About a year ago I created my one and only reddit account. Never had one before. I work at a place that is semi virtual. We are required to come into the office 2 days a week. No one has their own dedicated PC. You just pick whatever is available and sign in. Obviously everyone is using the same internet access.
When at the office and I need a break I would visit a few groups of interest on Reddit. Groups that have ZERO to do with politics or anything controversial. I have never made a post or comment about anything political or controversial. I’m in groups like NFL and Dogs.
A week ago I get a message that my account is suspended for 7 days because of a violation of a “linked” account. I have NO linked account. I only use reddit while at work and no where else. I didn’t appeal when I saw the message, I just said whatever. But yesterday I log in and now I am permanently banned.
Anyone have an explanation of what is going on and how to actually get unbanned.
Someone else at your work acted the ass and got banned. You’re on the same IP so reddit assumes you’re the aforementioned ass.
Companies collect a bunch of telemetry about everyone they can, that’s the basis of their ad revenue. The data is used to identify you, your devices, and your preferences, and is called a digital fingerprint.
They also use this fingerprint to detect people doing things like making an account to avoid a ban.
Your fingerprint, when you made a reddit account at work, will have virtually identical devices attached as anyone else using reddit at work. Lots of people have alt accounts for normal reasons, so Reddit decided yours and someone else’s belonged to the same fingerprint, probably since you made the account.
But now they got banned. Maybe even got caught actually using a second account to circumvent it, and reddit is cracking down on the whole digital fingerprint because that’s “you”.
I got banned for saying that I wish Marjorie Taylor green would trip and swallow her own head. I was inciting violence apparently. I had a 13 year old account :/ I appealed and they said there was no error, I was basically a terrorist.
I have been told by long time reddit users like you that in the past you could make an appeal that would actually be considered. But now it seems that “appeals” are just automatically deleted with no Admin ever even looking at them. In your case you were making a joke and not actually calling for violence. You should have been able to say “I apologize, I was joking” and then maybe be banned for a week or a month. Ironically as traditional media is shrinking and social media platforms are growing but reddit has no problem banning many of their long term users.
I have a suspicion that Reddit’s anti evil operations team is basically a bunch of low wage workers with very rudimentary English skills who don’t understand or even look at any sort of context.
I had accounts banned for the absolute dumbest and most mundane things. Hell, even pop culture references can get you perma-banned and the appeal rejected. Meanwhile, you report literal calls for genocide or violence and you get a message that the reported content didn’t violate their terms of service.
It’s a complete clown show at this point.
Haha. Im not alone! A very similar thing happened to me, except I said that Trump needs a metal-bikini-clad dancing girl to strangle him with her chain. Perma ban. Same appeal. Same result. Maybe they’re not Star Wars fans.
Anyway, now I have lemmy and I think I prefer it.
I think you have the wrong perspective. Reddit is garbage and it took itself out of your life, which is about all you could ask garbage to do.
You used it as work where other people have the same IP… it’s pretty standard for them to ban all accounts associated with the same IP.
Welcome to the Internet.
