Being anonymous got me shadowbanned from Reddit \ stacker news ~privacy

Being anonymous got me shadowbanned from Reddit

2669 sats \ 17 comments \ @shafemtol 18 Jan privacy

I'm a long-time lurker on r/Bitcoin and related subreddits. I registered an account 11 months ago in order to respond to posts and comments and have made a total of 4 comments there.

This may be a bit of a long rant, but whatever. I need to get this off my chest.

So...

Two weeks ago I posted a comment to a post titled "Bitcoin stuck on blockchain, need advice", where I provided four paragraphs of analysis and advice on the situation. A few minutes later I got a message in my Reddit inbox:

u/shafemtol is permanently banned from r/Bitcoin

Hello, You have been permanently banned from participating in r/Bitcoin because you broke this community's rules. You won't be able to post or comment, but you can still view and subscribe to it.

Note from the moderators:

Reddit has suspended your account. Subreddit moderators don't know why and can't help you. You will need to contact site admins directly via this link. https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360045734511

This caught me by surprise, as up until that point I had not seen any indication that my account was suspended. When logged in, everything seemed fine. But then I logged out and visited my own profile page:

This account has been suspended

And going to the various places where I've posted my comments, those comments are of course gone without a trace as soon as I log out.

According to the reddithelp article above:

Suspensions are notified via a private message. [...] Information about your suspension will be specified here.

Yet I got no such notification until r/Bitcoin permanently banned my account citing a Reddit suspension.

A visual reminder of the suspension will appear on each page you visit and any time a forbidden action is attempted. On the website and mobile apps, you will see a banner describing your ban and its duration.

Yet when logged in, I see absolutely nothing indicating a suspension.

Temporary suspensions will only be apparent to the user. Permanent suspensions will be publicly communicated via the user page and accessible by other users.

So I have been permanently suspended from Reddit, with no notification and no reason given.

An account suspension is an action taken by Reddit’s administration for security purposes or to enforce our Content Policy.

Had I broken their Content Policy? At this point, all I had discussed on Reddit was:

The use of commas vs. dots as decimal separators
The formula for the Bitcoin block subsity
Whether a perfectly fair coin or casino grade dice are necessary for generating a Bitcoin seed
How to deal with a non-confirming transaction

As far as I can see, none of these subjects are against their Content Policy. Everything on-topic, no negativity, nothing spammy, nothing scammy.

If you think a suspension for a content violation was applied incorrectly, you can submit an appeal. [...] Find your suspension message in your inbox and appeal your suspension through the unique link provided. If you don’t see a link, you can appeal your suspension through https://www.reddit.com/appeals.

So I did. But I've received zero response. I doubt my appeal was ever read, or will ever be read, by a human soul.

So...

I'm left with only one possible explanation:

I've been automatically, permanently shadowbanned from Reddit for the offense of using Tor Browser.

Using Tor Browser isn't a great user experience in general. You're too anonymous. Like you're up to no good. Probably a criminal hacker or a botnet. Every server is set up against you. Captcha this. Captcha that. Prove you're not a robot by feeding Big AI with your human labor. Please try again. Contact your network administrator. Secure Connection Failed.

Whatever. For most browsing, it's mostly an annoyance. Worst case you try a new Tor circuit, check the page on Wayback Machine, or just go somewhere else.

It hurts a bit more to realize all the things you thought you had shared with your community for the last year have silently been directed into a black hole.

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58 sats \ 2 replies \ @justanumber 18 Jan

thanks for sharing your experience. All these platforms are rug pulling in this ridiculous manner. As you say, you have no chance to speak to a human about anything. They do not give a fig.

Tor OMG there's only certain things I can do in Tor and that changes by the day. Some sites I used to be able to use in Tor, I can't any longer.

I had stupid issues with instagram, rugged me before I even started. It was annoying as I had reasons to want to be there. I'd never had an Insta account prior to this. I did nothing wrong but it made it impossible. Also, being nomadic is an issue as it wants to know what your main country is. So, where I am now, it was showing me trending audio and ads from that country. But that's not my target audience (different language as well). Anyway, it's a long story but it made it impossible to work with and I was getting nowhere. I feel like they have done me a favour in preventing me from spending time building up a following and then doing the rug pull.

FB - I go in there 2 or 3 times a month, just to check in. Can't do that in Tor. Librewolf clears the cookies every time (which is great so FB isn't having nosey in there ) but it freaks out and locks me out regularly. I answer all the questions security Qs correctly (to get back in) but it still doesn't allow me back in. I don't give FB my phone no, so no 2FA. I ended up putting Messenger app onto the phone, which I really didn't want to to do, just to get back in.

I've heard so many variations of these stories. The payment services, such as Stripe, paypal, Wise etc are anxiety inducing as they have your funds.

Feels like things will start to become quite limited as more sites restrict privacy browsers. It's becoming all the more important to build alternative, decentralised tech.

5 sats \ 1 reply \ @legxxi 19 Jan

Do you have to use Suckerberg’s tracking platforms?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @justanumber 19 Jan

Yeah totally, I'd prefer not to! It used be a necessary evil because of groups I just had to be in for certain things to do with my kids. Now it is a bit less imperative, I am just checking in every now and then. I miss out on things in groups by not being there, which is annoying. I try to coax people away and tell them there are other alternatives but it's like screaming into space

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @Malachi17 18 Jan

I'm used to being shadow banned for no seeming reason at this point. Hell, I'm suspicious if that DOESN'T happen. "Is it free speech this time, gents? REALLY?"

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @guts 18 Jan

Reddit never has been about free speech.

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @ssaurel 19 Jan

The problem with these centralized platforms is that very often, it is bots that ban you and when you appeal, it is still bots that review your appeals. From then on, the decisions do not change even if you are within your rights. Your only chance is to somehow draw attention to your situation so that real human moderators of these platforms can look into your situation.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @legxxi 19 Jan

But besides Nostr there aren’t really other decentralised options.

42 sats \ 0 replies \ @OriginalSize 19 Jan

Thanks for sharing. These platforms never respected our freedom, yet without us they cannot exist. This is a good reminder to put our energy where it is respected so that the right online platforms grow.

50 sats \ 0 replies \ @Caleb 19 Jan

Legacy, dinosaur, Web 1.0 social media sites are fueled by ads. This means they make money off of YOUR attention and YOUR content. It’s bad enough they don’t share revenue with you, but if they’re going to abuse you either intentionally or with shit automated systems then drop them immediately with great prejudice. Forever. Period.

Spend that time on sites like this one. Give this site your attention. You’ll stack more sats instead of fake Reddit epeen. Make something. Read a book. Talk to family or neighbors. Reddit is 95% bots and 5% the dumbest takes from the dumbest people.

13 sats \ 0 replies \ @cryotosensei 18 Jan

Don’t worry about it, buddy. I was banned from r/cryptocurrency for eternity. I was distraught at first but these days I wear it like a badge of honour. SN FTW!

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @xz 18 Jan

I occasionally have found some topic that discussed something of interest, but these days not so much. It would be great to have search engines that allow filtering out reddit posts. It's just a minor inconvenience.

It feels much better to be only giving a fraction of time and attention to antisocial media. I consider nostr and this community different. It's much more opt in. No ads. No honeypot sponsored content.

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @stargut 18 Jan

Reddit sucks. Can't even use vpn

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @fake123 20 Jan

Did you try their onion?

https://old.reddittorjg6rue252oqsxryoxengawnmo46qy4kyii5wtqnwfj4ooad.onion

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Krv 18 Jan

Reddit has become almost complete utter poc. Has anyone created an equivalent tool to Nitter.net for Reddit?

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @ryu 18 Jan

There were plenty before Reddit kneecapped their API for profitability reasons, Teddit and Libreddit being two major examples of privacy browsers that now suck or cease to function at all.

It's only a matter of time before classic Reddit's UI goes away, despite Huffman's comments on the contrary. Use uBlock Origin or any other ad and tracker blocker anytime you browse the web.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @riberet19 18 Jan

Thank you for making known your case of unfair ban on reddit, we already know that it is a website to avoid, I don't usually use reddit much, but from today even less

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @w3irdrobot 18 Jan

I haven't been able to look at reddit with a vpn on for a while now. just completely unable to bring up the site. luckily I only use it for attempting to debug things. so I just avoid it at this point.