Reddit seems to have introduced sitewide AI moderation bots that are sweeping up users and outright banning them, without warning or explanation, for crimes like including links in their posts. This has started to hit some pretty well-known artists in r/comics.

It’s inconsistent and unpredictable - which makes it worse, since you don’t know what the rules are. As companies like Reddit give up more and more control to unaccountable machines, this kind of thing is getting more common.

Reddit has always had kind of a strange relationship with contributors and what is often called “self-promotion”. On one hand, it wants Content… But it can’t seem to decide where it wants the content to come from.

It’s nice that we’ve got alternative spaces like this.

Anyway, have some links:

  • sychthys@lemmy.world
    172·
    3 days ago

    While that’s horrible and should not be happening at all…

    …w…why’s…why’s the Reddit Alien is so caked up?

  • A_Chilean_Cyborg@feddit.cl
    49·
    3 days ago

    Reddit crappy automoderation had been known in the Spanish speaking communities for years.

    “Negro” in Spanish means black as the colour, but the AEO may interpret it as that some countries who do not usually speak Spanish may use it as a racial slur.

    This is no joke, once they auto-ban me for talking about how a black coloured wall would hide the grime better.

  • bandanawearingbanana@lemmy.world
    24·
    3 days ago

    meanwhile they cosy up to advertisers and introduced hiding post history so no sane person can tell whether somone is a bot from their history.

    • krisevol@lemmus.orgEnglish
      3·
      2 days ago

      Something like 90% of reddit users are bots. I wish i could find the link but someone did a little investigating and that is the number he found. They also found that most the new users are from India.

      • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
        2·
        2 days ago

        and which one are propaganda bots from israel, russia, palintir , and then you have actual human ones using bots to drive traffic to thier own site/OF, theres a forum for that its easier to gauge this one then the propaganda ones.

    • Bondjimbond@lemmy.caOP
      31·
      3 days ago

      I’m getting multiple references to “Beep”… I’m clearly out of touch. Can you explain?

      • killea@lemmy.worldEnglish
        74·
        3 days ago

        A lemmy user who likes to post comics and remove all references to the author/creator, I believe?

        • SatyrSack@quokk.auEnglish
          59·
          3 days ago

          A bit further than that, they went on a little crusade insisting that attribution is advertisement. They kept making meta posts requesting that the rules in the comics community be amended to not allow attribution.

          • yermaw@sh.itjust.works
            31·
            3 days ago

            And going on a one man brigading mission telling everyone who dared to post that they needed to crop the image themselves removing the artists name.

            Going so far out of their way to remove the name/website/anything off the image themselves and reposting it in the same community.

            Is beep still alive active? They’re my one and only blocked member

          • Ech@lemmy.ca
            16·
            3 days ago

            They pretty much single-handedly instigated this comm getting a new, actually active mod team and a slew of new rules. Silver linings, I guess.

        • Lumidaub@feddit.org
          2·
          3 days ago

          Yep, they deliberately cropped out anything they deemed self-promotion because “nobody wants to see that” and argue endlessly with people about it. One lesser side effect was that it made a lot of comics look like shit because the layout was designed with attribution in mind.

          Are they still around?

  • speaksintv@lemmy.world
    78·
    3 days ago

    I was there 14 years and never had a ban. Not even a warning. In the last 6 months I was banned 4 times for comments ranging from “ice gonna mess with someone exercising their 2A and find out” to pointing out a mod’s contradiction when he said Harris both was anti-gun AND admitted she said in an interview she carried a Glock. He kept messaging me in DMs via modmail (which you can’t block) even after I asked them to block me.

    My final, site wide ban for every account linked to my device was for saying Don chomo’s seizing of immigrant bank accounts was akin to Jews having their property taken by nazis.

    On appeal they actually replied that the permanent ban stays because I was “targeting a group of people”. I didn’t even know what to say.

    However if it wasn’t for that dumb shit it was gonna be for something else. I was a top 1% commenter too.

    Deleted all my accounts, removed the app, and won’t be back.

    • Victor@lemmy.world
      284·
      3 days ago

      11+ year old account here. 🖐️

      I deleted my only account before I could get any sort of ban. F—k that whole site, bro. I don’t miss it.

      The only thing that irks me is when people link me to a Reddit post. Then I see some comment that makes an incorrect statement (there’s one in each post), and I’m unable to reply and correct them. 🙈

      • Mostly_Gristle@lemmy.world
        2·
        2 days ago

        If it makes you feel any better, a lot of the time those posts aren’t even made by real people. They’re made by bots who are designed to post something completely wrong or wildly contrary for the sole purpose of pissing you off so that you’ll engage and add to the post count.

        Or sometimes they’re more malicious like the shit-disturber bots that BlueSky was (or maybe still is) plagued with that inject what-about-isms and negativity into otherwise healthy and productive conversations just to poison the discourse and inject conservative bullshit into leftist spaces. Not that BlueSky is particularly leftist, but you’d see the bots appear more frequently in threads where people were talking positively about leftist ideas, or where the conversation was otherwise becoming too “woke.”

        So you might not actually be missing out on anything except arguing with a clanker who only cares about its prompt.

        • Victor@lemmy.world
          1·
          2 days ago

          I have no experience with bad faith on bluesky btw. It’s all been good for me there.

        • Victor@lemmy.world
          1·
          2 days ago

          It’s not usually posts that are completely wrong though. Usually subtly wrong or have some small detail incorrect. The ones I’m talking about don’t seem like bot accounts or bait. They seem like they’re well-intentioned but just have some small misconception about what they’re talking about. 🙂 Those are the ones I care about correcting because those are the ones that seems like they actually want to spread truth.

          But, alas. It’s Reddit, so I will not interact. It is forever dead to me.

        • Victor@lemmy.world
          21·
          2 days ago

          I dunno… Maybe some. But a lot are only subtly or slightly incorrect. I don’t think the majority are like that.

    • nullspace@lemmy.world
      15·
      3 days ago

      I had a similar experience. Years of use with no issue then suddenly an admin crackdown on anti-fascist comments.

      Give it a few more years and I expect the site to be mostly bots talking to bots, subtly mentioning products and services in their comments.

      Anyway, it’s time for me to drink a Mnt Dew and eat some Cool Ranch Doritos as I play the new 007 First Light on my Xbox Series X.

      • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
        5·
        3 days ago

        Musk did recently asked SPEZ to take down any pictures of doing the nazi salute, making him look like a fat walrus, when he was balding and had bad teeth.

        you dont need a few more years, currently its 50-70% bots right now. worst of all its AI posting and reposting too. reddit is trying to obfuscate the actual numbers, by having bots “making interactions with each other” and of course opening the floodgates for the political discussions in many subs to be astroturfed.

    • Jessicat@lemmy.world
      18·
      3 days ago

      I was there for a good while too but got baited by someone who started spamming me with messages repeating the same questions on the same comments when I stopped responding. I eventually told them to fuck off and got shadow banned. I appealed, gave it a week and then deleted the account and the app. I’m done with them. They won’t even stand by their own decisions and explain what rule I violated. They basically brick your account without even telling you, it’s such a weird policy.

      • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
        5·
        3 days ago

        shadowban is the brick, its pretty much being abused by reddit now because it keeps the reason thier banning people more up to discussion, rather than a sitewide ban they gives you the reason for the ban. since mostly done by AI now it gives them the more reason to shadowban people.

        • Jessicat@lemmy.world
          3·
          2 days ago

          What’s their end goal though? It’s just going to be bots arguing with each other if they keep it up. I feel comforted seeing other similar experiences here, I’m in good company it seems.

          • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
            1·
            2 days ago

            propaganda like FACEBOOK, probably. plus “datamining the users for advertisement and AI”, i think there still enough ACTUAL users for them to mine the data.

    • mrmaplebar@fedia.io
      11·
      3 days ago

      Basically the same thing happened to me…

      Reddit user for 10 years, 10,000+ karma, active in a lot of niche communities and even started a couple myself. All the sudden got banned multiple times in the span of a few months in 2025 for talking shit about Trump, ICE, China, and generative AI companies… And then I was perma-banned across all accounts and devices with any new account banned within a couple of hours of creation. Their loss.

      I’m ashamed to admit that I was a too addicted to browsing and commenting Reddit multiple times a day. Like most social media, that’s by design, as the algorithm is tailor-made to draw you in and keep you engaged.

      It’s much better for me, and for the internet at large, to just spend more time on the fediverse where I can be part of an actual community instead of a cog in some corporate data harvesting machine. I’m actually glad that Reddit requires an app these days to browse on mobile, because sometimes i find myself browsing reddit for a few minutes before the pop-up blocks me from continuing and then I remember to check the fediverse instead.

      • Hueristic_Autistic@lemmy.world
        6·
        3 days ago

        26,978 Karma just checked my recently banned account that I’ve had for 5 years. I got banned for breaking rule one which is bullying, harassment or violence against a marginalized group for asking reddit something like: Why don’t we castrate all billionaires if we don’t want generational wealth? and all my accounts linked and I can’t comment or like. … I missed it for a little bit for the reason of not being able to correct people as well lmfao but I don’t miss it now that I’ve found something better.

          • Hueristic_Autistic@lemmy.world
            3·
            2 days ago

            You and me both. I was like that’s not possible when I got banned for that. That’s a valid question too. To be honest and I know filters don’t think logically but thinking logically, wouldn’t someone be more inclined to take their money and leave them for dead than go through the trouble of cutting off their genitals and knowing someone or having the surgical knowledge to do such?

            Like castration of billionaires is way more time consuming than just finding better legal wording to get them to get them to redistribute their wealth back into society. I don’t think generational wealth is as big of a problem as tax breaks are.

            Think of it: they donate a building or build for example a hospital wing and that humanizes them to the public and the media and they look like less of a rat bastard while they’re doing it for tax cuts and writeofffs. I bet if they also didn’t need to spend money to be fiscally sound they wouldn’t do it too.

            If people who made 500k$ upwards got taxed by 3% more than the people who made 100k$… Life would be significantly better.

      • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
        1·
        3 days ago

        thats thier AI moderation in action, it just probably detecting alot of things you said that wernt initially ban worthy and just decided to ban you, because you said random things over different accounts, and it assumes you are ban evading or botting. they have other wierd metrics to ban people to. like your brwoser fingerpint looks suspicious, or your writing style, or you made too new of an account.

        sounds like you were shadowbannd too.

    • 87Six@lemmy.zip
      4·
      3 days ago

      I cant tell what is dumber, the AI moderation, or the actual human reddit mods

    • YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.todayEnglish
      7·
      3 days ago

      15 + year old account with nearly 10mil karma, and I was known for silvering entire threads, and I got banned for saying “Fuck trump and Obama.” At least you got a reply to your appeal. They couldn’t even be bothered to.

      I actually gave them real life money, and they couldn’t have been bothered to even review my appeal.

      • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        3 days ago

        yeah i was kind of asking for mine, posting twerking weegees the way i did. no other bans, but they claim i was inciting violence. suuuuuure automod, suuuuuure.

          • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            3 days ago

            It is perfect I my opinion

            I think my reddit ban history could be taken as evidence of oppositional defiant disorder, but I knew full well what I was doing fuck the huff. I’m not sure where that ends up.

    • jorymo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      3 days ago

      I wish I at least got that much of an explanation. I lost my account there the other day for “multiple content violations on connected accounts” when I only had one account. I tried appealing and asking what the violations or other accounts actually were, and just got a reply saying the ban would be upheld without any answers

      • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
        3·
        3 days ago

        i had that same thing last year. multiple accounts got hit by that AI message without saying what it is.

        They likely reotractively banned you too, looked at your current one that said that thing that got you banned and then looked at your dormant accounts to see if they said a similar thing or it was banned before, and shadowban your IP/DEVICE. they never did this up until early last year.

        for a while reddit allow some time to lapse for sub banned accounts to comment again, or you can use another account to comment. but after the changes they dint allow it anymore.

    • AmyAye@nord.pubEnglish
      3·
      3 days ago

      Yeah, I had been there 15 years and nothing.

      I got banned 3 times in Jan this year, the third being permenant.

    • fonix232@fedia.io
      2·
      3 days ago

      I was on Reddit since 2009, registered in 2011… Had the occasional 3-7 days bans, usually when I called out power tripping subreddit mods over modmail, who’ve tended to respond with the “help this user is harassing me” button (and even a decade ago Reddit was leaning towards trusting subreddit moderators over average users).

      Recently got banned for “ban evasion” - got banned from a tankie subreddit, someone else replied a “😂” to the power tripping mod, who must’ve reported it as ban evasion because a few hours later permanent banhammer struck my main account, my tech account, my porn account, my politics account… the list goes on.

      So yeah, fuck Reddit. They had so many chances to be better, and chose to be greedy at every single one of them.

      • dodecadance@lemmy.today
        2·
        3 days ago

        I got permanently banned for describing Minecraft features, like cheekily describing the parallels between the villagers and antisemitic stereotypes. I was permanently banned for that, appealed the ban, and before the appeal was able to go through I was banned again on every account for… whatever the fuck, they didn’t tell me. I assume ban evasion, but I didn’t even post on any of my alts.

        I appealed that ban as well, but decided it wasn’t worth it and deleted the app from my phone and the bookmark from my browser before I could find out if it went through.

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
      1·
      3 days ago

      they are definitely astroturfing anti- MUSK, P47 comments. given how many times spez already capitualated to musk asking for sitewide takedown and bans. people shouldnt forget musk is chronically online unlike most other billionaires, because hes on ketamine all the time.

  • mesa@piefed.socialEnglish
    441·
    3 days ago

    Post over here! We would love the comics!

    Fediverse people are fun and actual people. Well other than the furries.

  • gigastasio@sh.itjust.works
    9·
    2 days ago

    So, honest question, if creators want to ditch Reddit, where do they go besides here? Fediverse ain’t that big yet.

    For comic artists, there already seems to be a decent and growing community here. I’m a musician. There is (used to be?) a vibrant community on Reddit for songwriters, home recording enthusiasts, amateur producers…and it was a good place to network. I won’t go back to Reddit for any reason, so where do I go? Those communities here don’t have enough users to be active. I’ve tried.

    • Bondjimbond@lemmy.caOP
      8·
      2 days ago

      I’m sharing my stuff wherever I think I can find an audience… Reddit will be included until it becomes untenable. (I exclude Xitter from that because I don’t like Nazis.)

    • dustyData@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      Don’t think on a where to go permanently basis. Just go where your target people are, forget about how a specific platform gamifies their algorithm. Subscribers and followers, upvotes don’t matter in the slightest anyway. Make sure, instead, to always refer people to a place where they can engage directly with you. Either listening to your music, buying it, buying merch, or getting some interaction. But don’t put much stock on platforms, it’s there for the corpos, not for you.

      • HrabiaVulpes@europe.pub
        31·
        2 days ago

        In short: just make another reddit account, because this is where most of your readers/viewers are.

        • dustyData@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          2 days ago

          Unfortunately, yes. Each person has to establish their own ethical framework for what they consider proper or not. But there’s no two ways about it. You either show up on the place where people gather, or no one will know about your thing. A good way, for example, is to make it clear that the main channel is the fediverse, mastodon or whatever. Like I said, have a hub somewhere everyone can arrive to and know immediately where to find your stuff. There are degrees of interaction, you don’t have to tie your entire private life and existence to one account in one platform, but you don’t build a community sitting alone in your own bedroom, no matter how comfy and ethically safe it is. You have to go outside and meet people where they are.

          • HrabiaVulpes@europe.pub
            11·
            2 days ago

            Hm… You know, dustyData, that really explains why so many projects now have a Discord server as their primary channel.

  • Anas@lemmy.world
    7·
    2 days ago

    oh my god I missed it on my first scroll, I can’t believe you’ve done this

  • GoofSchmoofer@lemmy.world
    6·
    2 days ago

    This is shit, yet their banning people has always been inconsistent and unpredictable without knowing why. I got banned 3 years ago with absolutely no explanation why - just “your banned”. When I did the auto-appeal I just got a response “sorry, your banned.” Never a word as to why so fuck Reddit.

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
      1·
      2 days ago

      the bans from last year are worst since thier use of AI has been introduced, they dont give a reason at all, for the sitewide bans. and then switched to shadowbans which are even more nebulous. AI indiscriminatedly bans too, plus even if you were unbanned from a sub because originally if enough time lapsed you could potentially comment in a sub again. but they were looking at “previous offenses too” in all your accounts.

    • Small_Quasar@lemmy.world
      2·
      2 days ago

      My latest account just got its first warning.

      There’s a pretty horrific story this week in the UK about a guy with a severe mental disability who threw a child into a crocodile pen at a wildlife park.

      Someone said they think anyone who does that should be put in front of a firing squad.

      I replied that we shouldn’t be shooting disabled people. I got a warning for implying exactly the opposite of what I was arguing, while the original comment (which I reported after getting my warning), is still up 48 hours later.

  • Impractical_Island@lemmy.world
    5·
    2 days ago

    That’s why every day, I look up a random reddit admin or employee and masturbate to them. I am doing my part to bring change to this world. If more people followed this example, we’d have more change in the world as the Earth turns where it stands, unless you have a long enough lever to pull it.