Small tip for people reading comments: if you want to read Reddit anonymously you can replace the domain of any reddit URL with teddit.net. It's an open source, lightweight, web UI for Reddit focused on privacy: https://teddit.net/ . Git repo available here: https://codeberg.org/teddit/teddit .
Tell HN: Reddit accounts cancellation/suspension caused by VPN usage
21–30 of 254 posts
Re: Tell HN: Reddit accounts cancellation/suspension caused by VPN usage
#22Upvote bots use VPN all the time, so there might just be a chance that you managed to get IP from VPN that was perma banned by reddit (yes, its a thing).
Re: Tell HN: Reddit accounts cancellation/suspension caused by VPN usage
#23I’d guess it’s not the usage of a VPN that has triggered this, but rather a new account immediately presenting multiple IP addresses. I’d guess that would trigger abuse flags at most places (especially from known VPN IP addresses which tend to have a lot of malicious activity originating from them). This isn’t to defend them - it seems very odd to immediately permanently suspend accounts like that!
Yes. Most likely it is just a correlation, not the real cause. We have been using https://focsec.com/ for detecting trial abuse in our products. People using VPNs (+ new free email accounts) to "restart" trial periods is something that is quite common, we found.
Re: Tell HN: Reddit accounts cancellation/suspension caused by VPN usage
#24Doesn't surprise me the slightest, Reddit is not like it used to be. It used to be the underdog where free speech flourished and today it's a chineese-owned propaganda machine. A few users controls the biggest subreddits and most deviating views get themselves either banned or restricted.
Chinese? I'd say Russian.
> Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.
Re: Tell HN: Reddit accounts cancellation/suspension caused by VPN usage
#25I suspect I was banned from Instagram in the same way. No explanation was given. I use ProtonVPN. It wasn't until Spotify stopped working sometime later (403 Forbidden for all HTTP requests) that I narrowed it down to using VPN. Seems to be a growing thing. Thankfully, Spotify didn't do anything to my account, and it continued to work from regular IPs.
At work we got a login attack via VPN IPs and we blocked VPNs from login in via AWS WAF and 2 days later a major user was complaining that he cant login. We had to remove the rule. (developers were working on captcha in the meantime)
I also used a tunnel when Spotify was not available globally. It did not create any issues.
Using a Public VPN is double edged sword. If you really need it its better to setup a wireguard tunnel to a own server as the the Public VPN IPs as monitored by the security companies and also get abused all the time.
Re: Tell HN: Reddit accounts cancellation/suspension caused by VPN usage
#26It seems obvious that this is the result of someone else having abused Reddit too much from PIA addresses.
I also find blanket proxy bans reasonable: it’s akin to refusing service to those who wear a balaclava to a store.
Re: Tell HN: Reddit accounts cancellation/suspension caused by VPN usage
#27I don't think reddit accounts get banned by using VPN but it is more about what you are posting using your accounts.
Re: Tell HN: Reddit accounts cancellation/suspension caused by VPN usage
#28It can be even worse than suspending you, as early as 2018 i noticed they were shadow banning you based on VPN (PIA also). Meaning you could still post but not be seen, or have the ability to notify people you replied to. I've never since bothered to have an account there. Reddit's CEO, like Jack Dorsey, denies 'shadow banning', even though you can test it by getting -100 karma and watching your comments reach nobody. The negative karma shadow ban is why Reddit is the biggest hivemind on the internet, FYI.
Re: Tell HN: Reddit accounts cancellation/suspension caused by VPN usage
#29Doesn't surprise me the slightest, Reddit is not like it used to be. It used to be the underdog where free speech flourished and today it's a chineese-owned propaganda machine. A few users controls the biggest subreddits and most deviating views get themselves either banned or restricted.
Chinese? I'd say Russian.
I'm pretty sure a certain chinese company invested ~300M$ couple of years ago[0] if i recall correctly.However the platform became totally unusable and a sh*tfest way before that,think ~2014+, mainly because it was the turning point where no transparency was maintained or provided anymore, especially when it comes to moderation of users & their posts and management of subreddits.By early 2016 this was almost 'proved', but at that point this tactic resulted in creating echo-chambers, which drove up users and made it the "successful" platform it is today.Turns out nobody really cares about transparency and doing the proper job when the users and numbers are constantly exploding due to the forementioned created echo-chambers.
By the way my guess why reddit was never russian-oriented or 'aligned' is because most russophile subreddits were actively targeted and shut down(for good reasons many times), whilst chinese subreddits, the 'official' north-korean (propaganda) subreddit, and many others, were kept up and almost treated as separate platforms from the mainstream website.
[0] ( https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/11/reddit-300-million/ ) Indeed it was,once again, Tencent, the company famous for destroying MMOs, infiltrate the western gaming markets and pollute it with micro-transactions, cosmetics, etc.We're on the edge of touching politics and geostrategy here and I don't want certain people to jump telling me i'm a conspiracy nutjob.At this point the record is there, go look at it.
Re: Tell HN: Reddit accounts cancellation/suspension caused by VPN usage
#30I suspect I was banned from Instagram in the same way. No explanation was given. I use ProtonVPN. It wasn't until Spotify stopped working sometime later (403 Forbidden for all HTTP requests) that I narrowed it down to using VPN. Seems to be a growing thing. Thankfully, Spotify didn't do anything to my account, and it continued to work from regular IPs.
At work we got a login attack via VPN IPs and we blocked VPNs from login in via AWS WAF and 2 days later a major user was complaining that he cant login. We had to remove the rule. (developers were working on captcha in the meantime) I also used a tunnel when Spotify was not available globally. It did not create any issues. Using a Public VPN is double edged sword. If you really need it its better to setup a wireguar…
Can't you do a captcha with the WAF? I'm pretty sure that's an option on AWS