
Why I'm Leaving Reddit - dpcx
http://www.dp.cx/blog/why-i-m-leaving-reddit.html#.UPWzlKGjcag
======
ricardobeat
great story bro

Now, seriously, when you post your own content, deep down it's always more
about self-promotion than something that interests the community. You post
because you're afraid no one else will do it - you just did the same here on
HN. It's frowned upon in most places, not because it means you're a spammer
bastard, but because it's so hard to draw the line: if every company started
posting their own stuff it would fill the boards with trash.

I've done it too, but have started refraining from posting my own stuff
because of that. If I'm allowed, everyone should be, and I don't think that's
a good idea.

~~~
cooldeal
I think the focus of HN and Reddit should be to surface content that is
interesting to HN or to the subreddit. The rest of things like user karma, etc
are(and should be) secondary in pursuit of the primary objective of the site -
surface relevant content. This does not mean that excessive or repetitive
submissions should be tolerated.

------
orangethirty
Just make a new account. One of the things I advise people is to not use your
personal account in reddit. But do use your business account in a savy manner
by:

\- participating in the discussion on subjects related to your
business/product.

\- not posting links to your content until a minimum amount of Karma is
achieved.

\- not linking to your own facebook/twitter pages unless someone asks to.

\- using related discussions to explain how a given problem might be fixed,
offering options, and mentioning that you provide one of those options.

This also applies to HN, but do realize that the community here is more tight
knit and more focused on learning than many other places. So you can make a
post of how your product is awesome (in a technical manner) and people will
appreciate the content and participate in the discussion.

But! Reddit is not generally a place where you find people like HN members.
The average there is more about passing time, and hanging out. Though
particular sub-reddits have their own culture, you will should expect the
typical group of trolls (sometimes, the moderators are the trolls).

If you plan to post to a specific sub-reddit, then contact the moderators
before posting, and get to know them. I always, always do this and have never
been perma-banned. The way to do it is to introduce yourself in a friendly
manner and ask for their blessing. Explain to them the who/what/how/why/when
if what your are doing. Let them know that you dont want to spam the community
but want to take part in it. Thus, imparting your knowledge about the domain
with the insight gained from providing a product in the market is something
that is valuable for the community at large.

You will also need a good sense of humor and a flame suit.

------
pavel_lishin
He posts the links he submitted, but not links to the reddit submissions (such
as
[http://www.reddit.com/r/Permaculture/comments/lf5f1/google_i...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Permaculture/comments/lf5f1/google_investing_in_residential_solar_power/)
), and there is no link to the submission in r/reportthespammers where they
discuss him.

I find that suspicious.

> _I’ll be leaving my account, but I won’t be back._

Okay, but his user page shows a 404: <http://www.reddit.com/user/gms8994>

Maybe that's what usually happens to shadowbanned users; I have no idea.

edit: I can still see at least some of his submissions -
[http://www.reddit.com/r/Celebs/new/?count=125&after=t3_1...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Celebs/new/?count=125&after=t3_16f2z9)
\- <http://i.imgur.com/pL4bs.png>

edit 2: trevorj brings up a good point:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5062850>

~~~
doomslice
Here's the link to RTS -
[http://www.reddit.com/r/reportthespammers/comments/xwrf7/ove...](http://www.reddit.com/r/reportthespammers/comments/xwrf7/overview_for_gms8994_proudgreenhomecom/),
no discussion there at all. Just a karma count of +3/-2

~~~
pavel_lishin
Interesting. It was submitted five months ago, but he was still posting four
days ago.

~~~
doomslice
My guess is that it had nothing to do with that subreddit and more to do with
individual people clicking "report" on the links he submitted.

------
codinghorror
Why didn't they just contact you first and _ask_ you about the behavior,
expressing their concern? Did they contact you at all? How did you respond?

That's not covered in this article. And it seems crazy to me that they would
vote to shadowban you without attempting to talk to you at least a little. Is
that what happened? If so, that's nuts.

~~~
AgentConundrum
I think it's worse than just "they didn't ask". They don't even care if a
moderator vouches for you.

A week or so ago, it was pointed out to me that ircmaxell was also banned from
reddit - I think it was a shadowban as well, since his username still appears
as the submitter on some items, rather than "[deleted]" - because he was
submitting too many links to his own blog.

Now, this isn't just some average blogger. Anthony is a very well known PHP
developer - by which I mean he develops PHP, not just _in_ PHP, and has voting
rights regarding the direction the language takes. (Please don't hold that
against him, Jeff.)

While I'm sure he was posting a lot of submissions for his own site, it was
really great stuff. The first I really heard of him was due to a series of
articles he and another developer wrote as a guide to understanding the
internals of PHP with directions on what various C code was and how it hung
together. It wasn't spam, at least not by any definition I care to recognize.

This didn't matter. Quality didn't matter. Apparently, one of the moderators
to /r/php even went to bat for him with the admins, asking that the ban be
lifted. The admins didn't care.

Meanwhile, many people submit a lot of content they also made themselves -
memes. If you want to make a bunch of advice animal image macros and upload
them to imgur, that's fine. If you write a five part dive into the guts of
PHP's internals, you're banned.

It's funny too, because maybe I'm remembering incorrectly since it's been so
long, but I seem to recall early reddit specifically saying that it was cool
to submit your own stuff, and even encouraging it. Now, there's some sort
ratio of yours-to-others content that you need to keep in balance, otherwise
you're marked a spammer, regardless of how good your own content happens to
be.

------
vor_
Hackers News has the same thing, called hellbanning.

~~~
thedufer
IIRC, HN's hellbanning is actually worse. In order to not immediately tip off
people who are hellbanned that it happened, hellbanned users see hellbanned
content in line with everything else, but no one else sees it. This way it
still gets votes, comments, etc. (albeit at a slower rate).

~~~
businessleads
How do I figure out if I've been hellbanned?

~~~
anthonyb
Usually, view your account with a browser in incognito mode and look at your
comments. I do it every now and again, just to make sure.

Also, addlepate, you've been hellbanned:

    
    
        addlepate 8 days ago | link [dead]
    
        Are you sure about all that? I never get votes or replies. Also, as implemented, 
        HN's hellbanning is quite obvious when it happens.
    
    

Clearly not _that_ obvious.

------
michaelwww
You seem like a decent guy based on this brief wayback machine history:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20110907072017/http://www.reddit....](http://web.archive.org/web/20110907072017/http://www.reddit.com/user/gms8994)

My guess is that you posted too many links like the pop mech link, which had
an auto playing video the first time I visited before a cookie was set saying
I'd seen it (I'm guess they do this because I didn't see it again)

Links like that are extremely annoying and the quickest way to express it is
to hit the 'report' link.

------
TrevorJ
Doesn't add up. You don't get banned from Reddit simply by being added to the
/r/reportthespammers subreddit, and there's no way he would know that the vote
was 2 to 3.

~~~
dpcx
You can see the up/down votes for a post. It's available via the API, and the
Reddit Enhancement Suite.

~~~
pavel_lishin
That's just people who happened to vote on a particular submission in a
particular subreddit. This is not Alexis Ohanian personally clicking a "I
agree to shadowban gms8994".

------
slovette
Let alone what his posting habits may be, this management behavior is
atrocious. If someone came to my desk and presented me with ideas to moderate
a community that related to these hellbanned/shadowbanned methodologies, I’d
flip my lid. It’s cowardly, plain and simple. It reminds me of some cruel
school yard tactics that bettered no one. If someone is harming the community
(spamming), then ban them blatantly. Stand up to it and stand by your decision
to do so. Don’t hide behind a cowardly veil of secretly isolating the person.
So childish and weak…

------
akkartik
This post has been taken off the frontpage. Deliciously ironic.

~~~
michaelwww
Self-pity never goes over well.

------
rhizome
It seems like a telling omission that he doesn't say whether his former
employers compensated him for posting about them.

------
freework
I think hellbanning/shadowbanning is the worst thing ever, and needs to be
exterminated. If you don't want someone part of the community, then ban them.
Shadow banning just seems to passive aggresive.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Hell/shadowbanning _works_.

If you ban someone, they just re-register, and you have to hunt them down
again.

If you close registration, your site slowly withers away.

If you verify registrations one at a time, your time slowly withers away.

If you charge for registration, you better be SomethingAwful or MetaFilter, or
your site will _rapidly_ wither away.

I've had to mod a few communities here and there, and while I admit that I'm
not particularly good at it, it has definitely taught me that it's mostly a
thankless slog.

~~~
freework
If you shadow ban someone, they will just re-register. I was shadow banned
here a few months ago. I re-registered. It did nothing to deter me. What I
actually did to deserve the shadow ban I have no idea. Maybe I disagreed with
the wrong person?

All it did was make me lose a bit of respect for the people who moderate this
place. If the mod had actually sent me a message telling me why I was banned,
I could have at least learned from it.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> * If you shadow ban someone, they will just re-register.*

An ideal shadow-ban makes it difficult to realize you're shadow-banned.

