Random Account Suspension

LeftEndDev@slrpnk.net to Reddit Migration@kbin.social – 47 points –

Title is pretty much it. Woke up this morning to an email in the inbox with a reddit message notification from u/reddit

Your account has been permanently suspended for breaking the rules.

The thing is not only have I not been on reddit since the protest (barring google searches while not signed in on a private browser, for specific questions unfortunately), but it's a lurker account. I have one post from a year ago asking a question, then a few sporadic comments with the last being in April.

I suppose the breakup with Reddit is a mutual thing now lol. Just a very strange scenario.

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Side question: Why do Reddit and Twitter and all of these other social media shitshows use idiotic terminology like 'permanently suspended'? Surely the correct term is 'banned'. The word suspended in this context usually implies a temporary nature.

It's corporate horseshittery, same as everything VC-encrusted hellcorps do.

For the same reason employers and unemployment insurance is moving from termination, to separation. Less of an inherent negative connotation.

Unfortunately, they fail to realize that the system itself is what created the negative connotation in the first place. So it too will be replaced with yet another synonym in the future.

It is likely that Reddit helpfully "connected" your account to a strangers account and then that stranger got banned with or without valid cause.

I have high hopes for the fediverse.. All fediverse software/servers is still in its infancy. But I believe the fediverse will have a very bright future...

Darn, I promoted Lemmy and KBin on Reddit, Voted for mods to continue the protest, encouraged people to request their data from Reddit, and linked my KBin in my bio before completely leaving the platform.

I still haven't gotten the message of honor :(

Admins probably did a sloppy keyword recursive search going back a long time in scope. So a post of yours from a couple years ago said something about olives and they thought you were saying "John Oliver" for example, which is clearly grounds for a permaban. (sarcasm)

I mean, are we talking green or black john oliver's?

Might be your usage of the API, but there's really no information you've provided that we could use to do anything other than guess.

Starting to wonder if they've decided to scrape user IDs from here and lemmy and compare to their own DB to try and scorch the earth.

I don't think the scraping is the full reason. I was not on lemmy/kbin or any other part of the fediverse and I still got this random permaban, in fact it happened before the pricing changes were announced on May 31st.

Also, my username there is different to what I'm using on the fediverse.

Prior to being permabanned I also never used the API for anything. Only used it for the scripts to wipe my account clean (so being permabanned doesn't typically prevent one from creating the API tokens or actually using the API, it seems).

Well that rules out (most) of the malicious possibilities. What we're left with is probably either Hanlon's razer, or something you commented about spez.

If it's the latter, the four accounts I nuked are still alive.

Sadly, it wasn't the later. I never mentioned spez and didn't even know what the CEO's name or username was until the blackouts (i.e. after i got permabanned).

VPN? They have this half-baked user "reliability" rating system that they claim "identifies known alts".

Which is marketingspeak for "we log ips," I think. If they did that as poorly as everything else, it's possible they think you're the last guy to use that vpn before you.

Also.. sorry for grilling you. Just curious.

Never used VPN, had a couple of active throwaways and those were not caught either. Oddly the message is "all your accounts" as in plural but it was only the one account.

Thanks again.

Guess we're back to Hanlon. Probably a buggy, hastily written script by a jr dev, or worse.. they're doing this manually based on a spreadsheet tracker.

The only time I used the API was to run a script when I first created the account to port over my subs from the account prior. I usually kill and create new accounts yearly.

Also in case anyone is wondering, PRAW and the reddit api still work somehow, I was able to grab my saved posts, in case they are lost with the account.

Can confirm. Exact same scenario. Being permabanned means having read-only access for the most part, with the sole exception being that one is allowed to edit and delete existing posts and comments.

I would consider sending them a message requesting (based on GDPR) that they remove all of the data they have about me. For EU citizens GDPR provides a "right to be forgotten". This is one of the lesser known benefit of GDPR.

🤨 Huh. I wonder why the hell they suspended you.