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Tell HN: Reddit accounts cancellation/suspension caused by VPN usage

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Re: Tell HN: Reddit accounts cancellation/suspension caused by VPN usage

#81
post #73

Both Reddit's admins and their future-employee mods are completely out of control, in a way that makes Facebook's intentional topic manipulation seem tame by comparison. These people go out of their way to ban people for no reason -- constantly, every single day -- in a way that can only be described as intentionally abusive. They appear to get some kind of sadistic pleasure in reading ban appeals and denying them, k…

"They appear to get some kind of sadistic pleasure in reading ban appeals and denying them, knowing full well that the bans are improper and the appeals are justified." Or they get pleasure by making more money, in not paying enough people to manual review issues.

I thought mods are unpaid?

Re: Tell HN: Reddit accounts cancellation/suspension caused by VPN usage

#82
post #73

Both Reddit's admins and their future-employee mods are completely out of control, in a way that makes Facebook's intentional topic manipulation seem tame by comparison. These people go out of their way to ban people for no reason -- constantly, every single day -- in a way that can only be described as intentionally abusive. They appear to get some kind of sadistic pleasure in reading ban appeals and denying them, k…

"They appear to get some kind of sadistic pleasure in reading ban appeals and denying them, knowing full well that the bans are improper and the appeals are justified." Or they get pleasure by making more money, in not paying enough people to manual review issues.

Except some of the people they've banned were making them lots of money, so it's not as simple as your suggestion.

Re: Tell HN: Reddit accounts cancellation/suspension caused by VPN usage

#84

It's how the Reddit spam filter works. Once your account is flagged as spam by the system, it would be global shadowbanned automacially. At this stage, your account is essentially finished, it's basically impossible to talk to someone and get your account unblocked. Eventually the account would be deleted, all the post you've ever made would also be gone in the worst-case scenario, just like my previous account. My R…

[deleted]

Re: Tell HN: Reddit accounts cancellation/suspension caused by VPN usage

#85

People shit on facebook but honestly how reddit is still pushing that redesign is unfathomable.

They're pushing the redesign because it works. I'd guess a good portion of their userbase is actually relatively new or young users, who prefer to scroll through endless wall of pictures/videos like they do on instagram. I'd never use Reddit like that, but seeing the discussions over the past few years it's obvious most (vocal) users are on mobile, and they use the instagram look.

Re: Tell HN: Reddit accounts cancellation/suspension caused by VPN usage

#86

It 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 -100 shadowban is mostly subreddit dependent, and done via automoderator by the mods of most larger subreddits. An actual admin shadowban does happen and they are employed, but I don't think they're particularly hidden. As a mod I see "User is shadowbanned" when they message us if they've been shadowbanned from Reddit by the admins.

Yes, I would like to see the source that makes the claim that Reddit doesn't shadowban, because any mod of any subreddit can trivially refute that. I see shadowbanned users all the time, and Reddit calls them shadowbanned in the UI; it's not a secret. Nearly all of them are fairly new accounts, presumably having run afoul of some sort of automatic system. It definitely has plenty of false positives, but at the same time I also see essentially zero spam, so it's clear that they're trying to optimize for false positives rather than false negatives. It would be great if mods could at least approve a shadowbanned user for posting in their own subreddit, right now the only recourse is for them to make a new account and roll the dice again.

Re: Tell HN: Reddit accounts cancellation/suspension caused by VPN usage

#87

It's how the Reddit spam filter works. Once your account is flagged as spam by the system, it would be global shadowbanned automacially. At this stage, your account is essentially finished, it's basically impossible to talk to someone and get your account unblocked. Eventually the account would be deleted, all the post you've ever made would also be gone in the worst-case scenario, just like my previous account. My R…

Shadow banning is such a disgusting practice. It's basically sweeping the "problem" under the rug, whilst leaving the "problem" completely in the dark with regards to what it was they did wrong.

It's lazy, it's abusive, and it should be illegal.

Edit: to clarify, I'm totally fine with this tool being employed to combat spam(bots). Just not against normal posters/contributors.

Re: Tell HN: Reddit accounts cancellation/suspension caused by VPN usage

#88

All is not lost if your account is mistakenly suspended due to VPN usage. They still allow you to: * Communicate with reddit admins via /r/reddit.com modmail * Appeal your suspension via https://www.reddit.com/appeals with a permanently suspended account. See https://reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360045734911-My-acc...

Did that already, first for the original account, then the two older ones. Suspension reconfirmed almost immediately, on all three, indicative of an automated system in the backend. There is no Kimi (human intervention) behind this alleged appeal process.

Did you try modmail to the global admins? That has to go somewhere that's read by actual humans.

Re: Tell HN: Reddit accounts cancellation/suspension caused by VPN usage

#89

It's how the Reddit spam filter works. Once your account is flagged as spam by the system, it would be global shadowbanned automacially. At this stage, your account is essentially finished, it's basically impossible to talk to someone and get your account unblocked. Eventually the account would be deleted, all the post you've ever made would also be gone in the worst-case scenario, just like my previous account. My R…

> At this stage, your account is essentially finished, it's basically impossible to talk to someone and get your account unblocked. Seems like they're following Google's strategy. Presumably, ad profit from each individual user is low enough that it's cheaper to accept false positives in their anti-abuse mechanism than it is to provide a functioning appeal process. Maybe if the user manages to go viral on Twitter or…

Is Google banning accounts just for vpn usage?

Re: Tell HN: Reddit accounts cancellation/suspension caused by VPN usage

#90
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How resource intensive / business focused is your product? Lots of people use vpns for work or privacy, I think that method would have a lot of false positives. In cases where trial account usage costs you very little or nothing I'd err on the side of not blocking users.

> I think that method would have a lot of false positives

What makes you think that? This is you saying that that detection service is not very good, FWIW.

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