I had been falsely permanently suspended from Reddit, and not just on my account, but also on all of my sister’s accounts. All of them. They suspended each and every single one of them. I had since deleted my account and decided to make homes on Lemmy and SaidIt. I will explain everything that led up to this point, because quite frankly, this might be the stupidest suspension ever. I am very unhappy with how Reddit handled the situation. Like, very unhappy.
Reddit handled this situation very poorly. Quite frankly, their handling of it was the worst I have ever seen from Reddit. Basically, this nonsense all started because of a certain stalker on Reddit. Destrucity was their name. They were the most butthurt snowflake on all of Reddit. They had been constantly harassing and even stalking me on every single post I created. They kept telling me that dyscalculia, a very much real learning disability, wasn’t real and was fake. The thing is, no matter how many times they got suspended from Reddit, they would make more alt accounts and do the same thing again. They were the worst of the worst. They kept trying to convince me it was fake and I constantly attempted to shut them up, but to no avail as they continued to make more accounts and go right back to harassing me.
The thing is, after the user got butthurt by me for the first time, they reported me to Reddit. Sooner or later, I got hit with a 3-day suspension. They clearly were just butthurt and so, they reported me and I got suspended. Keep in mind this is only the one of two suspensions I had recieved because of them in particular. Destrucity could not be stopped. The user also would have been able to make another account anyway. The thing is, Reddit doesn’t judge fairly. If you are reported, you will probably get a suspension from the site, and for no reason, might I add.
Immediately after I was unsuspended I started to get pissed off with my stalker and plastered them all over Reddit, because they were the most pathetic user I have ever seen on the entire site. I posted everywhere I could to get some form of help, but either barely anyone were willing to help me, or I would just get silenced as enforced by the ‘politically correct’ agenda on Reddit. Finally, some users were able to give me some form of advice, and I got backed up by people who were on my side. For the first time on Reddit, I actually felt like people actually cared about me as a person, which is a very rare sight to see on Reddit.
To no surprise, Destrucity continued their endless harassment and bullying, and eventually, I snapped. I chatted with them and called them ‘pathetic’, because continually making new accounts to harass and stalk a specific user is pathetic. Yet they’re unwilling to accept it because they have absolutely no life outside of Reddit. Once again, the user got butthurt because I called them ‘pathetic’, and once again reported me to Reddit. This time, I did not get a 3-day suspension, I got a 7-day suspension instead. A 7-day suspension for having an appropriate emotional response to someone else’s BS. I even explained it to Reddit, and they wouldn’t even care, because come the next day, Reddit did the unthinkable.
After I woke up, that being today, I had noticed that Reddit had changed their minds and updated my suspension. No, it was not 3-days, 7-days, a month, or even a year. It was a permanent suspension from Reddit for ‘ban evasion’. You know, that right there is BS. And also, they suspended all other accounts that had some tie to it. I got multiple emails from Reddit stating I was suspended. This was an absolute overkill decision from Reddit to permanently suspend me from the entire site over something I did not do. I have never, ever evaded a ban on Reddit, so their blatantly false accusation about me evading my ban was a big bundle of crap. And it all started because a neckbeard keyboard warrior on Reddit was being a dick. And I didn’t even get to be on Reddit for even a year before I got suspended.
I tried to send off an appeal, but I knew it would not be accepted and I would get the usual denied message. So, that was it. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I decided that enough was enough and I was no longer going to use Reddit because of this overkill and very unjust decision they pulled out of their asses. I frankly deleted my account because of Reddit’s false accusation which resulted in me getting suspended. I even told them in the message that they would never see me again. It felt so good to finally break out of Reddit’s grasp. It honestly felt like breaking up and getting out of a bad relationship. As such, I decided to make a Lemmy account. Reddit is history to me and I won’t be making another account to feed their hive mind echo chamber. They lost a valuable user today and they won’t be getting it back.
This is a sign we need to stop using Silicon Valley tech. The big tech giants are controlling of everything and if you say or do something that does not meet their ‘politically correct’ agenda, expect to be banned from the site. The only thing Silicon Valley giants care about are control and money. We need to start migrating to decentralized sites like this one, whose goal is clear: to allow anyone to speak freely without oppression. Reddit is not how it used to be. Over the past 3 years, Reddit has gotten worse and worse. The thing I am saying is: let those sites become the hive mind echo chamber they were designed to be. Let them die. Just move your stuff over to decentralized sites. Like, leave YouTube and switch to Odysee. Leave Twitter and switch to Mastodon. And especially, leave the hive mind echo chamber we call Reddit and switch to Lemmy or SaidIt. If it wasn’t clear enough, Reddit, YouTube, Twitter, and others don’t care about you. Leave the sites and switch to more decentralized alternatives. We can only defeat Big Tech giants if we let them rot as their little echo chambers. That is the only true way we can win.
Late to the party, but I’d like to bitch, too.
I’ve used Reddit with one account or another for like 14 years, and I admit that I was a part of the account deletion exodus when they went scorched earth on 3rd party apps, and that I further created a new account because, you know…it’s the Internet’s town square and there is a lot of information you can only get there (although, ironically, and a little delightfully perhaps, now the AI LLMs have inhaled it all so perhaps its monopoly on useful information has come to an end), so I made a new account that was recently 2 years old.
I mostly just did what I do on Lemmy…graze. Scroll. Copy memes over to my friends’ Discord server. I was in some communities that are niche enough not to exist (yet) on Lemmy. It was just, you know, casual Redditing.
Then last week, someone posted in a subreddit for liberal gun owners, a photo of a whole pile of guns. I didn’t recognize them. Didn’t care about them. But he seemed proud, and I was in a mood, and I just felt like engaging, and maybe gassing up the OP a little, and so I said something along the lines of, “You have too many guns. You should give one of them to me. Help a comrade out.”
I was immediately banned from that subreddit for solicitation of purchase of firearms, which is fucking insane. Nothing in my comment, if read with an ounce of grace and human capacity to think, indicated that I was seriously trying to buy firearms from this guy. And, okay, so I’m banned from that sub now. Whatever, I didn’t really do anything or contribute there anyway. I go shooting a couple times a year and I just liked getting recommendations on left-wing-friendly firearms YouTube channels and stuff.
Only I woke up two days ago to find that, actually, my entire Reddit account was banned, for the same reason as I was banned from that sub of course. I was offered an appeal as is the typical process, and I know you’re supposed to kiss their asses, but I said essentially this: “I find it completely impossible to believe that a human being read my comment and genuinely believed I was trying to solicit the purchase of firearms. I was using overly-enthusiastic language to illustrate envy of OP’s collection.”
They got back to me today to confirm that, yes, in fact, a human did read my comment and yes, in fact, I was still banned, for life, including any attempt I may ever make to create a new account, which will then be banned for ban evasion which is hilarious.
It’s Reddit. It’s like being banned from Walmart. Yes it’s kinda the worst place on earth, but when you need groceries or hard items, you know that you’ll always have access from anywhere you happen to be, because Walmart is so prolific. Even if Walmart sucks shit, getting banned from Walmart would suck. So that’s part of my frustration. But the other thing is just the black-and-white injustice of it all. No slap on the wrist. No customer service (hah! you’re the product, not the customer, of course) to complain to or have a discussion with. Just “you broke a rule you didn’t know existed by doing something you never imagined could be construed as rule-breaking, and you are now banned, without argument, for the rest of your life, from the most ubiquitously useful megaforum on the Internet.”
Fuck Spez.