. Reddit admins legally own the site, but fuck them, if you wanna use their tool, use it. Just let the behavior of the tool guide how you decide to use it. As it is, I still use it, but it will change next month and I won't be downloading the official app, so I won't use it as much, and I will no longer be a "feature" of the site, as in the subs where I was only there to contribute to the site, I have left. The subs that are still useful to me, I keep. If they ban me, I will just use one of the accounts they don't even know is me and I will pare my subscriptions down to only the subs that don't have a strong community elsewhere. I also will only interact with the site in ways that allow me to block all ads.

your account was older than most Questies on VRC

Hell, I got banned for agreeing with a post. And when I complained about it to the mods, they had reddit perma ban my account.

Reddit is slowly going to fall apart. For example, one subreddit i used to like (before THEY banned me) has made it so that only people who are considered "experienced" (whatever the hell that means) on the subreddit are now allowed to post topics.

And the subreddit that banned me would not openly list there moderators.

I don't really care as they have finally soured me on the site permanently. TBH they have done me a solid favour. Reddit is just slowly going to eat itself.

I was shadow banned by an admin, apparently the masterpiece of spez getting raided by a Garfield with a rack offended someone. 🤔

I saw this post on the front page. Condolences, maybe?

I've been wondering why I haven't seen ANY anti-Reddit posts on the front page lately, despite anti-Reddit sentiment being really high and almost all sub action votes are heavily anti-reddit.

It is truly incredible how little it takes to get permbanned on reddit. I posted something in r/politics once that the hivemind didn't agree with, despite being neutral in language, and immediate permban. That is why people keep making accounts over there, they can try and whack-a-mole but you can't stop an idea.

Now you don't have to scrub your post history.

What's the problem?

I can't even "scrub my post history" anymore... The account is in readonly mode basically - and I can't delete or edit anything from my history

They ban for anything but yet /askthedonald /politicalcompass and /conservative still exist

Ive seen both the lemmy versions of those when first browsing through communities on the community tab

Don't remeber if they where on lemmy.world or another instance

Honestly I'm disappointed someone would come to lemmy to create those bigoted places

Those post do get heavily down voted. I do my part to keep them put of the hot/Frontpage.

Well those type of places are gonna exist somewhere regardless. I personally liked keeping an eye on those type of subs on Reddit, just to see what discourse was going on and watch them react to the latest flavor of fear porn

/r/Palestine is literally Yeey Hamas and kill the Jew every other post. And they let it pass.

My Reddit account was permabanned because I posted (about a guy who killed a teenager who came to his house) "You know, I've changed my mind. Give this guy the chair. Not as a punishment but as a mercy. If I had grandkids like that I'd want to be mercy killed too!" The grandkid I was referring to was a screenshot of his grandon's Twitter calling him a Nazi.

Banned for "inciting violence" or some horse shit. Appealed for 30 days straight, now every one of my appeals is instantly denied by some bot.

Just be glad you don't have to spend more time in that shithole.

Redditor for 13 years I think. Same username as the one I sport on here.

Eh... damage control, "Hey, we've got enough of this shit and we saw you on the front page so get nuked nerd", etcetc. If anything, that'll be a nice thing to tell to you grandsons, "Back in the day I got lots of fake internet points and got nuked into oblivion because I made a pun out of a random person."

They banned me forever for quoting historical facts. It was a 16 year old account. It really did turn to shit.

Anyway, I'm sure degenerates from /r/palestine will contribute much better content to their community.

My guess: when you hit r/all someone looked through your comment history and found stuff that got you banned.

Could be... that's why I asked them to clarify which content rules I broke, maybe they'd clarify what rule I broke, or linked to something

but literately my entire post history was either programmerhumor memes, or answering programming related questions.

It's hard to find any archived version, since it cuts off after the first page, but this is the gist of it. https://web.archive.org/web/20230528122136/https://old.reddit.com/user/RonSijm

I don't know if there are better "reddit archivers" out there that would show more history, but I don't think there's any "stuff that gets me banned" in there. If anyone knows a better reddit archive lemmy know

Congratulations! There should be "Banned from Reddit" medals on Lemmy/Mastodon/kbin

Custom medals for an instance that admins/mods could give to accounts or posts would be cool, might be a way for admins to reward/push good content. Kind of like reddit mod awards except you don't have to give money to a jagoff to do it.

Ah, yes. Driving away your meme-makers. Certainly the most brilliant strategy for maintaining a healthy internet community. Works all the time.