I’ve been wondering for a while why no one was responding to anything I was putting on reddit- I was putting different questions into niche community groups and was very shocked to see that no one was interacting.

Today I learned that I had actually been shadowbanned from reddit for some reason. For those of you who don’t know, that essentially means that I had been banned from participating in conversation by creating posts or comments, but I had no idea that was the case since on my end it looked like everything was posted and visible to the public. They don’t give you a reason though, but since I mostly lurked and the only thing I ever did post wise was try to ask some questions in various hobby groups, I have no idea why I was chosen for a ban.

To say I am angry at reddit is an absolute understatement. I will never darken the doorframe of that platform again, and I am so thankful that we have this platform with much more liberty to converse and contribute to our little communities on the internet.

Thank you all for being here and making the internet a place where open discussions can be held between everyone again.

  • TeaHands@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    On the bright side, when the same thing happens on Lemmy it’s probably just because the software freaked out and didn’t federate your post. Totally different! 😅

  • DarraignTheSane@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Yeah, it’s one of the more egregious practices they ever had. Happened to me many years ago. I messaged the admins, they responded with a reason why I was banned. I played nice, said I wouldn’t do that again and they restored my account. I doubt you’d get the same courtesy these days, if you even cared to try.

    • HectorBarbossa99@lemmy.fmhy.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      I genuinely don’t know which admins would have done it and for which group. I had started a second reddit account after deleting my previous one in an attempt to get away from using it all the time.

      Ended up having a question about some thing and made a post after otherwise just lurking in different subs only to never hear anything from it. I figured it must’ve been because of my low karma, but didn’t understand why no one interacted with any of my future comments or posts.

      Took me half a year to figure it out😅 just glad to have a reason to finally cut ties

    • Liome@pawb.social
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      1 year ago

      Maybe I dreamt it, but I vaguely remember them saying that shadowbans were made for bots, and humans were not supposed to get them, and if they did, it was because automod thought their activity looked like a bot.
      I don’t know if it was not actually the case, or if they changed it’s intention later.

      • dedale@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Kind of like the tasers and flashballs, once you give people the tools, they’re tempted to use them.

    • BruceTwarzen@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I asked nice and they acted like power hungry dicks. Something like: say pretty please and i think about it. I am now ip banned

  • ExaltedWarrior@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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    1 year ago

    I’ve never had a whole account shadow banned, but I’ve had some comments get shadow removed. I’m not sure why but it happened more often with my longer posts.

  • NightOwl
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    1 year ago

    It’s been that way for a long time. For new accounts you usually have to get comments pre-approved so they can become visible then slowly gain enough karma to the point that your comments stop requiring it. Opening up a permalink of the comment I made was something I did often to see if it was actually visible.

    • HectorBarbossa99@lemmy.fmhy.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      it’s something that I didn’t know about until today. started doing the Perma link thing to check- sure enough none of my posts or comments were ever actually posted.

      doesn’t really make sense because I’ve never said anything offensive or otherwise controversial, so I’m not sure why I was excluded from participating in conversation