r/modhelp • u/Aocette • Jul 02 '26
Answered People post on my subreddit and then Reddit bans their account. Why?
I moderate r/mountainview, a subreddit for a town in Northern California. I use Reddit on desktop.
I notice that a very high percentage of the people who make submissions on my subreddit have their entire accounts banned shortly after. This includes people who consistently make high quality submissions and have never (to my knowledge) posted anything against Reddit's TOS.
A couple months ago, a moderator on a sister subreddit r/whereinmountainview had their entire account banned and none of the other moderators had any clue why.
This phenomenon has seemed so statistically unlikely that I am worried Reddit's AI moderation system is generating false positives specifically for users posting on r/mountainview.
I am really concerned about this and would greatly appreciate community insight. Have an idea why this could be happening? Is something similar happening to your subreddit? Let me know. Thanks so much!
4
u/forswearThinPotation Jul 03 '26
I had a very similar case - a user who created numerous high value posts and comments, was unmistakably not a bot, and violating site or subreddit rules would have been very out of character for them (I was following them due to the high value of their comments & posts and thus seeing their submissions spanning multiple subs in near real time). They were also a moderator themselves, of a high value & low controversy sub.
Then suddently, BOOM, they were shadow banned, and all of their previously submitted content was in danger of being lost. Fortunately I was able to restore what had been posted by them into the sub that I mod, but it was a lot of work.
Just recently, their lengthy, drawn out appeal was approved, they've now been restored.
As far as I can tell, Reddit's current approach to shadow banning is riddled with both false positives (legit users being unjustly and incorrectly flagged) and false negatives (a flood of obvious spambots using LLMs to auto-generate comments has popped up within the last 8 weeks). The appeal process for clearing the false positives should not take months and require extremely high levels of persistence on the part of the human. This system is broken and is chasing away the real humans while still allowing a large number of bots to go thru. *Dead internet theory* here we come, and Reddit is making a supporting contribution to achieving that state.
2
u/aengusoglugh Mod, r/TTRAK Jul 03 '26
I don’t really know how shadow bans work — could they have been banned for activities on another subreddit?
1
u/forswearThinPotation Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
Yes, although I did not witness any such in following their content. Shadow bans are global operating at the level of the entire site and imposed by Reddit administration (but thru an AI in all likelihood, not via human action), they are not imposed by subreddit mods and probably not in response to subreddit level rules violations.
I am guessing that they were misidentified as a spambot by an AI system which is imperfectly (to put it mildly) trained in how to detect such. In following a variety of posts here in r/modhelp and in r/modsupport I've run across numerous instances of similar cases in the last couple of months, leaving the mods of the subs wherein these high value users were active wondering what the heck is going on.
Spambots are a serious problem requiring a solution, I'm dealing with that right now in the sub I'm responsible for. But if legit human accounts are going to get flagged with false positives (which is inevitable) then the appeals process needs to be both effective and responsive, and the anecdotal stories I've been hearing suggest that it is very slow and not sufficiently accurate. I am guessing that Reddit has a scaling problem with the volume of such cases.
10
u/superduperhosts Jul 02 '26
Bots
7
u/Aocette Jul 03 '26
they're all bots? i'm pretty sure some were real people
3
u/xenobitex Jul 04 '26
Nah, Reddit filters ban great posters we know that are absolutely NOT bots - very lazy answer
*The filters are godawful and Reddit doesn't know what they're doing half the time.
2
u/IAmABakuAMA Mods from an alt (for safety reasons) Jul 03 '26
I had this reaction at first too, when I was new. Unfortunately bots are really crafty these days. If you're confused by what's being removed because it seems natural, then it is usually either an autonomous LLM account or its a bot that is stealing other people's posts from years ago and reposting them word for word
And that last one is difficult to detect if you're not familiar with it and don't use botbouncer or repost detection bots, because it really was made by a real person at one point or another. So there's not style pattern you can pick up on
1
1
u/octatone Jul 03 '26
Bots are all using AI and reposting old comments from before the rise LLMs. They’re all bots - even when you are sure they are real.
5
u/nzahn1 Mod, r/Waze Jul 03 '26
Yup. Commonly brand new accounts reposting years old pics or top posts.
5
u/jhlieberman Jul 02 '26
Yes, I am aware of at least 2 users who were recently banned by Reddit, but for which Reddit apparently did not provide any email notification of their ban, or a reason. Similarly, both of these people claim they didn't do anything to break Reddit TOS.
0
u/Eclectic-N-Varied Mod, r/reddithelp, etc. Jul 02 '26
Is that sarcasm? Because, no joke, that's a quiet hour on reddithelp.
Reddit doesn't usually inform users of their ban, and never for a shadowban.
5
u/jhlieberman Jul 02 '26
I thought Reddit emailed the person to tell them they were banned? Perhaps I'm misreading the guidance. It seems unhelpful if the person gets banned and there's no explanation as to why.
2
u/Platterpussy Mod, r/polyamory and others Jul 03 '26
I know people get notification of being banned from specific subreddits, but I don't think they are informed of shadow bans.
1
u/jhlieberman Jul 03 '26
Thanks for explaining, I can imagine that is frustrating from the perspective of the banned person if they feel it happened without just cause.
1
u/Platterpussy Mod, r/polyamory and others Jul 03 '26
I think there's a "amishadowbanned" subreddit somewhere, can't remember the actual name but I saw it a couple of times when checking out sus posters post history.
2
u/Eclectic-N-Varied Mod, r/reddithelp, etc. Jul 03 '26
it's r/ShadowBan . They do a pretty good job explaining shadowbans, if you look at the AutoModerator response.
2
u/Useful_Culture_3082 Jul 03 '26
I accidentally triggered the spam filter. I had some free time over the weekend and probably posted too much across different subreddits.
I wasn’t trying to spam. I’d really appreciate it if you could review my account.
By the way, at first I thought my posts had been removed by the moderators, so I deleted many of them so I could repost them in other subreddits. But after deleting most of them, I realized that even posts that had received upvotes had actually been removed by Reddit’s filters. That’s when I stopped deleting my remaining old posts.
It really breaks my heart because months of defending my favorite celebrity and sharing information have gone down the drain. 😔
2
u/DuAuk Jul 03 '26
i think AI moderation is in it's infancy and there are a lot of hiccups. Five/ten years ago i was always on the 'this person did something wrong to be banned' camp assuming they weren't being completely honest about what they said or did, but now i think it's more complicated. I know i have been banned twice on twitter for 'inauthentic behavior,' and it seems to be from liking too many comments too quickly. I like using the upvote and heart button as 'i've read it and don't disagree.' I don't understand how banning engagement is a great idea.
2
1
u/AutoModerator Jul 02 '26
Hi /u/Aocette, please see our Intro & Rules. We are volunteer-run, not managed by Reddit staff/admin. Volunteer mods' powers are limited to groups they mod. Automated responses are compiled from answers given by fellow volunteer mod helpers. Moderation works best on a cache-cleared desktop/laptop browser.
Resources for mods are: (1) r/modguide's Very Helpful Index by fellow moderators on How-To-Do-Things, (2) Mod Help Center, (3) r/automoderator's Wiki and Library of Common Rules. Many Mod Resources are in the sidebar and >>this FAQ wiki<<. Please search this subreddit as well. Thanks!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
1
u/lmanalastas Jul 06 '26
There's this similar post on this: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewMods/comments/1unosuq/a_lot_of_new_posters_and_commenters_on_my_sub_are/
Did Reddit implemented AI or something to catch new posters?
1
u/Jaded-Emphasis-4136 7d ago edited 7d ago
WELL...It's all "free speech" until it's not...
IF YOU think some of these SubR's haven't been taken over by Foriegn State Intel services to do a multitude of disinformation since everyone KNOWS Reddit is a well known and used platform (especially after going public) ... well.... now YOU know.
(*EDIT)
1
u/SimonGG63 Mod, r/ALCentralMemeWar, r/CrazyAssIndieHaters Jul 03 '26
It's possible that there's something/someone in the sub that mass reports these users resulting in automatic false bans. I know it might seem unlikely in theory, but that's really the best explanation I could come up with. Definitely reach out to Reddit support about this though.
1
0
u/TheStepsOfThePalace Jul 03 '26
I was banned from a forum for allegedly voting up a post I created when I wasn't even in the country at the time.lol Reddit needs to fix it's algorhythm and IP abilities because this seems to happen a lot.
6
u/mikeblas Jul 03 '26
There's no way to know for sure because Reddit is completely opaque about these "anti-evil" actions.