Tell HN: My Reddit account was banned after adding my subs to the protest

596 points

3 years ago

As you may be aware, there is an upcoming protest[0] on June 12-14 where many subreddits[1] are going private for 48 hours in protest of reddit's API fee increase[2][3], which many expect will lead to the end of all third party apps.

I moderate a few subreddits for a niche hobby, and decided to join the protest. We're fairly small, if non-negligible potatos: altogether, maybe 10k-15k active users on a busy day, but still want to show support.

So, I commented to add the subs to the list[1] and made announcement posts based on the template[4] linked from r/modcoord.

Several minutes later, the site logged me out. I received an email from reddit that said my account had been locked for "suspicious activity" and I would need to reset my password.

The timing seemed curious, but as I was logged in over an Airbnb's wifi, I figured it could be legitimate.

When I logged back in, I saw that all of the posts and comments I've made from this account had been deleted. The password reset requirement is understandable; the fact that the posts and comments were not restored, less so.

Looks like it's finally time to encourage my community to move to another site.

0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36187705

1. https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/1401qw5/incomplet...

2. https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/13xh1e7/an_open_l...

3. https://old.reddit.com/r/evilbuildings/comments/140n3m3/hey_...

4. https://old.reddit.com/r/ProCSS/wiki/api_protest_template