Goodbye, Reddit: How the Internet’s Front Page Is Eating Itself

Same. I used reddit since 2008. I've had accounts with multiple posts to /bestof, with over 100k karma get banned. The things I've been banned for have always been trivial "zero tolerance policy" violations that remind me of the zero tolerance, zero thought policies you used to (still do?) see in American high schools. At least when I was in school, my school had a zero-tolerance policy for violence. A bully could attack a victim and both of them would be suspended for fighting. The administrators didn't want to bother figuring out who was at fault, so they just punished victim and perpetrator equally.

On different accounts, I was banned from some of the largest subreddits that I had years of history of posting very high quality and well-regarded comments in. The biggest account I ever had was under the username "isleepinahammock." You can still find links to now-deleted bestof posts through google. The things I've been banned from the big subreddits for include:

1. On January 6th, as the capital was actively being breached, wondering aloud why this invasion wasn't being responded to with soldiers and automatic weapons. (Historically how such mobs trying to overthrow governments are always dealt with. Later we learned that the reason those soldiers weren't present was because Trump deliberately left the place unguarded.)

2. As SCOTUS was considering its ruling on presidential immunity, stating that if SCOTUS rules the president has complete immunity and effectively be a dictator, Biden should simply drone strike Supreme Court justices until the ruling is reversed. (Later news articles and opinion pieces proposing this exact kind of thing were openly promoted to the top of r/politics.)

3. Flippantly telling an overt bigot, commenting in one of the LGBT subreddits, to "go die in a fire."

4. Making pro-Palestinian comments in r/worldnews.

Never did I ever threaten anyone. Never did I propose vigilante justice on anyone. Any mentions of violence were either obviously flippant remarks or suggestions of lawful and just use of government authority. But these comments violated the zero tolerance, zero thought policies of the major subreddits. I received bogus site site suspensions for these, which I ignored with alt accounts. Eventually I received a total IP ban for ban evasion.

I realize that reddit likes to claim to have a neutral hand. They say that moderators should be able to operate their subs as they please. But these major community subs aren't some niche community. If you want to create r/rightwingworldnews, go ahead, but the main worldnews section for the biggest discussion site on the net should not be run by a bunch of radical Israeli supremacists. r/politics, the main political discussion forum, should not apply a harsher standard to their commenters than they do the standards they apply to the very stories they feature. And there should be a meaningful appeals process to actually get access restored to individual subreddits and the site as a whole.

If they actually cared about quality content, they would do this. But this takes care and thought. And if all you're trying to do is juice ad revenue, your number one priority is to make the site as clean and sanitary as possible. If all you care about is maxing ad revenue, then having a zero-tolerance, zero-thought policy of "any mention of an act of violence in any context = ban," makes sense. Even though in some cases, such a nation's capital literally being stormed by an invading rebel army, violence IS the correct response.

I don't know if you saw images of what the capital looked like a few weeks after January 6th on Biden's actual inauguration day, but the capital was a damn fortress. If those fuckers had tried to storm the capital again on that day, it would have been a blood bath. And you know what? I would absolutely support the military opening up machine guns on any violent mob trying to overthrow our democracy. The moment you choose violence, you deserve to be responded to in turn with violence. You do that? Well you've made your choice. I have no sympathy for you. And zero-tolerance, zero-thought moderation policies prevent us from talking about these harsh realities. Sometimes violence IS the answer. Sometimes democracy DOES need to be defended with force. But we cannot discuss these harsh realities on the main political page of the biggest discussion site on the net, just to keep the place clean for advertisers.

Oh, and one more reason I was once banned from r/politics? Someone posted a doomer comment saying something to the effect of, "how can we possibly deal with MAGA terrorists? What if they lose the next election and just start an open rebellion? It's hopeless! We might as well give up now." I responded with the obvious and correct statement. Something to the effect of, "what do we do if armed revolutionaries enter open rebellion against the government? We shoot them. We send in the military and we shoot them. That is what you are SUPPOSED to do to people who take up arms against a just and legitimately elected government. It's that whole 'enemies foreign and domestic' thing that soldiers swear to enforce." I was literally banned for suggesting the very thing every US soldier swears an oath to do if necessary.

Thank you for all your posts here