I lurked Reddit for a long time before creating an account which is now over 6 years old. I was a ‘Top Contributor’ and in the rewards program. 89k karma, never promoted violence or targeted any group, but I got a 7-day ban which was followed up hours later with a permanent ban. This is because of a comment criticizing Senator Radcliffe, trump, and Musk. The comment included profanity, (I called them hypocrites and cunts), but it wasn’t directed at any user or marginalized group. Just harsh political commentary.

Reddit initially issued a 7-day ban, which I appealed. That appeal was approved, the comment was restored, and they admitted it didn’t violate the rules. But the permanent ban still stands, and my follow-up appeals on that have been ignored. No explanation. No transparency. Just gone.

It’s made me realize how fragile “free speech” is on platforms like Reddit. You can insult regular users and get away with it, say horrendously racist, misogynistic, and homophobic things, but speak too plainly about powerful people and suddenly you’re promoting “hate.”

I combed through the Reddit rules, and nothing I have ever commented or posted violates them.

That’s the reason I’m here on Lemmy now. I’m trying to read more, scroll less, and engage with platforms that aren’t actively censoring political dissent. Who else is in the same boat? Is there anything that can be done to hold Reddit accountable or make people aware of they way they are censoring speech? This is my first Lemmy post. I marked it NSFW because of the profanity.

  • illegible@discuss.tchncs.de
    4·
    1 hour ago

    It’s funny how we used to have this trope of the mighty censorship bureau that has to rubberstamp everything (like they do for movies) but the reality is that the sycophants will trip over themselves to censor their neighbors in order to please those above. In Reddits case you have subreddit mods banning and censoring to please the reddit mods, who are trying to please reddit management, who are trying to please people like Musk, who are trying to please Trump. Trump doesn’t have to say anything, those low level Mods are doing all the censoring for him pro bono.

  • utopiah@lemmy.world
    1·
    1 hour ago

    I haven’t nor plan to… but it’s also worst and worst content and behavior so yesterday I request my data take-out.

    I’m not sure if I’ll just stay logged-out (like right now) or plainly delete my account but either I’m preparing a way out.

  • LemmiChanga@programming.devEnglish
    12·
    2 hours ago

    No way. I do that all the time, so does most people on Reddit. What is up with peeps on Lemmy always trying to say Reddit is banning shit. I will mention Luigi all the time on Reddit and have never been warned.

  • Surp@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    6 hours ago

    I cant even tell you what I got banned for because they banned me without saying why. I dont even know the last thing I was talking about was finding anime in the style of berserk.

    • ghen@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      3 hours ago

      They probably banned you for something that happened at least 24 hours before the ban hit because they’re just slow. My account was banned a week after I had replied to a racist troll trying to figure out if they were being racist so that I could ban them on my subreddit, and my comment was flagged as racist. I had already banned the user and hidden the thread, but that wasn’t good enough for Reddit and I needed to go.

  • Glaedr304@lemmy.world
    61·
    9 hours ago

    My leaving was originally from the api cost changes, I had payed for a 3rd party reader years ago and all of a sudden my lifetime of no ads was gone and I had to pay. This change was admittedly after reddit decided to follow twitters api cost changes. I am supprised at how close Elon and spez seem to be, given that I don’t know of any photos of the two of them, they they probably only know each other as CEO’s.

  • Phoenicianpirate@lemm.eeEnglish
    41·
    9 hours ago

    I got permabanned for criticizing Israel. The final comment that got me permabanned was literally ‘No, just the problems they deserve blame for’ to a zionist who accused all Lebanese of blaming all their problems on Israel.

  • BluewaterRed@lemm.ee
    8·
    11 hours ago

    Holy crap that is EXACTLY what happened to me this week. I wasn’t top contributor or anything so grand but I got a 7 ban after criticizing imperialism which after making an appeal that was rejected. I literally did nothing afterwards but woke up to a perma ban that was issued several hours after with no indication of why.

  • Geetnerd@lemmy.world
    121·
    15 hours ago

    Same, happened to me hours ago, with no message stating why, or no recourse.

    Elon whined to Spez to do something about Redditors being mean to him.

    I guess it worked. Fuck both of them.