Reddit is trash

[MS-DOS]

Reddit mods banned me for some bullshit and now I cannot even make new accounts. Range IP ban? it's dynamic. Holy what a bunch of lossers. Unusable website where every subreddit requires some convoluted karma requeriments. If you say anything that someone doesn't like you may end up banned because someone knows a mod or something. In real forums like this you can create a new account and start asking questions and interacting. I miss old forums, this is the only one left that I still can use, the rest have been abandoned for the redditarded abomination.

[BillBill]

32 minutes ago, MS-DOS said:

Reddit mods banned me for some bullshit and now I cannot even make new accounts. Range IP ban? it's dynamic. Holy what a bunch of lossers. Unusable website where every subreddit requires some convoluted karma requeriments. If you say anything that someone doesn't like you may end up banned because someone knows a mod or something. In real forums like this you can create a new account and start asking questions and interacting. I miss old forums, this is the only one left that I still can use, the rest have been abandoned for the redditarded abomination.

Don't fell bad. You can be banned from any subforum. Even if you followed all of the rules. I was accused of pretending to be a moderator. For just asking a question in a forum. The mod went on an incoherent rant. Saying I would be permanently banned. They do a sitewide ban by IP address. So if your IP ever changes. You might not be able to use the site. Based upon someone else being banned. Some bans are temporary to the entire website. Subforum bans are normally permanent. You are better off not going there.     

[ThousandBlade]

Reddit is a cesspool of eco chamber, anything that's not aligned with mods narrow world view is a instant ban.

Reddit moderator attract social rejects that couldn't get an ounce of respect from anyone in the real world, that's why they're compelled to swing their ban hammer around to feel important. 

[ewitte]

I got "permanent" banned from one subreddit for some reason I can't even remember.  I noticed like 6 months later it was working...  The only thing I remember is it wasn't really breaking the rules, maybe slighly grey area with no warning.

[jordanbuilds1]

reddit is basically discord in forum form. can be used for good, but is mainly shit

[TempestCatto]

If you say something the hive doesn't like, you get down dooted to oblivion.

Oh you gave your perspective on a situation, that of which you've actually experienced, but it wasn't the affirmation that OP was looking for? So you get -1,000+ down votes on your comment, screamed at by people with no idea what colour grass even is, and eventually banned.

 

The annoying thing is, there's often really good info on there too. Like obscure problems with a very specific year/make/model/spec of your car, only one other person on the whole of the internet had the same issue years ago. The people on that thread figured it out, and now years later, you reap the benefits and are able to fix your car. So weird how polarizing Reddit truly is.

[emothxughts]

For me, it's the fact that incredibly unfunny "jokes" get way more upvotes in a thread than the genuinely helpful answers.

[BillBill]

9 hours ago, emothxughts said:

For me, it's the fact that incredibly unfunny "jokes" get way more upvotes in a thread than the genuinely helpful answers.

You can provide an accurate and detailed answer. So you either get downvoted or the person deletes their tread. They then repost the same topic. Expecting a different outcome. 

[Poinkachu]

 

Thanks for stating the obvious thing for the last what? decade? xD

[Lurick]

Oh no!

 

Anyway

[Ha-Satan]

15 hours ago, TempestCatto said:

If you say something the hive doesn't like, you get down dooted to oblivion.

Oh you gave your perspective on a situation, that of which you've actually experienced, but it wasn't the affirmation that OP was looking for? So you get -1,000+ down votes on your comment, screamed at by people with no idea what colour grass even is, and eventually banned.

Yep, this is why I completely quit the site. The upvote/downvote model is designed in such a way that it pushes each sub-community towards the most extreme version of whatever viewpoint is in the majority in that sub. It creates a feedback loop where small majorities turn into supermajorities.

 

Like, what I mean is this: let's say you have a sub about some topic and there is a contentious issue that exists regarding this topic. Let's say, further, that this sub is split 55/45 in favor of Position A vs. Position B (at least, it's split like this at time = 0).

 

Even with a slight majority in the sub, as time goes on, Position A will rise to the top of any thread that discusses the topic. This creates the impression that Position A is more popular than it actually is, which pushes newcomers even more towards Position A and dissuades them from considering Position B. Furthermore, it discourages people who hold Position B from even posting, so there's a decent chance that holders of Position B will just leave the sub altogether and form their own sub, which further entrenches Position A's supermajority in the original sub. If the original sub is a well-known and popular sub before the split occurs, then it's very possible that this serves to signal boost Position A even more. This is all worsened by the fact that the ease of creating new reddit accounts makes it very simple for bad-faith actors to make sock puppet accounts in order to abuse the voting system to boost their chosen views.

 

Once Position B has been largely removed from the sub, this creates an environment where there are very few moderate voices to counterbalance Position A, which oftentimes leads to the sub sliding in a more and more extreme direction towards and sometimes even past Position A.

 

In other words, the TL;DR is that reddit's system is basically a perfect environment if you want to create extreme division and polarization.

 

 

[BillBill]

25 minutes ago, Ha-Satan said:

Yep, this is why I completely quit the site. The upvote/downvote model is designed in such a way that it pushes each sub-community towards the most extreme version of whatever viewpoint is in the majority in that sub. It creates a feedback loop where small majorities turn into supermajorities.

 

Like, what I mean is this: let's say you have a sub about some topic and there is a contentious issue that exists regarding this topic. Let's say, further, that this sub is split 55/45 in favor of Position A vs. Position B (at least, it's split like this at time = 0).

 

Even with a slight majority in the sub, as time goes on, Position A will rise to the top of any thread that discusses the topic. This creates the impression that Position A is more popular than it actually is, which pushes newcomers even more towards Position A and dissuades them from considering Position B. Furthermore, it discourages people who hold Position B from even posting, so there's a decent chance that holders of Position B will just leave the sub altogether and form their own sub, which further entrenches Position A's supermajority in the original sub. If the original sub is a well-known and popular sub before the split occurs, then it's very possible that this serves to signal boost Position A even more. This is all worsened by the fact that the ease of creating new reddit accounts makes it very simple for bad-faith actors to make sock puppet accounts in order to abuse the voting system to boost their chosen views.

 

Once Position B has been largely removed from the sub, this creates an environment where there are very few moderate voices to counterbalance Position A, which oftentimes leads to the sub sliding in a more and more extreme direction towards and sometimes even past Position A.

 

In other words, the TL;DR is that reddit's system is basically a perfect environment if you want to create extreme division and polarization.

 

 

The polarization is beyond extreme. If you do not go along with the majority. People will upvote the wrong answer a thousand times. Even downvote a person that has a good question. If you don't use terminology that they understand. The topic goes into a total meltdown.  

[Lurick]

3 minutes ago, BillBill said:

The polarization is beyond extreme. If you do not go along with the majority. People will upvote the wrong answer a thousand times. Even downvote a person that has a good question. If you don't use terminology that they understand. The topic goes into a total meltdown.  

Prove it

Also prove that it's not bots doing this in a lot of cases just to push/farm karma.

Reddit is no different than here or any other discussion place. The mods here could ban me right now because I said they're stinky doo-doo heads. If everyone got banned for having a different opinion then there wouldn't be anyone on Reddit because everyone would be banned, and yet that's not the case.

[BillBill]

15 minutes ago, Lurick said:

Prove it

Also prove that it's not bots doing this in a lot of cases just to push/farm karma.

Reddit is no different than here or any other discussion place. The mods here could ban me right now because I said they're stinky doo-doo heads. If everyone got banned for having a different opinion then there wouldn't be anyone on Reddit because everyone would be banned, and yet that's not the case.

The burden of proof isn't on me. It is for the individual to make that decision. 

[Ha-Satan]

1 hour ago, Lurick said:

Prove it

Also prove that it's not bots doing this in a lot of cases just to push/farm karma.

Reddit is no different than here or any other discussion place. The mods here could ban me right now because I said they're stinky doo-doo heads. If everyone got banned for having a different opinion then there wouldn't be anyone on Reddit because everyone would be banned, and yet that's not the case.

The point that @BillBill and I were making isn't that the mods on Reddit are bad (or worse than anywhere else). Neither of us said that you get banned on reddit for having a different opinion (though I guess TempestCatto did, but I didn't really intend to respond to that part of their post).

 

My point at least - and I think what BillBill was agreeing with - is that Reddit is structurally designed in such a way that it creates polarization. That has nothing to do with how the mods behave.

 

Compare that to old-style, in-sequence bb boards like this one, where posts just appear in order. This design is inherently more egalitarian and conducive to fostering different viewpoints. Sure, there are likes and you can get your post marked as a "solution," but if I make a post and it doesn't get any likes, that doesn't automatically make it less visible. It still shows up in order with all the other posts.

 

I know this might seem like a really small thing to view as important, but so much of our current social discourse happens online through these platforms (including discourse that leads to significant real-world outcomes), so I think it's absolutely worth looking at how the a platform's design shapes the discussions that occur on it.

 

 

[Lurick]

20 minutes ago, Ha-Satan said:

The point that @BillBill and I were making isn't that the mods on Reddit are bad (or worse than anywhere else). Neither of us said that you get banned on reddit for having a different opinion (though I guess TempestCatto did, but I didn't really intend to respond to that part of their post).

 

My point at least - and I think what BillBill was agreeing with - is that Reddit is structurally designed in such a way that it creates polarization. That has nothing to do with how the mods behave.

 

Compare that to old-style, in-sequence bb boards like this one, where posts just appear in order. This design is inherently more egalitarian and conducive to fostering different viewpoints. Sure, there are likes and you can get your post marked as a "solution," but if I make a post and it doesn't get any likes, that doesn't automatically make it less visible. It still shows up in order with all the other posts.

 

I know this might seem like a really small thing to view as important, but so much of our current social discourse happens online through these platforms (including discourse that leads to significant real-world outcomes), so I think it's absolutely worth looking at how the a platform's design shapes the discussions that occur on it.

 

 

Apologies, I thought one of you was the OP when I made the post originally which made the claim that reddit mods are bad and everything.

 

Polarization is possible anywhere with any system it's just a matter of how it's handled at scale and especially, in the case of Reddit/Twitter/etc. how much profit there is to be made by pushing certain things up or down based on outside influences in a lot of cases too. If Reddit didn't have a system where you could make money off upvotes and whatnot (I'm pretty sure that's active now at least) then the propensity of bots to mass upvote/downvote garbage or specific viewpoints would be diminished in that regards. That's not to say profit is the only incentive for bots or outside actors to push narratives either and yes, a straight upvote/downvote system where downvotes lead to things being hidden isn't a great way for things to be handled but it's not the worst either, depending on how it's implemented. Slashdot has a somewhat similar system for comments and generally unless you're completely off the rails the system doesn't really hide much in terms of competing viewpoints, not perfect but still it's got perks to it.

 

The problem though is at scale there isn't a good system to agree/disagree and keep valid discussions going and at the same time allowing users to try and filter out trolls that isn't ripe for abuse sadly.

[Ha-Satan]

1 minute ago, Lurick said:

The problem though is at scale there isn't a good system to agree/disagree and keep valid discussions going and at the same time allowing users to try and filter out trolls that isn't ripe for abuse sadly.

Yeah, I totally agree with you that the scale makes this really difficult. I've been an admin for a bb forum similar in scope and usage to this forum, and I found that it was pretty easy to moderate and keep up with what was going on simply because there wasn't that much going on. With platforms that have billions of posts per day, that would be totally impossible. And yeah, the subreddit mods are supposed to keep an eye on their own subs, but they're frequently part of the problem.

[Mark Kaine]

On 5/8/2025 at 1:33 AM, jordanbuilds1 said:

reddit is basically discord in forum form. can be used for good, but is mainly shit

While that's mostly true on the surface, it's really not... Reddit is more about influence and dominating any search algorithm than just being a highly toxic "forum like thing"... I would probably more compare it to twitter or something but it's really a thing on its own.

 

I wouldn't really compare it to discord directly because it's wayyyy easier for me to find actual communities and with more reliable information on discord.  (and you also don't find many discord communities randomly by a google search - that is the main difference here, not just technically, but by design, as I have already pointed out) 

 

Reddit was cool like 5 years ago but now you're probably better off asking an ai... 

[Mark Kaine]

7 hours ago, Lurick said:

Prove it

Also prove that it's not bots doing this in a lot of cases just to push/farm karma.

Reddit is no different than here or any other discussion place. The mods here could ban me right now because I said they're stinky doo-doo heads. If everyone got banned for having a different opinion then there wouldn't be anyone on Reddit because everyone would be banned, and yet that's not the case.

That's besides the point the post was making, you can't get "downvoted" on a forum so that kind of polarization just can't occur. Reddit is basically designed (or rather redesigned as it wasn't like that a couple of years ago) to be the perfect echo chamber.... It's probably highly addictive, but really serves no purpose and provides basically zero value.

 

Which is a shame, because despite all its short comings reddit *used* to be a good source of information if you needed help with something, or were just looking for ideas... Not anymore, this aspect is completely gone, reddit is just unreliable and not interesting now (imho)

 

 

7 hours ago, Lurick said:

that it's not bots doing this

I *think* that's the entire issue why reddit is now useless. Nothing ever feels real (because it probably isn't lol). 

[apoyusiken]

i got banned and idk why, i dont even really use it

[20ReliableLights]

With CGNAT becoming more common, IP bans are going to start becoming a real crapfest soon.

 

Fiber finally came to my neighborhood last year and they use CGNAT so there are hundreds (probably thousands) of different customers with the same IP address. I had to pay for a personal static IP since I have a Plex server. Luckily they only charge $5/month for that.

[ewitte]

On 5/8/2025 at 11:24 AM, Ha-Satan said:

Yep, this is why I completely quit the site. The upvote/downvote model is designed in such a way that it pushes each sub-community towards the most extreme version of whatever viewpoint is in the majority in that sub. It creates a feedback loop where small majorities turn into supermajorities.

 

Not sure why people even care about downvotes.  If it's the only place with information you're looking for, it's the only place.  So much is censored elsewhere it makes it hard to find information sometimes.  I quit FB except for communicating with family near the end of the pandemic because they blocked pretty much any useful information.  The really good sites that cannot be censored don't have enough people to be valuable at this time.  

[wasab]

congrats man. i have account site wide banned for three times now and roughly 12 or so sub bans by mods. Always result of me not being able to keep my opinions to myself and joining whatever controversies and flame wars happen to be there for that day. You just need enough people to falsely report you for violence and sexualization of minors, and whatever false nonsense to trigger a bot admin to ban you. 

[Why_Me]

turd sandwich > reddit mod

[avidgamer121]

twitter is the same, my account got hacked despite having securely generated password and that guy posted spam after that they don't care about my appeal and don't even let me make a new account, Elon Musk is a sick capitalist who thrives on that extremely overpriced subscription.