I got banned from the forums after having been considered “too combative” for not taking it lightly that a moderator lectured me on unrelated forum etiquette rules.
I wanted to discuss a legitimate technical issue, which turned out to be coil whine - at the time I did not know it was called that. A community member offered some advice, and I asked them kindly whether they would like to remove a particular question which I’ve answered in the very previous original post. They became offended by the very suggestion of this and deleted their whole reply, including the useful stuff. The moderator stepped in here and gave me a petty little lecture on all kinds of behavior norms, which I one by one refuted - to no avail, the thread just got locked.
Ok, fresh start. Let’s open another topic because I’m not here to bicker - I have an issue to discuss. The new topic got closed within 10 minutes by a mod, threatening me with a ban if I open it again.
I thought that was kinda ridiculous, because I’m a Framework customer and I want to discuss an issue with my laptop, so I opened anothe topic. Sure enough, it got closed and I got banned for a month.
A month has passed, and my problem is still there. One day when I’m browsing the interwebs to understand my issue, I stumble upon another Framework forum post discussing the same thing. My ban being lifted, I jump into the conversation and confirm that I have the same issue, and I share my story of having been banned after trying to discuss this. As you might guess, a mod appears, closes this topic as well, and states that the real reason I’ve been banned is that I have… wait for it… FREIGHT FORWARDED! And proceeds to permaban me on the spot with the notice “too combative”! What the hell, Framework!!!
I hadn’t freight forwarded and I have no possible explanation as to why this mod was jumping at me like that. Anyway, let’s take to reddit to complain about this. Quickly, a mob of zealous Framework fans forms, trampling over each other trying to lecture me that freight forwarding is prohibited etc… I WAS NOT TALKING ABOUT FREIGHT FORWARDING! I was complaining about a mod accusing me of freight forwarding and banning me for this bogus reason! And guess what - eventually the thread gets shut down after inevitably devolving into a discussion of freight forwarding (to which Framework has a similarly bogus attitude, although that has changed slightly with them conceding to European single market regulations) - the Reddit thread gets locked as well and I get permabanned from the subreddit for “discussing freight forwarding”!
Ever since, I message the mods on Reddit every now and then, reminding them of the utterly crazy way they’ve been treating me, and the usual response is just a temporary mute so that I can’t message them further.
Does anyone else have a similar experience?
Seems like you’re exremely trigger happy to call unpleasant behavior harassment. Harassment in online spaces means incessant abusive communication directed to someone - I was being neither abusive nor incessant. I just didn’t take accusations and preaching from an imaginary moral high ground very well.
Of course forums are privately owned. Civil rights such as free speech were fought for and won by previous generations exactly in order to put an end to everything being privately owned and behavior dictated. Seems like these days there is too little awareness of this and people are giving away their rights singingly, defending corporate censorship on the grounds of private property. That’s a bonkers attitude if you ask me, calling my unpleasant comments harassment and defending the power and money hungry capitalist machine’s rights to control how I can and cannot waste the precious bytes and milliwatts of their servers with my unwanted comments.
To someone who wants to look up information about Framework before making an informed decision whether to buy their products, their forums and the subreddit is public space and we should treat it as such.
They are moderated public spaces, there are plenty of actually public spaces to discuss things.
Coil whine is probably not the most well known thing, but I’m surprised you never tried to Google something about “high pitched computer noises” before posting about it.
I did try to google it, and I didn’t actually find out what’s going on. My googling skills could be better, I know.
The problem with this argument is you’re basically saying “go away”. But you’re not pointing to any useful locations to go away to. In fact, as I’ve stated, if a newcomer is looking up information, they are going to look in the official forums and Reddit - here especially Reddit is the problematic one as it looks like an actually public space but it’s totally corporate controlled as well.
Of course companies are able to control their forums. But we shouldn’t simply accept this as a fact of life and move on. We should demand standards of privately maintained public spaces that don’t allow for easy distortion of information in order to generate profit.
Suggesting alternatives is not their responsibility.
That’s what we agree to do by using their systems, though. They provide a service for free, while in exchange, we promise to play by their rules. It’s FAR from ideal, but being disruptive is not the answer.
That would be a fair solution.