Reddit seems to have introduced sitewide AI moderation bots that are sweeping up users and outright banning them, without warning or explanation, for crimes like including links in their posts. This has started to hit some pretty well-known artists in r/comics.

It’s inconsistent and unpredictable - which makes it worse, since you don’t know what the rules are. As companies like Reddit give up more and more control to unaccountable machines, this kind of thing is getting more common.

Reddit has always had kind of a strange relationship with contributors and what is often called “self-promotion”. On one hand, it wants Content… But it can’t seem to decide where it wants the content to come from.

It’s nice that we’ve got alternative spaces like this.

Anyway, have some links:

  • speaksintv@lemmy.world
    53·
    2 months ago

    I was there 14 years and never had a ban. Not even a warning. In the last 6 months I was banned 4 times for comments ranging from “ice gonna mess with someone exercising their 2A and find out” to pointing out a mod’s contradiction when he said Harris both was anti-gun AND admitted she said in an interview she carried a Glock. He kept messaging me in DMs via modmail (which you can’t block) even after I asked them to block me.

    My final, site wide ban for every account linked to my device was for saying Don chomo’s seizing of immigrant bank accounts was akin to Jews having their property taken by nazis.

    On appeal they actually replied that the permanent ban stays because I was “targeting a group of people”. I didn’t even know what to say.

    However if it wasn’t for that dumb shit it was gonna be for something else. I was a top 1% commenter too.

    Deleted all my accounts, removed the app, and won’t be back.

    • Victor@lemmy.world
      202·
      2 months ago

      11+ year old account here. 🖐️

      I deleted my only account before I could get any sort of ban. F—k that whole site, bro. I don’t miss it.

      The only thing that irks me is when people link me to a Reddit post. Then I see some comment that makes an incorrect statement (there’s one in each post), and I’m unable to reply and correct them. 🙈

      • Mostly_Gristle@lemmy.world
        2·
        2 months ago

        If it makes you feel any better, a lot of the time those posts aren’t even made by real people. They’re made by bots who are designed to post something completely wrong or wildly contrary for the sole purpose of pissing you off so that you’ll engage and add to the post count.

        Or sometimes they’re more malicious like the shit-disturber bots that BlueSky was (or maybe still is) plagued with that inject what-about-isms and negativity into otherwise healthy and productive conversations just to poison the discourse and inject conservative bullshit into leftist spaces. Not that BlueSky is particularly leftist, but you’d see the bots appear more frequently in threads where people were talking positively about leftist ideas, or where the conversation was otherwise becoming too “woke.”

        So you might not actually be missing out on anything except arguing with a clanker who only cares about its prompt.

        • Victor@lemmy.world
          1·
          2 months ago

          I have no experience with bad faith on bluesky btw. It’s all been good for me there.

        • Victor@lemmy.world
          1·
          2 months ago

          It’s not usually posts that are completely wrong though. Usually subtly wrong or have some small detail incorrect. The ones I’m talking about don’t seem like bot accounts or bait. They seem like they’re well-intentioned but just have some small misconception about what they’re talking about. 🙂 Those are the ones I care about correcting because those are the ones that seems like they actually want to spread truth.

          But, alas. It’s Reddit, so I will not interact. It is forever dead to me.

    • Jessicat@lemmy.world
      12·
      2 months ago

      I was there for a good while too but got baited by someone who started spamming me with messages repeating the same questions on the same comments when I stopped responding. I eventually told them to fuck off and got shadow banned. I appealed, gave it a week and then deleted the account and the app. I’m done with them. They won’t even stand by their own decisions and explain what rule I violated. They basically brick your account without even telling you, it’s such a weird policy.

    • nullspace@lemmy.world
      11·
      2 months ago

      I had a similar experience. Years of use with no issue then suddenly an admin crackdown on anti-fascist comments.

      Give it a few more years and I expect the site to be mostly bots talking to bots, subtly mentioning products and services in their comments.

      Anyway, it’s time for me to drink a Mnt Dew and eat some Cool Ranch Doritos as I play the new 007 First Light on my Xbox Series X.

    • jorymo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      2 months ago

      I wish I at least got that much of an explanation. I lost my account there the other day for “multiple content violations on connected accounts” when I only had one account. I tried appealing and asking what the violations or other accounts actually were, and just got a reply saying the ban would be upheld without any answers