Seems like they're following Google's strategy. Presumably, ad profit from each individual user is low enough that it's cheaper to accept false positives in their anti-abuse mechanism than it is to provide a functioning appeal process. Maybe if the user manages to go viral on Twitter or HN with their story they could get it reversed. Going viral with stories of false-positive bans is the primary way to restore a Google account, it probably works for Reddit too. Normal people have to suck eggs.
At least losing a Reddit account is less life-disrupting for most people than losing their Google account.
Several months ago I followed a new cardistry (look it up) personality on Instagram. I scrolled through and "liked" one or two dozen of their performance clips, out of the hundreds that they've posted. My Instagram account was blocked, for "manipulation" or some verbiage like that. Basically, the algorithm thought that I was a bot hired to inflate that person's numbers.
The Instagram appeals process is to email them a selfie, holding a piece of paper with the current date and something else written on it. I did this, but never got any kind of response. My Instagram account that I had for 5-10 years is just gone.
Turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I created a new account attached to the same phone and email address (somehow THIS isn't detected as abuse?). But I just lost interest in the app, and life seems to be better now for having done so. If Reddit ever nukes me, then it would be the kick in the ass that I need to stop wasting time on that toxic site as well.
Do they also ask you to put a shoe on your head?
iI have another idea why Reddit does not like VPN. They cannot monetize your data as easily.
What needs to happen is for someone who has a report to make to contact the state attorney general and say "because this company is profiting from child pornography with no reporting mechanism, they have lost their safe harbor protection, and are complicit."
Companies like this need to be taught at the metaphorical end of a rifle.
But... all the people they claim to have on their "Safety Board" haven't worked for kik for years and all efforts to contact anyone on twitter or anywhere fail. Even DMCA takedowns of revenge porn were being ignored now. It seems to be a dead platform that nevertheless gets app updates uploaded so something is still going on somewhere by someone.
Basically the only option they were discussing was getting the app removed from Google and Apple stores and they compared the situation to Parler where the app was pulled for failing to moderate. And yet kik seems to get a pass somehow. It's a very disturbing and frustrating episode.
Of course, doing that would cut off a stream of easy pedophile convictions. The prosecutor’s office might like the status quo. It certainly helps increase their metrics.
the fbi's real world response would be "let us introduce you to some canadian officers, and we're going to help, but it's actually up to them"
still, as the former owner of an ISP, i've had to do this, and they're actually quite professional and reasonable about it
Entirely possible that user will get their account back since they won the social media lottery, but for every viral story there are god knows how many people out there who lost all their email/photos/etc. because of some inscrutable machine's mistake.
It's lazy, it's abusive, and it should be illegal.
Edit: to clarify, I'm totally fine with this tool being employed to combat spam(bots). Just not against normal posters/contributors.
I really dislike "it should be illegal" for things like this. It's itself a lazy solution against a hard problem. It seems to often be used as shorthand for "I don't like this and I want it to stop". But making things illegal isn't a magic "make it stop" button. (Hello, War On Drugs, War On Terror, War On Poverty, etc).
If you want to involve the Government in solving your problem, you now must also account for:
* What is the exact text of a law against this that could actually make it through any particular Congressional body?
* How will possible violations of this law be reported and investigated?
* How will that law be misused by malicious prosecutors and investigators to hassle and punish anybody they don't like?
* How will all of the actors involved actually change their behavior in ways that you didn't expect in order to avoid being targeted for either well-intentioned or malicious prosecution for possible violation of these new laws?
Example: Say I run a pseudonymous social media site resembling Reddit, and shadowbanning is the only thing keeping it from being a hopeless pit of spam right now. If I can't shadowban anymore, maybe my only solution is to require hard proof of identity for all users at least as strict as the KYC your banks use. Now everything you ever post is hard-linked to your identity. Even if not publicly shown normally, it's vulnerable to hacks, malicious employees, or Government requests. That would obviously benefit the Government, so there's a little incentive for them to implement and enforce any such law in such a way that sites are effectively forced to do this. Whoops, we just made the problem worse.
The amount of people getting caught up in the filter is likely quite small. Should they have a better system to get accounts re-activated? Probably - would make sense that they cast a wide net and then have a relatively easy way out for real individuals who can prove identify. Is that perfect? Heck no.
> The amount of people getting caught up in the filter is likely quite small.
As I mentioned I'm fine with this tool being used against spam.
Although I'm not normally massively against using anecdotal data for hypothesis building, in this case, it seems as though without actual data, it'd be silly to comment further.
Think about fraternities. Think about ethnic centers.
People have an expectation that because it's immoral in the obvious case, it's illegal.
It's actually not. Nothing stops anyone from making a group for, say, Chinese American newspaper reporters, or Lebanese car mechanics.
What's actually illegal is turning people down for jobs or housing over race.
The law would only be interested if the website was the only way to get to protected topics like a job board
In case you're not familiar with the concept: it entails "muting" an account without ever notifying said account of that fact. They can still post, comment, vote, and everything else, but no one will see this content.
Also "illegal" is a little over the top. Are we talking misdemeanor or felony, here?
Edit: I'd just like it to be not allowed by law to hopefully curtail its use. I don't really care about what the repercussions of doing it anyway might look like.
> which you'd contact concerning (shadow)bans
Shadowbanning seems mostly used to silence slightly different opinions, and that's what I have a problem with.
This is the original intent. As far as I understood shadowbanning was for nefarious actors such as spambots, manual spammers, etc so they'd keep going without automatically creating new accounts.
Apparently it was because I had two accounts made from the same IP. On on my laptop and one from my mobile phone.
I noticed because your comment showed dead.
Say you do notice, you just start a new account for free. Bonus points for moving identities and breaking existing tracking history.
Getting banned can be a win/win
Not sure it would even matter. I once submitted a breaking news story to /r/news and it was autodeleted by their bot. I messaged a mod asking why it was deleted since it was in fact news and was not a duplicate and their response was to tell me I'm stupid and to permaban me from the sub.
My submission was deleted, my account was banned from the sub.
FWIW I had that happen to me a year or two ago and was able to get the ban overturned.
(Reddit allows the creation of multiple usernames using the same email address,) were your two different accounts that were (1) permanently banned and (2) temporarily banned using the same email address?
Interesting, didn't know that. But the E-mail addresses are different.
My previous account was initially shadowbanned without notice (all posts auto-filtered, and if I remember it correctly, it was a global shadowban on all subreddits) so I had stopping using that account. Weeks later I checked again and it became permanently banned explicitly. The system said,
> Your account has been permanently suspended for breaking the rules. This account has been permanently closed. To continue using Reddit, please log out and create a new account (the username [REDACTED] cannot be reused). This is an automated message; responses will not be received by Reddit admins.
My current account in question was temporarily shadowbanned. I was able to post in a subreddit without problems, and one day I was suddenly shadowbanned. But it was not a global one because I was able to post in another subreddit, so I suspect it was just an Auto-Moderation filter. After I sent a message to the mod of that subreddit (not Reddit admins) and stopped logging in via Tor, the account went back to normal again. But I never actually received a reply from the mod, I'm not sure how exactly I got unbanned - automatically due to a "good" IP, or manually by a mod.
Hence why Reddit will only and ever remain a tool for consumer to consumer communication, and why a business would be stupid to use it as a primary marketing channel.
My Reddit account was banned because I was posting from Tor. I've registered successfully via Tor and was able to use it without any problems for 6 months or so. One day, I was suddenly shadowbanned. I guess it was because the exit node I happened to be using that day was on a "kill on sight" spam blocklist.
I always posted in good faith and never got into any flamewar, a few links I shared were well-received by the subs.
Recently it almost happened again with my current account, but this time I was not global shadowbanned and it seemed to be just a local spam filter (many subreddits have their own anti-spam policies and auto-moderation queues). I sent a message to the Subreddit admin and I was able to post again. But after this incident I've completely stopped accessing my Reddit account via Tor.