Source

I have seen LLMs used to karma farm in order to create sellable accounts, but this account is 12yo which I find more disturbing because it means it used to be a real person's and is now being used for something else.

3 month old account with 5.3 million karma already. Seems like a legit account!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/54430747

got the notification to verify my age when trying to access NSFW posts or profiles already for a few weeks now, but as of today my whole account is blocked unless I verify. I guess that's it then. Based in Austria btw, so there is no specific law in place that forces Reddit to implement this and I will definetly not give my personal information to Persona, a company that belongs to Peter Thiels Palantir group.

I dunno if it's my algorithm, the poor quality posts meaning less interaction or just I'm not there often enough to tell. Anyone else noticed anything?

It all started when my main Reddit account was banned—simply because I posted a comment criticizing the banning of a subreddit—resulting in the immediate loss of an account I’d held for about 4 years, with 102k karma. I appealed, but I received no response—not even a reason for my ban, nor any notification that I had been banned in the first place. I’ve filed appeals repeatedly over the past few months, but today, I’m finally giving up. Fuck Spez and his pathetic, whore of a family. When I submitted my appeals, there wasn’t even any indication that they had gone through; I was just left in total silence, unable to do a thing. I started using an existing alt account for basic tasks, but today, that account was banned too—all because I recommended the non-profit, open-source "VPN Gate" project to someone who was complaining about the mandatory KYC (age verification) requirements being imposed in my country. The only reason I was still using Reddit was out of habit, and I’ve decided it’s time to change some of my habits. Ultimately, this is the inevitable fate of every centralized corporation—without exception. There’s no guarantee that some complete moron won’t end up in charge of any of them. I wish more people realized this. If four years of my effort are being sold off to AI data companies, and everything can be permanently wiped out overnight without a word of warning, then that is, quite simply, data theft. Once again, fuck you, Spez—you absolute piece of shit. If you had even an ounce of courage or integrity, you wouldn’t have imposed those damn API restrictions in 2023 and ruined Reddit. I truly regret the four years I spent here, but it’s better to cut my losses now. Goodbye, you son of a bitch Spez, and your puppet, Reddit...

Im guessing reddit has decided to do a maas roll out of age verification BS

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/50252054

"Won't somebody think of the kids?!" while they admit to using the data to squeeze more money from ads (translated making your experience better). They don't deserve the communities they have anymore.

Soon any company you interact with will have enough information to ruin your life because there's always a way for some employee to get the data even of you really do what you promise and don't save anything.

As GLaDOS said - it's been fun, don't come back.

Here's what makes this whole thing absurd

The ban in question was a 3-day ban from r/youll_be_banned which is a subreddit where getting banned is literally part of its punchline. You make a post, you get banned if the mods are in a bad mood, and that's just the joke

Why on earth would I try to circumvent such a short ban, from that subreddit of all subreddits?

Still, it doesn't change that I've been accused by the automated system, even for something that I did not do

Right after I got that message about the sitewide ban, I panicked and sent a half-baked appeal explaining that I had zero intent. Of course that appeal got rejected because I didn't explain the context above. You could tell from the wording itself that I was still experiencing the shock of it all

And, well there is a page allowing me to send my second appeal. I'm just scared of it getting rejected again somehow

I think in the meantime, I'm just gonna stop shouting into the void and reach out here to you guys, just to talk it over. It's been 11 days since the ban, and I've been a little depressed about it

Does anyone want to share their experiences?

Edit: Submitted my second appeal which says:

My 3-day ban was from r/youll_be_banned, where bans are part of the joke. I didn’t intentionally evade it. Please review the specific activity behind my permanent suspension; my first appeal lacked context.

Wish me luck, even if my luck is low. If they still don't hear it, oh well I guess

When compared to ~5-10 years ago, I find Reddit comments and posts to be more difficult to read.

I am curious as to why this is. I suspect this could be because of bot posts, but am not sure.

Originally posted to: r/SubredditDrama

By: u/CoffeeMaleficent1956

Guy takes over r/hysterectomy, deletes and bans all criticism

For reference, the new mod has a LONG history of taking over womens' spaces and shilling his business. His first "official post" as a moderator was to ban discussion of sexism, which is a very relevant topic when it comes to healthcare as women face multiple layers of hostility and sexism in trying to get care. Conveniently, when this rule was criticized, he then deleted that post as well.

Several people have caught bans (we are discussing this elsewhere) for pointing out his authoritative and dismissive tone towards anyone and everyone with concerns, ranging from a simple "why was no one involved in this decision" to "why is a cis man telling us how to manage our emotions" (in his first action, he told us to go outside).

I can't even provide much in the way of proof of what's happening because he is deleting everything he doesn't like. Even posts talking about moderator code of conduct have been deleted, he's hidden himself from the moderator list (which is now just him) so that people can't report him directly.

People with no history of offenses are getting temporary and permanent bans despite the fact that those are lower on the tier and require more offenses to be the given moderator action, so he is breaking his own rules.

On a personal note I haven't seen any slurs or anything of that nature thrown his way, mostly just questioning why a man is in charge of a female space, why no one was asked about this, why specifically he is against the discussion of sexism in healthcare.

https://www.reddit.com/r/hysterectomy/comments/1x430mr/comment/pfhsoi1/

A link to his "official first action"

List of Subs

Comment by u/mangobean_

Edit: reddit admins are intervening and putting some of these subs up for adoption. I've crossed out the subs that he no longer moderates. He is still moderator on some so the fight isn't quite over yet!

Also, whoever takes over moderation of these communities will have some work to do. He allegedly issued unjustified bans and many of these communities have misleading posts from Kevin and automod sticky comments with links to neueve. Please consider cleaning that up so future users don't get misled. Thanks to everyone who made the women's health corner of Reddit a better place today.

Yes!

Here's a bigger list from what I could find:

r/hysterectomy, modded by:

• ktoasty

r/PelvicHealthAllies, modded by:

• neuevehealth
• neueve
• Spiritual-Friend4347
• ktoasty

r/BacterialVaginosis_, modded by:

• ktoasty
• neuevehealth
• Educational-Pie-4183

r/utis, modded by:

• ktoasty
• neuevehealth
• neueve

r/Cystocele, modded by:

• ktoasty
• neuevehealth

r/Berberine, modded by:

• ktoasty
• mathnerd_aya
• Educational-Pie-4183

r/VaginalYeastInfection, modded by:

• ktoasty
• neuevehealth

r/RectoceleSupport, modded by:

• ktoasty
• neuevehealth

r/VaginalHygiene, modded by:

• NovaBlue144
• ktoasty*

*Kevin was removed, NovaBlue made a post addressing the situation and added a brand new 0 day, 0 post history account as mod.

Poster Notes

Posted this here because holy hell. According to the comments this guy has been slowly taking over subs for awhile ago he can sell his supplements to desperate women who trust him. And Reddit admin who has their hands in everything somehow didn't notice? Didn't care? I'm not sure but, makes you wonder what else is going on.

So, kind of an odd series of events bare with me if you can.

No matter what I do, my reddit accounts are banned. I have a feeling that something happened where my post thought I had spammed at one point and I got caught in a filter. When attempting to create a new account to appeal, I think I may have deleted the old account and the Admins likely saw that as ban evasion which I was not shooting for when attempting my appeal because of a bug. Now whenever I try to create an account I get banned within a couple of minutes and my appeals have not been acknowledged in well over a year.

Is there anyone out there that can see what account I was initially banned on and why I cannot appeal? I am a pretty good egg, most harm I had ever done was maybe have a political disagreement in one of the news sub reddits. I just find it to be a useful tool to talk to people locally because of the large audience.

Let me know if anyone can help.

-BZ

Why? I'm using Firefox browser on a Win11 Desktop. Do I need to remove the Reddit cookie from Firefox?

Here's the latest with what I've come up with to do it. It's not easy, because reddit has created defenses primarily to stop bot networks, who have far more resources than an actual redditor.

To that end, using VPNs or TOR is a no-go because there are databases that catalogue all these IPs and reddit makes use of those databases. You also don't want to access with a home WiFi cable type IP, as these tend to be static and reddit will have associated it with your banned account. This leaves one option: use a cell phone data connection. These IPs change often and reddit has little ability to flag cell data IPs without causing collateral damage.

Reddit now requires and email address. For this it's tempting to use throw away email services, but reddit flags disposable email. It might be possible to get away with custom domains or, .edu addresses, but for ban evasion, the safe bet is to use one of these: gmail, hotmail, outlook, yahoo or icloud. These are the most common providers, thus reddit can't blindly discriminate here.

When it comes to web browsers, people will say "reddit tracks your device", that's actually not true, it would be a breach of privacy for reddit to access any kind of hardware ID. But what they do is profile your client, like your screen size, time zone settings, detected browser plugins, etc. With this they create a probability that you are a match with your banned account. If you do nothing to hide your client details, the probability of a match will be high, and the subreddit moderators will be informed that your new account is likely affiliated with a banned account. To avoid this, you can either use the Brave browser, or Firefox with "privacy.resistFingerprinting" set to true.

Some have said that reddit profiles things such as your subreddit subscriptions and usage patterns to detect if you have returned. This is rather unlikely, as the false positive rate would be very high with so many people having shared interests. But just to be safe, don't copy your subreddit subscriptions one for one, mix it up for at least the first month of the account's life.

There are only certain flags reddit can use with a high degree of confidence: poor reputation IP address, poor reputation email provider, cookie/client data crumbs, and user agent profiling. If you have accounted for each of these clues, then there's little else that reddit can determine about you which is actionable.

Here is a summary in steps:

1. Install the Brave browser on your phone. If already installed, delete all cookies and data.

2. Google "what is my IP", find your IP and write it down.

3. Put your phone into "airplane mode", wait.

4. Exit "airplane mode" and check your IP, if it's unchanged, repeat step 3 until you have a new IP.

5. Create a new hotmail or yahoo email account.

6. Go to reddit, create a new account with Brave, the new IP and the new email address.

7. Build up karma to at least 100 by spamming clever comments to posts in r/askreddit/new

Wait a few days before posting to any subreddit you were banned from. Try to wait up to a month before using the same IP address as you had with a banned account, such as your home cable connection. Looking at reddit with a banned IP is likely safe, but the act of posting comments from that IP will trigger flags. It's likely that a bad IP reputation falls off over time, as IPs get repurposed on a periodic basis, and errors would increase over time if they marked a given IP as untrustworthy forever.

If you don't want to have to use reddit on a phone, you can buy a USB wireless network interface, then have that interface connect to your phone with the "mobile hotspot" feature, then install something like 3proxy.com, and configure Firefox to use 3proxy, so that reddit, as seen through proxied Firefox, will see your phone's IP address, not your home internet connection. If any of the proxy setup is unclear, just ask your favorite LLM for more details.

It can be tedious to tether your phone to your computer, because you have to leave and take your phone with you. If you're a reddit power user, it might make sense to buy a burner phone with a data plan, and keep it with your PC, specifically to act as your reddit IP address.

Personally, I just don't like typing on my phone, so I bought a USB keyboard with a phone holder, but I'm resigned to the fact that my hope cable IP is probably toxic for a month or so.

. . . . . . . . .

Update for people using Comcast et el who have a static IP address:

I couldn't change the MAC address of my comcast router, so I had the same IP for nearly five years, which reddit blacklisted with my accounts. I set my router to bridge mode, and used a separate router for my home WiFi etc. , a Netgear Orbi system, and it does allow the MAC address to be set to anything, and this induces IP changed with Comcast, which is very useful. If you're on Rogers, Spectrum etc. and have a sticky IP, this could be worth a shot.