Sorry for the rant, I don’t know if it belongs here, I’m new. But I am just super disappointed and want to maybe help people in the future experiencing something similar so we can cope together.
So, a few days ago, one of my random alt accounts on Reddit gets sitewide banned for harassment because I called someone dumb in the comments (literally no more than that) as a joke on a shitpost a few years ago. I laugh the random account ban off and delete the account and return to my normal Redditing.
Now, I’ve been a daily commenter and poster on Reddit for several years at this point. You could call it addiction. But I also use it for updates and questions at my local university, so it’s also made its way into my personal life, too.
So, after the ban, I figured I was fine and I could continue to use one of my many other accounts. I was wrong.
Nope. A few hours later, ALL of my accounts over the last decade or so get permanently banned for ban evasion. I did not know Reddit bans were global like that. So, obviously I try to appeal the bullshit original ban, but I DELETED the account so I couldn’t.
I try to appeal on the alts, but I get the same generic “your request has been denied” message. Over and over again across all of them, same message.
So, I figure that they banned me for having my other accounts on the same device. Really shitty all my accounts were gone but I was reluctantly fine to start over by removing them all and deleting the app.
Those accounts got banned too.
Okay, looks like it’s by IP and device. Cool. I’ll… use the browser version on Brave and use a VPN when I want to post on Reddit. Super inconvenient but I’ll do what I have to do.
All accounts created or largely used on a VPN get shadow banned and appeals are ignored.
Okay, VPNs don’t work. I’ll delete all my account info on all my devices, reset my router to change my IP, use a new device, and not sign into any accounts other than Reddit and that should be good!
It works for a few hours. Perfectly fine. But, as I scroll more and more, I start to see communities that I recognize from my old accounts. No big deal, they probably recommend those communities to a lot of new users.
But, as I scrolled more and more, even smaller communities showed up that I used. Smaller, smaller, and even smaller, until eventually these were subs under 5k members even though I didn’t interact with he vast majority. They caught me, again, on a brand new device with a different IP.
Well fuck. Reddit is going to be the biggest inconvenience ever to use again. But I had one last trick up my sleeve.
A special VPN that uses the network of its users to reroute internet so websites are extremely unlikely to ban each individual server. A fucking virtual linux machine. Brave browser with the most secure settings.
It went well for longer this time, a few days, but the same Orwellian shit happened. More and more tiny subs until I saw ones with mere single digit upvotes on all the posts on subs with just a few thousand members. And then, just a day or two after my account creation, boom. Permanent ban there, too.
There is literally nothing you can do to get back on Reddit if you’re banned and want to use it in even a slightly normal way. I have submitted an appeal on the reddithelp form, but this is also extremely unlikely to be accepted even though the ban was bullshit; they haven’t responded yet. I don’t think I can ever use Reddit again because their system uses the most advanced AI to detect evaders I have ever seen. They’re definitely spending tens of millions monthly on computer costs and research SOLELY to catch evaders and it fucking works.
So, I guess I’m a Lemming from now on. Super upset, Lemmy doesn’t have subs for my favourite games and even the more popular games are super inactive. But, there is nothing I can do. Sorry for the rant but I know I started reading ban posts like these for hours when I first got banned, so I hope I can help people in the future realize they’re completely done for unless their appeal gets accepted.
TL;DR: Even with a completely unrelated device, IP, and a virtual machine, Reddit’s AI will detect what types of posts you like until they are slightly confident it’s you. Then, permanent ban. You cannot avoid this. I’m super bummed out.
Edit: For peoples who have had site-wide bans doomscrolling about it in the future like I was, I’m not saying evading a ban is impossible. If you really want to get back on don’t give up hope, I’m just saying it’s going to be very difficult. But definitely consider contributing to the awesome Lemmy community. I know it’s missing a lot, but it does help scratch the itch. I recommend the Blorp app as it’s the most similar to Reddit’s UI.
This is a fairly interesting story, how do they manage to identify you with (high enough) certainty. People should shudder at the possibilities here. Maybe they track your screen resolution mouse-movement speed and even typing anomalies to detect you.
…and that’s why I never sub to any subs. I only peek at the All, and … rarely comment. Almost never upvote. Usage pattern? Dead.
Why even have an account then?
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I wonder how many calories your brain burned trying to get back into the crackhouse that is Reddit. I’m impressed by the sheer height of that wall of text alone.
TLDR; tho
Reddit’s AI will detect what types of posts you like until they are slightly confident it’s you. Then, permanent ban.
This seems extremely unlikely. There is most likely another explanation for what you experienced.
I’ll take Things that make your fingerprint unique, Alex:
- Cookies
- Rare browsers
- Local/Session storage/IndexedDB
- Browser extensions
- Your mouse patterns
- Your browser’s timezone
- Your browser canvas
- Other fingerprint techniques…
Chameleon is a nice browser extension (it does some nasty things on sites that do try to assert that you are human, or that is it truly you, and you can get banned or blocked so use it with that in mind) that tries to hide some of those things, but maybe they look for it in your browser and default to other techniques… I understand this has been son effort on your part and that some of the things I listed do not apply to you in your last attempts, but maybe some of the others do. Or maybe this is a signal for you to leave that cesspool, maybe.
If you want to see how big your fingerprint can be: https://amiunique.org/
hey that really worked. Great link
Start your own instances for those that dont exist, we will grow slowly !
I lost all my accounts by attrition. I had dozens. Maybe even few dozen.
In spite of trying the rate of replacement was basically zero. As you described it’s impossible to make and maintain new accounts.
Take this is an opportunity to wean yourself off reddit. It’s worthless anyways.
impossible, with the same ip or device. and people who used hundreds of accounts, have other methods to evade bans, which requires money though.
This shit is super dystopian.
The data also exists in Lemmy to auto IP ban and also attach your IP and MAC to a cookie.
Same as reddit.
One day, someone will make a community here that is moderated like that.
And thankfully none of us will have to use that bullshit community.
Lol,
Lmao
These practices were implemented on reddit to make moderation easier and to remove accountability.
It will be willingly introduced and implemented by the mods of the larger communities for the same reasons.
Mods here already use automod to ban people with no appeal process.
Just go to the library and use their computers to make a new account and post.
when i still had accces to my universities computers, i unknowingly was doing just that, but for a public library its more problematic because you have to use your own devices.
I wouldn’t even bother, I used the site for 15 years mostly just answering software and tech questions and talking about music gear and they banned me in seconds for one anti trump comment earlier this year. It’s fucked. Now I wish I would have stopped using it when they allowed The_Donald subreddit to fester on their site.
when r/technology was getting astroturfed with trump news i was commenting as other people are, about antitrump stuff, temp ban. then suddenly all old accounts were hit with the same permaban. they also fish out old accounts you might not have used in while and ban those, if at any time(on the same device or ip address) you commented on a sub you were banned in.
Are you using new reddit or old reddit? I have never gotten hit with alt detection on old reddit.
Isn’t that just different front-end? I kinda doubt the detection system itself is different
Dude my whole family got banned on Reddit when i got banned. It’s a shitty corporation.
Same thing happened to me (shortly before the IPO, of course). Reddit had been enshittifying for years, and the blanket ban was the nudge I needed to stop giving a fuck about it anymore.
Being banned from reddit was a huge leap for my mental help. Glad they did me the service
Yeah I know any and all accounts I’ll ever make on Reddit will immediately be shadow-banned. The old trick of making a new account through your usual email, going on AskReddit, get a few karma points to be in the clear and be on your way is no longer working.
I’ve been on Reddit for 10-ish years so I’m pretty sure they’ve long caught on to all behavior patterns. It is ridiculous how much shit gets allowed while you feel like you’re the one targeted and banned for being the one playing by what rules there are, as fucking loose as they are.
I can appeal as many times as I want but I’m never getting a response back, because they know they have me by the IP and that’s essentially all that they’ll ever need. They see me make an account through my IP and it’s like “ohp, there they are again…BAN!” kind of deal. I’ve undergone a complete PC reinstall of Windows to erase all and any of those evercookies they’ve been practicing to keep those who try ban evading away, still the same thing.
Doesn’t matter what e-mail service I use, same thing. Could have gone VPN but I think that didn’t work either at one point.
It has just simply gotten ridiculous. And with Spez there, the shitstain, being a proclaimed billionaire now off the backs of everyone expendable, why should he give a single shit about retooling anything? He’s done away with APIs that were useful, that was the beginning of the end there if there wasn’t before.
I know someone mentioned a method in the comments here as to how to circumvent everything, maybe I’ll try that, I guess. Yeah I should be the change and whatnot for the Fediverse but we’re 2 years into the matter and I’m not seeing any substantial progression. I see hundreds of potential magazines just float around, dead. While there’s like 20 Technology ones, 30 Games ones, 25 more Tech-related ones .etc .etc that make me roll my eyes because it only tells me where the real priorities are.
When the Fediverse should be so much more than that, because Reddit still outclasses it by how many niche and relatively active microcommunities that there is.
Can’t you tell that reddit doesn’t want you on their platform? Stop trying, don’t jump through a ton of hoops just to get the “privilege” of using their website. Most of the user replies are bots anyway. Reddit is basically Facebook at this point. The more people they do this to, the less users they have. Soon it’ll be a website of bots talking to bots pretending to be humans.
facebook 2.0 basically, and they also blocked the word. only matter of time they want ID verification like FB.
VPN accounts typically get shadowbanned quickly in my experience. You need residential proxies. There’s also a warm up period for accounts where they are soft locked out of certain features like modmail, commenting, creating a community, etc. You won’t be told of these limitations, simply shadowbanned if you try to use them.
I’m not sure about Reddit’s use of device fingerprinting or user behavior heuristics when it comes to detecting evasion.
We are at war. I create accounts daily to send out modmail within my rights. We shouldn’t let admins or even mods sleep. I found it funny one time they blackholed an account so hard it couldn’t even be logged into anymore, then banned the entire username prefix “yoyoyopo” all at once, thinking it would stop me.
i heard about the proxies, you would have to use it with anti-detection browser to make full use of it, there sa forum where you can purchase private proxies that way reddit doesnt detect the most common or abused ones. warmp up includes human behaviour otherwise they might see your account as a bot.
they seem to trust google email accounts or, the browsers chrom or Firefox. if you are on any of the other forks, they might consider flaggin the account.
We are at war.
Are you ok?
We shouldn’t let admins or even mods sleep.
Are you opposed to all content moderation or just reddit specific implementation?
one time they blackholed an account so hard it couldn’t even be logged into anymore
Isn’t that just a regular ban?
They banned my alts for just lurking. I never commented a thing. All i ever did was upvote and bookmark on VPN and use the account to access other sites. Such bs
