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Reddit Admins & The Internet Going Soft
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MacNNFamous
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May 20, 2022, 06:57 PM
 
Man, this may be shocking to some of you, but I get banned on reddit ALL THE TIME. I don't get it.

Last time, account was 4 months old, lots of karma, and some anti-vaxxer starts arguing with me and telling me my immunocompromised GF should just take vitamin C to avoid covid, I finally just say:

"I hope you get sick, and your loved ones suffer. Your inability to care about anyone high risk makes me want you to learn from your mistakes the hard way."

I was banned for "Threatening violence". Appealed. Nope. I was threatening someone, by hoping an anti mask, anti-vaxx persons spouting misinformation, gets sick so he'll realize he's an idiot.

Is that seriously ban worthy? I swear man I get a decent account and BOOM it's gone, and I didn't even break any rules. Nowhere did I threaten anyone, and what violence? He doesn't care if he gets my girl sick, so I HOPE that mofo gets sick. Seriously don't understand how this is ban worthy.
     
OreoCookie
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May 21, 2022, 08:05 AM
 
I don’t know the context, but I know your online persona to some degree. My read is that you were banned, because the mods thought you behaved like a dick. You took your frustration (which I understand in this instance) and turned it into aggression (which is not ok). Posters with this kind of attitude can poison forums and subreddits, so mods need to keep an eye on people like you. (Nothing personal, you came here and asked.)

You can quibble whether “Threatening violence” was the right canned justification for why the mods banned you (I don’t know anything about their mod tools), but I don’t think this matters much. If you want to stay on forums for longer, you gotta learn to control your anger and aggression. My 2 ¥.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
     
andi*pandi
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May 21, 2022, 10:47 AM
 
AFAICT, each group has different mods and rules. If enough people downvote the antivaxxer, their comment goes away, right? So downvote with a vengeance.
     
MacNNFamous  (op)
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May 21, 2022, 02:00 PM
 
I just don't get how they can delete an account when you didn't break any of their rules. If they can just selectively ban you because they don't like what you said, what is the point of even having the rules?
     
ghporter
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May 21, 2022, 05:37 PM
 
Sadly, it's "their back yard" so they can pretty much do what they want to with it.

I'm not happy with the fact that they didn't give you a "stern warning" or a temporary ban with a warning. I know Reddit is pretty big, but it's also important to keep contributing content providers. My experience with Reddit is that they will consider just about anything "content", which says to me that they really want "any" content...

Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
     
OreoCookie
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May 21, 2022, 09:27 PM
 
Originally Posted by ghporter View Post
I'm not happy with the fact that they didn't give you a "stern warning" or a temporary ban with a warning.
Good point.
We even used an infraction system here for a while so that other mods and admins knew that someone has been warned before and when.
Originally Posted by MacNNFamous View Post
I just don't get how they can delete an account when you didn't break any of their rules. If they can just selectively ban you because they don't like what you said, what is the point of even having the rules?
Do they immediately delete accounts? Reddit doesn’t ban its users? Won’t the posts disappear then or is that the point? Here at MacNN, I think there were only (literally) a handful of cases where we have outright deleted accounts rather than banned them. Spammers gets soft deleted (at least ever since some upgrade), i. e. posts are still in the database and remain visible to mods and admins.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
     
Spheric Harlot
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May 22, 2022, 05:47 AM
 
Originally Posted by ghporter View Post
I'm not happy with the fact that they didn't give you a "stern warning" or a temporary ban with a warning.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume that the dynamics are going to have been similar to what we're used to here.

After a dozen altercations/moderations/bannings, what constitutes "stern warning"? If you're a repeat offender, and they see it's you, and they know it's you, and you act like a dick again, why bother?
     
The Final Shortcut
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May 22, 2022, 10:31 AM
 
Be a grown up
     
ghporter
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May 22, 2022, 12:13 PM
 
Originally Posted by The Final Shortcut View Post
Be a grown up
It appears that the supply of big girl panties is woefully sparse everywhere. Way too many people have their feelers hurt by life in general, and often they go looking for things to be hurt by/about. And they get validation by whining to authority figures about how their tender feelings were trampled by people they goaded mercilessly into a reaction.

And sadly, I think we’re pretty unique in having actual grown ups managing this chaos we call MacNN Forums.

I think that “being a grown up” in an online discourse is very much a two-way thing. It’s pretty challenging to disengage from pre-teen level jerks when they go personal. I’m not saying that our member was blameless, but he has a very legitimate point about his girlfriend being at risk from the idiots who think that “staying home” and/or “sucking it up” are valid solutions to the problem of immune compromise in this pandemic age. And that’s probably the personal part that “Tommy, who everybody picks on in middle school” zeroed in on. Whether Tommy is actually 12, or 34 and acting like he’s 12 is irrelevant.

Tommy, whoever and whatever you are, you are a poor excuse for a human being. Humanity includes empathy. Lack of such empathy is one of the hallmarks of sociopathy. These people, at their worst, torture small animals “for fun.” Lesser cases settle for being an online bully, and using the system managing their platform to reinforce their bullying.

Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
     
OreoCookie
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May 22, 2022, 09:23 PM
 
Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot View Post
After a dozen altercations/moderations/bannings, what constitutes "stern warning"? If you're a repeat offender, and they see it's you, and they know it's you, and you act like a dick again, why bother?
Speaking for MacNN and not Reddit, people with a history of abuse don’t need to receive a warning in every single instance. Still, at least here permabans were quite rare.

If they have been told before and have a history of bad behavior, you can dole out punishment directly. The infractions system was helpful in this regard, although with hindsight, the point scale was more trouble than worth most of the time. (I fondly remember exchanges like “No, it was an impersonal attack (worth less points) rather than a personal attack. Look at user xyz, they are much worse than I ever was!”) Simple warnings and infractions would have sufficed and the forums with a healthy user base I frequent have all adopted this system.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
     
Waragainstsleep
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May 23, 2022, 04:31 AM
 
Here's the thing, theres a section of society who treat the internet's wild west approach to conversation as a sacred shrine to free speech. Or they treat free speech as sacred in general. Very few of them seem to appreciate why free speech is important. Which of course is because you should be free to criticise government, expose injustice, etc etc. It is not remotely important, valuable or essential for Billy Bob to spread lies about vaccines or Karen to complain that 'all lives matter'. Its important they are free to believe these things if they wish, but views that are not grounded in reality and that are harmful are not important to society.

Arguments so often extend from one person talking bullshit about vaccines, flat earth, drinking bleach, etc, etc and someone else passionately trying to debunk said bullshit. If two people want to disagree about which is the better football, then these are subjective opinions, but so many modern political talking points are nothing of the sort. These views are dangerous. They hurt and kill people. If internet platforms don't wise up and crack down on harmful nonsense then governments should start criminalising this incitement to harmful stupidity. You can bet lawyers will at some point. We've seen people put on trial for encouraging suicides online. Just a matter of time before someone goes after an antivaxxer I hope.

The irony of conservatives wanting to own free speech simply because spreading lies is the only way they can cling to their power and influence in order to keep getting tax breaks and reduce regulations so they can rip more people off is probably the worst of all their hypocrisy.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
MacNNFamous  (op)
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May 23, 2022, 11:44 AM
 
Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot View Post
I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume that the dynamics are going to have been similar to what we're used to here.

After a dozen altercations/moderations/bannings, what constitutes "stern warning"? If you're a repeat offender, and they see it's you, and they know it's you, and you act like a dick again, why bother?
Yeah, nope. I use a VPN and am cagey about personal info.

ORIGINALLY, I had a fairly public account several years old with over 15k of Karma mainly from contributions and comments in /r/cars. I started sharing some videos to my projects, which blew up and had thousands of upvotes and hundreds of comments.

A month later I tried posting a followup video, and the reddit admins deleted it, stating I was being "promoting my own content too much". I asked what they meant, they said they had a set percentage of stuff that can be your own content vs other people's content. I said, okay, how do I know what my percentage is? They told me to install Reddit Enhancement Suite (RES) a plugin that gives you additional data/control on reddit. I installed it, like they suggested, yet still there was no way to see this 'percentage' stat that they claimed we needed to maintain. I posted screenshots so the mods of /r/cars could see what I could see, and it turns out RES doesn't provide that information at all, and so they said yeah I guess there is no way to tell, use your best judgement but don't get near that limit.

I looked at my post history and was well under the ratio they desired for my content vs others, but chilled out for a few weeks and only posted links to other things, not my projects.

Then I posted an "update" to one of my projects, and it had 230+ upvotes in about 30 minutes because it was informative/entertaining/not trying to sell anyone anything, and POOF, it was deleted/locked by a mod because I had "gone over the ratio".

I messaged them to say wtf, and demanded to see this secret ratio that only they can somehow calculate, and they simply went to my account and counted the # of video links, and said it was X%. I was like this makes no sense 90% of those video links are NOT my content, merely stuff I'm sharing. Didn't matter.

At this point I was super frustrated and wrote back basically, how the hell do you have these rules on ratios that people have no way of knowing, when your own mods aren't even doing that and lumping in EVERY video link you ever post as "your" content, regardless of destination?

They said " yeah sorry we see things differently, you're no longer welcome here", and banned my account, then blacklisted all links to my content so even other people can't post or talk about it.

Just.... wtf lmao.

The best part is, the shit I was posting was UPVOTED HIGHLY by their own community! Their own sub base liked what I was doing, but the mods wanted to powertrip with their stupid fucking games and completely insane rules that cannot be followed, that they don't even calculate correctly themselves.
     
andi*pandi
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May 23, 2022, 01:52 PM
 
That seems ridiculous. How could they do a proper "ratio" if they were counting links that weren't yours.

In my town reddit, a local band started posting their videos constantly. the first few got mild positive feedback, then it started to feel spammy and we downvoted/didn't engage with it, and they stopped.
     
Laminar
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Location: Iowa, how long can this be? Does it really ruin the left column spacing?
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May 23, 2022, 02:25 PM
 
Originally Posted by The Final Shortcut View Post
Be a grown up
"And don't engage with idiots" would be the second part to that, yet here we are.
     
MacNNFamous  (op)
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May 23, 2022, 02:45 PM
 
Originally Posted by andi*pandi View Post
That seems ridiculous. How could they do a proper "ratio" if they were counting links that weren't yours.
That was basically the question that got me banned and links to anything I do blocked. Fucking retarded.

What I really don't understand is that, again, the userbase LIKED it. I wasn't spamming, I had something with mad interest, and tried to post an update about a month later. If the population is upvoting it and supporting it, WHY ARE YOU BLOCKING IT.
     
   
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