Okay maybe I’m just being salty over it because I got permabanned a week ago but the mod-mob has been an issue for a long time now. And ever since I got banned, I’ve tried to create two accounts, and both of them have been immediately shadowbanned by reddit.
I’ll be more specific. The subreddit in question is r/Islam. There was absolutely nothing malicious about the comment I made on the post that got me banned. I know this because the comment was, “Do you have some kind of proof to back your claim?” I used to have two accounts on my reddit app and this comment was made through an alt account. A few minutes later I switched back to my main account and kind of forgot about it. I also used to engage with r/Islam through my main account so after a comment I made on a different post, I got the message that my account was permanently banned from reddit. I switched to my alt and there it was. The first message of how because of my comment, my account was banned from that sub and because I used my alt account, reddit flagged it as ban evasion and evoked a site ban. I appealed of course and tried my best to explain how there was a mistake while still being apologetic. My appeal was denied of course and the permabanned remained in order. The next day, my wife tells me her account was banned as well. She said she tried to make a new account but was shadowbanned immediately. I tried to create a new account through first my office wifi but same device and then on a different device on my home wifi. Got shadowbanned immediately both times. When I made an appeal, I believe their words were, and I’m paraphrasing here, “When we ban you permanently, we don’t ban your account, we ban the person.”
This got me thinking. How would reddit even know I was the one making those accounts later? Surely they collect much more information than they let on? Device fingerprint for example, IP and/or mac address. Either way, I guess that’s the end of my journey on reddit. And it got me into thinking how many subs I’ve been banned from for no apparent reason at all. Mods will just ban you for amusement sometimes, while other times they’d just do it as a power move. It’s becoming the next Facebook with each passing day.
The reddit moves against 3rd party apps and scraping were for more invasive stalkerware. This is the full scope in abstract simplicity:
The whole reason why everyone is pushed to install our app is not all that complicated. It boils down to how mobile devices are configured for ignorant users (like myself and most of us) that do not have a clue about how to securely setup, config, and maintain an operating system that is connected to the internet and send/receive connections from anyone (calls/messages/data). The way this is achieved is by removing all packages in the operating system that can modify or add packages to the operating system itself. This also involves removing the administrative (root) account. All of these packages are removed by the device manufacturer when the device is first configured. The remaining locked down OS is effectively in a Read-Only Memory state or “ROM.” Inside any mobile device, there is only one program effectively running on the host system OS. This is the user space application that almost all apps you interact with or download run from. These apps are sandboxed mostly from the base OS system. In Android, the sandbox is the SELinux system from the host OS. This is the application that limits where any app or user can save data and protects the execution path variable in the underlying OS.
So, the way you can install anything or use a device without understanding these systems and a whole lot more is because, in Android or others, the app developer is a user just like you. There is no effective difference between your access and theirs. You are not some system administrator. They have all the access you do so that they can configure all the things that you do not understand. A side effect is that they are FULL USERS ON YOUR DEVICE 24/7. They can do everything you can do. All the sandboxing, all the configuration is not to serve you or your interests. It is only attempting to prevent ANYONE from screwing up the device including you. Almost all of the sandboxing is only to protect the base OS configuration. Most of the privacy settings are only there to make you feel a little better. The app dev is still a full user exactly like you and with the ability to ignore most of it.
So what, it only happens when you open the app right? No! In Android the init configured package is called zygote. The device preloads all apps into RAM all the time. All apps are always running. Zygote is supposedly there to improve load times for apps, but the difference is on the order of microseconds and well below human persistence of vision reaction times.
Apps on mobile are like your most intimate life partners that are far more invasive and persistent than any human mate or sexual partner could ever be.
So you give up on apps and are smart enough to only use a browser. In steps why google pushes chrome and doesn’t really care if you use one of the chromium derivatives like edge, brave, or anything else. Apple does the exact same things in Safari. Anything about security or privacy in these browsers means from third party competitors to Google/Apple. ‘But I use degoogled chromium!’ It’s the mechanisms for fingerprinting and access to the base OS using JavaScript that is the primary tool being leveraged. A browser has extremely invasive administrate like connectivity to the operating system.
Security researchers have shown that it only takes 3-4 unique identifiers to correlate any anonymous data to a known individual. On mobile, every device model has a unique orphaned kernel. Most devices have nearly unique screen resolutions and configurations. This is a primary way to identify people as this info is in even the simplest of fingerprints. All the hardware paths present or not like codecs available for video are data points that can infer who you are. Your typing style and keyboard reveal a ton of information, as does your gyroscopic screen rotation sensor. Apps have full access to all of this information. Browsers may limit some sensor access. This is why everyone wants you to use their app, but also how most browsers are scantily better. If you run a whitelist firewall on a third party device, you will see how much junk you’re connecting to constantly by default.
This is why many of us here left reddit with the move against 3rd party scrapping apps. I know everything I say in this place is data mined for exploitation just like elsewhere else on the public internet. This is neo digital slavery for price fixing scams and echo chamber manipulation through nondeterministic search queries and suggested content. It is not just commercial; it is also political. This is why the best and brightest psych majors are getting high paying jobs in advertising. This is why scrolling media is pushed so heavily and why you find yourself making frivolous purchases if you consume such media. All of it is connected. It was never about annoying pop ups and banner ads no one clicked on. I even went as far as giving away stuff on Facebook when I was the Buyer for a retail store, just to prove that these platforms have no monetary value in advertising directly. If I can’t give away a thousand dollars to a person when I have 10k followers, how the hell am I going to do so by paying to show actual ads to the same people. There is so much more happening, but it is on a deeper and more invasive level.
This is the real world reason you were likely banned and it was easy to correlate your activity. Even with a VPN, most of us are unlikely to limit ourselves to the kind of opsec that can make us anonymous. If you are not practicing this opsec everywhere, at all times, you can still be tracked easily based on the few unique identifiers present and correlation.
TLDR: Don’t use phone apps
(I did actually read it so TLDR is inaccurate for me)
The problem is that they’re likely to get new users from their sale of data to Google. That’s constantly pushing new people to reddit. And if those people didn’t leave during the protest or because of the influx of bots, they’re not likely to leave en masse over this.
My guess is that reddits death will be very slow.
Yeah. I figured as much. But I guess a slow and painful death has it’s own merits. Damn, even as I type this I realise I’m still very much bitter about it.
I left during the protests when it became clear that they weren’t going to change their mind about shutting down third party apps. I still miss some of the communities there, and I’m a little bitter myself over the whole thing. But to me it’s better to continue to protest by not going back.
I’m a little late to the party but better late than never, right? I’ve officially said my goodbyes to reddit.
Data and metadata about you are a kind of digital noose that hangs loose about your neck, until a third party* pulls it tight to hang you.
You’re right to feel bitter. You’re the victim of an abusive software stack. But it’s important that you come away with an understanding of why R_ddit was able to identify you individually, and why the ways in which we interface with the web really do matter, despite normie’s typical self-justifying complaints.
*Anyone, identifiable or not, without warning, for any reason, at any time
It depends when they kill old Reddit
The way things are moving forward I don’t think it’ll be happening for the time being but that’s going to happen for sure.
It’s becoming the next Facebook with each passing day.
There’s your answer: Reddit will last forever at this point, too big to fail.
