Context:

/r/ProgrammerHumor/ closed for a couple of days, then - “because mods have to listen to the community or otherwise they get replaced by more /u/Spez compliant” opened up again, and held a voting which new rules to enforce. The sub opened up with the new rule allTitlesMustBeCamelCase.

I made the first post about 15 minutes after the sub re-opened (because I’m in their discord, I was aware it opened up again, it wasn’t announced yet, I think) - and of course I just make a shit-post about John Olver since it’s the /r/pics (and a bunch of other) subreddits way to protesting the API changes.

It wasn’t even that good of a post to be honest, it got temporary taken down by the subs’ mods since they mentioned “it’s only anecdotally related [to programmer humor]” - but after messaging them explaining the context they put it back up. So it’s basically approved by the moderators of the subreddit. And not against the content policy of the sub

It got like 3k upvotes in about an hour, so I got a message from some bot that I was on the frontpage of /all/ as well. At the end of the day it had 13.5k upvotes

About 48 hours later I got an automated message:

Your account has been permanently suspended for breaking the rules. This account is permanently suspended due to violations of Reddit’s content policy

I posted an “appeal” basically just asking “Lol you banned me for posting John Oliver?”

And the only response I got was:

Thanks for submitting an appeal to the Reddit admin team. We have reviewed your request and unfortunately, your appeal will not be granted and your suspension will remain in place. For future reference, we recommend you to familiarize yourself with Reddit’s Content Policy. -Reddit Admin Team This is an automated message; responses will not be received by Reddit admins.

I posted another “appeal” yesterday asking “Could you clarify which Content Policy rule I broke?” To which they haven’t responded yet.

It’s the only post I made in the last 2 weeks, so there wasn’t any other reason to suddenly ban me besides this post…

My reddit account was 12 years old at this point. I was going to leave anyways because the Reddit client I use (sync) already announced it would be shutting down June 30 - so I don’t care that much that they banned me - just though it was a pretty weird approach from the Reddit Admins to start banning people for getting John Oliver on the front-page

  • academician@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    26
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    That’s fucking ridiculous. Maybe we should all start posting this meme and get ourselves banned.

    Reach out to The Verge, they’ve been covering the Reddit debacle pretty well and I bet they’d love to hear from you.

    • RonSijm@programming.devOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      1 year ago

      I’m hoping they’re still going to respond to the appeal, as my first appeal wasn’t really a real one, just basically a “lol wtf?” one… Considering maybe it was just one random “hardcore” rogue admin on a banning spree for things they didn’t like. - And that if I just submitted an appeal another admin would see it and unban me. But that didn’t go as expected

      So I’m hoping they at least answer the second appeal asking to give me a reason. I’m curious if they’re going to admit it’s for the John Oliver post, or if they’re going to pull something from the history and be like “2 years ago you said something mildly problematic we just discovered” - or most likely, just keep it vague and say I violated the content policy without explanation

    • CaptainApathetic@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      1 year ago

      Custom medals for an instance that admins/mods could give to accounts or posts would be cool, might be a way for admins to reward/push good content. Kind of like reddit mod awards except you don’t have to give money to a jagoff to do it.

  • sensibilidades@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    19
    ·
    1 year ago

    My reddit account was 12 years old at this point

    I’m guessing that’s a big reason why. You know what Reddit used to be like, and that’s not where they want it now, so you’re more of a liability than an asset. They’d rather grow their userbase with millions of new users who will adapt to whatever shitty platform they’re continuing to morph into.

    • x4740N@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      Your comment just game me an idea but what if we make posts discussing how reddit has become a shithole but word the posts in a search engine optimised way

    • BD1sHappyFeet@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      I think mine is 13. Might have to try to get banned myself! Wonder if there’s a pic of John Oliver holding a ban hammer.

  • Sota4077@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    18
    ·
    1 year ago

    I’m sure Reddit will remain for many years, but I seriously hope this is the beginning of a major shift in peoples approach to large sites like them. Many smaller communities can only be a good thing for the internet. Lemmy/Beehaw are exactly what I hope become more commonplace. Mega social media platforms all need to go.

  • jballs@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    18
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    I like how they permanently banned your account, it’s against their rules to make a new account to circumvent a ban, then said “for future reference please read our comment content policy”.

    • TeoTwawki@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      part of their selective enforcement - they know the site is full of socks shills and bots, they just look the other way till its convenient for them to apply a rule to an account they want rid of.

      • jcit878@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        my alt was banned after my prime account was, it took about a day then out of the blue was banned. did not post anything with it and only noticed when i logged in a week later

  • jcit878@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    1 year ago

    reddit admins have been going on a purge like ive never seen. welcome to the club!

    • root@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      I had kind of already started detaching from Reddit (moving it from my bookmarks so I don’t click by habbit, uninstalling on phone, etc).

      Really liking Lemmy so far, especially with all the recent/ future improvements.

  • Buffalox@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    1 year ago

    If this is true it’s insane.

    That post is actually funny IMO, how thin skinned do you have to be to suspend people permanently for that? It obviously doesn’t break any rules. If it was ambiguous whether it did, a warning would be more fitting.

    Yes I can see it’s not directly about programming, but close enough IMO.

    • RonSijm@programming.devOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      If this is true it’s insane.

      It’s true. Since my account is suspended, I’m unable to delete or edit any post or comment. So anyone is completely free to Doxx my account, find it on a waybackmachine or any another other reddit archive and see if I posted anything even mildly problematic, or prove that I’m lying or leaving out details for no apparent reason or whatever

      If it was ambiguous whether it did, a warning would be more fitting.

      When something is ambiguous whether it fits a specific subreddit or not - is up to the mods to decide, and they deemed it ok. Sub-offtopic stuff just gets your posts removed by the mods, and normally wouldn’t get you side-wide ban

        • softpboy@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          1 year ago

          I read somewhere that even if you don’t live in Europe you should try to ask to delete everything through GDPR because it’s an automated process and some companies don’t check where you live. It’s worth a try

  • Cruxifux@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    1 year ago

    Yeah I’m permabanned from Reddit too for similar stupidity. Nothing of value was lost for me though.

    • Freesoftwareenjoyer@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      But why use a proprietary app when there are awesome people making Free and Open Source applications? For example Jerboa or wefwef.app. Anyone can audit their source code and make sure they don’t spy on you or do anything malicious.

      • Jfqs6m@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        I’m using Jerboa now and it’s pretty good. A few hiccups here and there, but all in all not bad.

      • impulse@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        Because the developer has years of experience in crafting a near perfect app for Reddit, much of which applies to Lemmy as well.

        Over the years this dev definitely earned the community’s trust and I see no reason to assume he will pull sneaky shit now.

        FOSS is awesome, but I kind of dislike the militant push towards it here on Lemmy. As soon as someone does not release their source code people go “But have you thought about open source?”, “Why not open source?”, “No source, no install” and the likes.

        • Freesoftwareenjoyer@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Over the years this dev definitely earned the community’s trust and I see no reason to assume he will pull sneaky shit now.

          The fact that he puts you in a position where you have to trust him makes him not trustworthy. There is no place for trust in computer security or privacy. If you have to trust something, it is bad for you. For example it would be ridiculous if encryption relied only on trust and nobody could verify that it’s actually secure. I’m not saying the developer is malicious, but he should know better than this (all programmers should).

          FOSS is awesome, but I kind of dislike the militant push towards it here on Lemmy. As soon as someone does not release their source code people go “But have you thought about open source?”, “Why not open source?”, “No source, no install” and the likes.

          Why do you dislike that? Do you not want to have control over your own devices and software that runs on them? Free and Open Source software gives you the freedom to study the program, modify it and distribute the original and any modifications you make to it. This way not only we can verify what the program does, but we can also change it to fit our needs. But also this makes it impractical to implement any malicious functionality, because users can easily remove it and share the modified version with others. So instead of the developer having power over users, the users are the ones in control. They can have privacy and security, which is impossible with proprietary software. That’s why proprietary software is unethical.

          • impulse@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            That is an awful way to go about it. Have you verified your bank’s computer systems? What about the servers your health data is stored on? I hope you use an Android AOSP ROM with a public source code. Do you even trust your microwave to not send death rays because of a malicious programmer?

            I don’t dislike it in general, I just think that FOSS is not a good fit for every project. A good and recent example: I work as a software engineer in a pretty niche market and my team and I have developed what we believe is a really neat algorithm for a pretty niche problem. There are already other players trying to replicate the solution, but thankfully they are falling short compared to our approach so far.

            Suppose instead of keeping the library proprietary we would make it open-source (and free). Well, now every competitor in the market just needs to look at our GitHub, and months of R&D budget would be basically wasted while at the same time, our competitors would get our IP handed on a silver plate.

            I’m pretty sure that Sync for Lemmy will have a pro version priced similarly to the Sync for Reddit pro version (~ $4.99 one-time). The dev would be stupid to release it as FOSS, if he intends to make money on premium features, when literally anyone with a computer and two brain cells could just compile the premium app from a public GitHub.

            Now take good examples of FOSS: Blender, Gimp, Inkscape, and the likes. The main difference is that there is no obvious monetization happening besides donations and sponsorships and for such passion projects FOSS is absolutely the way to go as you can pool in the knowledge of the community if your project generates enough traction. Blender wouldn’t be what it is today without all the volunteer devs contributing to it.

            • Freesoftwareenjoyer@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              1 year ago

              Have you verified your bank’s computer systems?

              No, it doesn’t run on my computer, so that’s impossible.

              I hope you use an Android AOSP ROM with a public source code.

              I don’t use Android. I have a PinePhone - it runs GNU/Linux.

              Do you even trust your microwave to not send death rays because of a malicious programmer?

              I have to trust it, because if it has any firmware, the source code is not public. But I’m pretty sure there are standards for electromagnetic radiation, which are regulated by the government. It would be nice to be able to modify such firmware though and change how much the microwave beeps after it finishes. But anyway, the Free Software movement recognises that it is currently impossible to write replacements for all firmware for every possible device. So if a program isn’t running on a computer, it’s ok if it’s proprietary (for now at least).

              I work as a software engineer in a pretty niche market and my team and I have developed what we believe is a really neat algorithm for a pretty niche problem. There are already other players trying to replicate the solution, but thankfully they are falling short compared to our approach so far.

              You could release it under AGPL license. Since it’s a Copyleft license, your code couldn’t be used (legally) in proprietary software. If other companies wanted to use your code in their product, they would have to release the source code for the entire program (or they can pay you for MIT licensed version - this is called dual licensing). If they make improvements to your AGPL licensed code, they would have to release those changes. Win-win for the society. I don’t release my code under anything weaker than GPL. You don’t have to use permissive licenses and you probably shouldn’t.

              Think of all those companies developing almost the exact same thing you are and wasting time and money on it, while they could all contribute to your solution instead and spend the saved money on something more important. How many other areas of development are there where this happens?

              I’m pretty sure that Sync for Lemmy will have a pro version priced similarly to the Sync for Reddit pro version (~ $4.99 one-time). The dev would be stupid to release it as FOSS, if he intends to make money on premium features, when literally anyone with a computer and two brain cells could just compile the premium app from a public GitHub.

              I’m pretty sure nobody has to pay for any software ever. People choose to pay for it. Checkout the game Mindustry on Steam. It’s Libre Software, you can not only get the code for free from GitHub and compile it, but the author ever releases the builds there for free. Yet me and tons of other people still bought a copy.

              I think most people probably don’t even know what GitHub is, but yes the more technical users could compile it. That doesn’t mean none of them will buy it though.

              Blender, Gimp, Inkscape are developed by non-profits. But that doesn’t mean that commercial Libre software doesn’t exist or that it can’t exist.

    • RonSijm@programming.devOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      I’m not so sure about that…

      I’ve been nagging /u/ljdawson (the sync dev) to comment on whether he’d open-source sync or whether he’d make it compatible with Lemmy: https://www.reddit.com/r/redditsync/comments/145vvjg/reddit_clients_can_support_lemmy_just_by_changing/jnog4ag/?context=3

      The news so far is

      No plans to open source right now but potentially lemmy

      ReVanced has patched sync to be compatible with any reddit API key, in case /u/ljdawson nukes it. And people have been working on decompiling sync and making it compatible with lemmy, and then recompiling it, but that’s not a long term solution. Making large changes on decompiled source is not ideal in the long run. Best case scenario would be for sync to become open source

      • csm10495@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        How is open source related to Sync for Lemmy being an option? It was announced already: it’s coming.

        Something being open source or not may be a reason for some to use or not use something but generally it isn’t an issue for the mainstream. (Exhibit A: Windows and MacOS hold around 85% of regular home users).

        He also wouldn’t nuke Sync for Reddit… the key he uses will stop on July 1st since he won’t pay for it.

      • kratoz29@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        What is the problem with it being closed software? I mean it is his decision after all.

        • Freesoftwareenjoyer@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          The problem is not knowing what the program does on your device (if it spies on you or if it shows you what you want to see instead of what the developers want you to see). It’s his app, but your device and you deserve to have control over it. The author doesn’t think so apparently, but fortunately other Lemmy developers have better standards.

          • gccalvin@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            0
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            True… But are people reviewing open source software and code to make sure they aren’t malicious? I’m not. I haven’t looked at the Lemmy code once, just saw there was a repo.

            I think the bigger issue is what motivates the dev. If it’s freeware, then the project probably isn’t backed by greed VS passion. In saying that, I paid $3 for an android music app (Symfonium) and it’s closed source. I absolutely love it way more than plex Amp and the dev is active. I have no issues with closed source unless development halters.

            • Freesoftwareenjoyer@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              Yes, people look at software’s code all the time, if it’s popular enough. Lemmy seems to have multiple people contributing right now and each of them knows some portion of the code. You don’t have to do that yourself to benefit from this. When a program is Free and Open Source, it doesn’t automatically mean that it’s secure and private, but it can be. With proprietary software that’s not possible at all, because it’s very difficult to verify what the program does and when authors do add malicious features, the users can’t do anything about it.

              With Free and Open Source software, users can study what the program does, make changes to it and share their modifications with others. It wouldn’t make sense to add malware to such program, because users can easily remove it.

              • Laice@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                2
                ·
                1 year ago

                Isnt the logic in the case lemmy kinda flawed? Sure the main instance is open source but you never know if any other instance may added tracker and such stuff since you cant directly verify what it runs.

                • Freesoftwareenjoyer@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  you never know if any other instance may added tracker and such stuff since you cant directly

                  Technically, because of the AGPL license that Lemmy users, instance owners have a legal obligation to disclose any changes they made to the source code upon request. But you are right that we can’t verify what is running on somebody else’s server. There is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to verify what runs on your computer/phone though and that’s more important.

    • moosh@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      What do you like about Sync vs the other apps out for testing right now? Still trying to figure out which I prefer.

  • jerome@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    12
    arrow-down
    5
    ·
    1 year ago

    They ban for anything but yet /askthedonald /politicalcompass and /conservative still exist

    • x4740N@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Ive seen both the lemmy versions of those when first browsing through communities on the community tab

      Don’t remeber if they where on lemmy.world or another instance

      Honestly I’m disappointed someone would come to lemmy to create those bigoted places

      • netburnr@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Those post do get heavily down voted. I do my part to keep them put of the hot/Frontpage.

      • Lifecoach5000@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Well those type of places are gonna exist somewhere regardless. I personally liked keeping an eye on those type of subs on Reddit, just to see what discourse was going on and watch them react to the latest flavor of fear porn

    • grue@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      I got permanently suspended for reporting misinformation in r/conservative. To be clear, not banned from the subreddit; suspended site-wide. That’s the admins supporting the mods’ retaliation for reporting misinformation.

  • Lorgres@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    1 year ago

    Time to request full gdpr info. Also they don’t delete your posts if you request account deletion and tell you to do it yourself.

    After the request tell them through an E-Mail to delete every single comment with remotely identifiying info for you since you dont have access.

    • RonSijm@programming.devOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yep, I submitted a GDRP request for all my data as well. After they’ve complied with my data request I intent to submit a delete request

      I practically work as devops / sysops so know the GDRP rules since I had to deal with them myself…

      After my account was suspended I can no longer do any “write” actions on reddit; upvote, downvote, delete posts/comments. “Luckily” my username is/was RonSijm - which is also my real-life name, therefore everything I’ve posted falls under GDRP. So they’ll have to comply with my request to nuke everything. “do it yourself” is not an option

      • Lorgres@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Careful, when you delete an account they just mark the username as [deleted] and claim it sufficiently anonymizes the data. Explicitly tell them to delete all comments or at least send then a specific list of comments with anything identifiable.