I lurked Reddit for a long time before creating an account which is now over 6 years old. I was a ‘Top Contributor’ and in the rewards program. 89k karma, never promoted violence or targeted any group, but I got a 7-day ban which was followed up hours later with a permanent ban. This is because of a comment criticizing Senator Radcliffe, trump, and Musk. The comment included profanity, (I called them hypocrites and cunts), but it wasn’t directed at any user or marginalized group. Just harsh political commentary.

Reddit initially issued a 7-day ban, which I appealed. That appeal was approved, the comment was restored, and they admitted it didn’t violate the rules. But the permanent ban still stands, and my follow-up appeals on that have been ignored. No explanation. No transparency. Just gone.

It’s made me realize how fragile “free speech” is on platforms like Reddit. You can insult regular users and get away with it, say horrendously racist, misogynistic, and homophobic things, but speak too plainly about powerful people and suddenly you’re promoting “hate.”

I combed through the Reddit rules, and nothing I have ever commented or posted violates them.

That’s the reason I’m here on Lemmy now. I’m trying to read more, scroll less, and engage with platforms that aren’t actively censoring political dissent. Who else is in the same boat? Is there anything that can be done to hold Reddit accountable or make people aware of they way they are censoring speech? This is my first Lemmy post. I marked it NSFW because of the profanity.

  • Dasus@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Got banned for antisemitism around the time the genocide ramped up in Gaza.

    And I was just criticising Israel. Things got a bit heated for the other guy apparently, and then I got brigaded and reported. I didn’t defend Hamas or advocate violence, just criticised Israel.

    • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      i was banned from worldnews in '23 for seven days, i partially abandoned that account and went with an OLD one, which usually is more trusted. up until this year, where they decided a temp ban= we will check all the other accounts you made that participated in banned subs, and ban you for that, you this is pretty ridiculous. i think someone also mentioned your account is easily linked with a strangers if any of them get banned you get a indiscriminate ban too.

      this time they said i reported too many times tech sub, something about trump so i recieved a 7day ban, then all my accounts were instantly banned, depesite the accts never going into those subs(until like 1-1years later). so they were routing out old accounts you havnt used in years. but thier bannings always increase when a GOP is in power, it was like severe version in 2017-19, now that trump is in power spez is somewhat afraid he will ge the wrath of MUSK.

  • Gowron_Howard@lemm.ee
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    30 days ago

    I was permanently banned for “inciting violence” by saying how great it would be if a meteor crashed down on Mike Johnson. A meteor….

    • locolangosta@lemm.ee
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      26 days ago

      I was banned for a week for saying I hope Jill stein bangs her shin on every coffee table she walks past for the rest of her life

  • surph_ninja@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    I had my main and a business account permabanned during the election, after Trump said Liz Cheney should be shot. I said I didn’t really care or have any empathy, because Liz is a warmonger who’s called for violence against millions of people.

    I didn’t say I agreed, and I didn’t say someone should do it. I simply said I didn’t care that she felt threatened by him. Permabanned.

  • Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    I got permabanned for criticizing Israel. The final comment that got me permabanned was literally ‘No, just the problems they deserve blame for’ to a zionist who accused all Lebanese of blaming all their problems on Israel.

  • Glaedr304@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    My leaving was originally from the api cost changes, I had payed for a 3rd party reader years ago and all of a sudden my lifetime of no ads was gone and I had to pay. This change was admittedly after reddit decided to follow twitters api cost changes. I am supprised at how close Elon and spez seem to be, given that I don’t know of any photos of the two of them, they they probably only know each other as CEO’s.

    • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      they are in cahoots with each other, since spez have openly love how elon “moderates” twitter, make sense why it resembls it now.

  • shaquilleoatmeal@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    I got my 10+ year old account permabanned for saying “trans women are women”, which somehow went against their rules about promoting violence. No warning given or anything. Appeal went ignored.

    • Geetnerd@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Yep, got that a few hours ago, but there was no message in my inbox explaining why, and no option to appeal a global permaban.

      No worries, I’m done with that Spez bitch.

  • zymagoras777@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    Closed account myself because got tired asking to remove shadow ban for two months. I have no clue why I got shadow banned, only realized when I stopped getting replies that something is not right. Oh well, I guess it’s more useful to bookmark useful reddit links in any browser instead of being able to post and comment on a platform where nobody can even see your efforts because of shitty AI and incompetent admins. I was with them for over six years.

    • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      you can hazard a guess, but its probably indiscriminate banning, linking your account with strangers, if that stranger is banned the filters automatically assume your part of that group too and this seperate from ban evasions. im not surprised other users are not reporting this on reddit, reddit has a rule against discussing bans funny enough. one of my fragile accounts was just shadowbanned, because a mod removed a comment, because the op of that thread was joking, and thought i was trying to make a snarky-smartass comment.(your on ptgcl live, for real a game that is barely functioning.

      from what weve noticed: comment removals, low karma , cqs score removal, botting,etc is an instant ban now, with no recourse.

    • phoenixarise@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I was able to migrate a lot of my favorite subreddits to Lemmy using the Voyager app. Maybe that could help. ☺️

      • zymagoras777@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        Yeah, I’m using Voyager as well. Too bad i realized I can migrate my subs after closing the account.

        • phoenixarise@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Oh, I’m sorry. At least a lot of the most popular subreddits have communities here, so you still may find what you’re looking for. ☺️

  • modernangel@sh.itjust.works
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    1 month ago

    I was already iffy about Reddit since the r/place #fuckspez whitewashing. I was never suspended - but when I learned Luigi was suddenly an “unperson” topic there, I realized that commercialized social media is inherently compromised.

    I’m not swearing off FB/Insta entirely just yet, but every time I visit them I’m more and more vividly aware how tedious Meta channels are.

  • courageousstep@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    I wish more people would travel here. We need people to build up the communities and interact with content. It’s refreshing to see comments under limited moderation, or moderation that actually targets the right kind of hate speech: the powerful punching down.

    I only visit Reddit when someone here links to it, since I’m assuming the comments are relevant, or if I’m doing a Google search and the answer is in a Reddit comment.

    Reddit is dying from the top down. People migrating away would show billionaires that they don’t control us.

      • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        its clear reddit is allowing right wing/russian trolls to astroturf left leaning comments, any criticism is usually met with an increased sensitivity of thier “comment removal, karma, spam filters” its funny they encourage reporting, but hate responding to these reports if you do it too many times, it was instant temp ban which cascaded in banning in all accounts.

        • silentbob@literature.cafe
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          1 month ago

          Thanks! I’ve been on reddit for 11 years and I haven’t been active on it for a month. Things are changing and I don’t feel good about it :/

    • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      top down, and INSIDE out, they were rottening from the core before it became top down.

    • TheHalifaxJones@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      I think what would help in this would be more options for apps (which there are thankfully) but also an easy to read guide on how this all works and how to sign up and get on board. It’s complexity vague in this effort. Which does weed out the certain kind of people who aren’t tech savvy. But it would help its numbers quite a bit.

    • LustyArgonian@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I think Lemmy is not super likable or usable. It tries to be something it can’t be imo.

      It would be better to just use the old style forums again, one niche topic/website style, and not a conglomerate. Or just use mass social media if that’s what you want, on a place like BlueSky or Substack with mostly consistent and understandable content moderation.

      • courageousstep@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        I haven’t had that experience. I barely understand how Lemmy works but this app I use makes it function like Reddit. I can’t even tell the difference, day to day, but vaguely understand that if the “country” my account is on starts to get weird, I can emigrate elsewhere.

    • BlemboTheThird@lemmy.ca
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      1 month ago

      When you absolutely have to visit Reddit for whatever reason, you should use an alternate frontend. The one I’m familiar with is called libreddit and functions similarly to nitter for twitter. You can do a search to find a large list of instances, but all you do is replace the “http://reddit.com/” part of the URL with the name of the instance. I usually use eddrit.com or safereddit.com

  • SeeMarkFly@lemmy.ml
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    1 month ago

    I have said all kinds of nasty things there about GropenFührer…I mean inmate #P01135809 and other than a few downvotes, nothing. Maybe it’s a “no warning” kind of thing?

  • Lucky_777@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    I told Nazis to go kill themselves. Then made multiple Krasnov accounts. All banned and now perm banned unless I use VPN. It was time to go, fuck that place. Welcome home.