Comment by pmarreck | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pmarreck | Hacker News Reader

Anecdotal data of 1 but I still post to FB and Twitter (uh, X) fairly often. I never got into IG (too superficial, and I actually prefer discussion). Tried Threads for a couple days and it never latched. Reddit (arguably accidentally) permabanned me across all my accounts after I accidentally used a different login to post to a sub I had been (debatably, mods can be jerks) banned on 1 of my accounts in a long while back (this literally flags all of your accounts, which they determine via ML fingerprinting, as "ban evasion accounts" which leads to a permaban across ALL of them... I wish I was joking), so mostly out of pure disgust I haven't been back even to view the read-only bits on a multireddit, and there's no one I can contact there who will respond fairly, so f**** Reddit (which is saying a lot, especially since I've had an account there since it was brand new!)

I've started checking out https://lobste.rs/ since I finally got an account there, but they literally make you wait 90 days before you can invite anyone else (I guess this is "anti-hockey-stick" development?)

Reddit completely deleted all your accounts for this accident?

It's extremely difficult to get reddit banned, let alone this - OP is telling on themselves

It's absolutely NOT difficult. I've been a Reddit user for decades (I think 2006 was my first account)... if I was actually an asshole, I would have gotten banned a long time ago, instead of 2 months ago.

Step 1, have multiple Reddit accounts for anonymity (hey, look, I don't want everyone knowing my medical problems that I seek help on, for example). Step 2, encounter 1 mod on 1 subreddit who misinterprets 1 comment (or you violate TOS without realizing it, by accident) and bans you when you seem insufficiently apologetic (I can show you the conversation evidence here, apparently "I'm sorry I made a mistake" is insufficient). Step 3, accidentally post anything to that subreddit (even something tame or supportive) with a different account months later. Reddit, via fingerprinting, will detect this, and now you are irrevocably a Ban Evader(tm) and all your accounts (as well as any new ones you create, which will now automatically be considered "ban evasion accounts") will be locked in turn as you log into them, making it impossible to interact whatsoever with the site except Reddit admins themselves, and good luck reaching them.

I've even bought Reddit Gold (and had plenty of credits remaining). Doesn't matter.

Deleting every Reddit cookie, blocking ads and changing your IP? They'll still figure it out somehow, and now you will be even MORE guilty of "ban evasion". It's ridiculous. There's no way to appeal it. It's guilt via mere suspicion.

Systems without enough humans suck.

Anyway, it's bad enough that your accounts are not actually anonymous there and that Reddit can actually associate all of them with each other. That's enough of a privacy violation on its own to merit not going there.

how do you violate the TOS on accident? are you alleging that multi-accounting results in a fingerprinting ban? because that isn’t the case. you’ve given plenty of indication and hinted you were actually banned for something else - if you got a ban and then attempted to circumvent it, that’s a very obvious site-ban on any site that’s run remotely sensibly and your grievance is pretty silly.

> how do you violate the TOS on accident

Because it's been months since you've read it, and you're a human who makes mistakes?

> are you alleging that multi-accounting results in a fingerprinting ban

Multi-accounting where just 1 of those accounts was banned from 1 subreddit results in a fingerprint ban across all accounts if any of those accounts is found posting to that subreddit. There is no warning, and I was not banned for something else (except originally, from the 1 subreddit, which was based on a highly debatable mod decision). Not sure what part of "I actually experienced this" you're failing to understand.

> if you got a ban and then attempted to circumvent it

Again, you're not understanding the problem. IT CAN LOOK LIKE I was "attempting to circumvent" a ban, when I simply forgot that I had been banned from 1 subreddit on some other account. I was not "attempting to circumvent" anything, I simply failed to unsubscribe from that subreddit across all my accounts. And AFTER THAT POINT, when Reddit has already "warned" you or whatever, you sign in with another account, it is IMMEDIATELY flagged as a "ban circumvention account" and then THAT account gets banned. It is a runaway explosion, basically. And if you try to at least leave a single account unbanned by removing cookies, etc. then those actions are seen as adding further guilt, which is hilarious because you're actually trying to avoid violating the ban any further but being penalized simply for using another account to not step on the same toes!

Feel free to peruse my comment history on HN, which is pretty representative of my online presence in general, and see if you can detect any personality flavor that is worthy of a sitewide ban. Remember that on HN, I can't delete past comments, so I can't now game my history to try to misrepresent myself.

They didn't delete them. They banned them from interacting with the site in any way except read-only. As soon as I posted to a subreddit I was banned on 1 account from, via a different account (I honestly forgot at that point, this was months later), Reddit itself detected this and banned ALL accounts they could associate with me via some kind of machine-learning fingerprinting which is, I have to say, quite effective.

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