The majority of reddit subs I've been banned from were for posting in other unrelated subs in violation of sadly unenforced moderation rules.

Then there's being banned from r/atheism for "egregious immorality" - I look at it as a badge of pride to be banned from an atheism sub on grounds that sound like ones only a religious sub would use.

The problem is we're talking about the main discussion forums on one of, if not the biggest, discussion sites on the internet. They allow way too much power to be in the hands of unaccountable moderators.

Want to know how my main long running account got banned from r/politics? I wondered aloud where the military was as an armed insurrection was literally storming the capital building of my country. Objectively, something like January 6th shouldn't even be possible. I wondered why the crowd wasn't being driven back by soldiers using automatic weapons fire. That is what a nation is SUPPOSED to do when its democracy is under siege. If you want your democracy to continue to exist, the sad truth is that yes, you have to be willing to kill people who take up arms against it. Otherwise some small well armed group will take over the whole place as you blindly cling to non-violence. My account was banned, on January 6th, as it happened, for wondering why our nation's military was failing to defend our democracy. Later it was revealed that the military wasn't deployed there, as Trump had specifically avoided deploying troops there as part of his plot to overthrow the election.

Or I had another account banned from a few subreddits for saying that if SCOTUS rules the president has complete criminal immunity, that he should respond by taking out a few Supreme Court justices. If the president is above the law, then he is now a dictator. And the only moral use of dictatorial power is to strip yourself of that power. In another account, I suggested on r/politics that Biden should just drone strike SCOTUS justices until they put out a ruling stripping him of that power. That got me banned for promoting violence. But the most ridiculous thing? r/politics openly allowed stories on the front page stating that the exact same thing should be done. They hold their comments section to a far higher standards than the stories they allow at the top of the r/politics feed.

Or how about getting instant banned from r/worldnews for saying anything remotely pro-Palestinian? That subreddit has been completely taken over by militant Zionists. If you have the temerity to dare to point out that, for example, the fact that the IDF has a worse civilian:combatant kill ratio than Hamas, you'll get banned. Or, they love to make a fuss about how that UN aid agency, with thousands of employees, was found to have some Hamas members in it. Nevermind that Hamas by their nature are mostly ordinary people who work ordinary jobs. The aid agency had a much, much lower share of Hamas members than the general Gaza strip population. But if you dare to point this out, you'll get instantly banned.

Yeah, you can cower behind the policies of reddit, "Just because you think it’s bullshit doesn’t mean you get to ban evade." But that's ridiculous. Unjust rules are meant to be broken. I have no respect for a reddit ban because they aren't worthy of respect. Reddit allows their biggest, most influential subreddits to be dominate by mods who have comically biased enforcement records or who implement zero-thought, zero-context rules like their misapplication of violence in r/politics.

Yes, you can always say, "but...but...those are the rules of the site!" But this is a cop-out. It doesn't make it any more just than any other comically unjust law or rule through history.

sadfasfsadfd

I'm sure VPNs can be used. You would have to use a VPN, a new email address, and perhaps a different computer even. But honestly, I just don't care anymore. I'm content leaving reddit to their demons. I have had a few big accounts on there with hundreds of thousands of comment karma, a decade in age or more. I contributed insightful commentary on the site and ended up on r/bestof a dozen or more times. It's clear that they don't want people like me, or anyone with a nuanced opinion, to be on the site. They want to focus on tiktok style brain rot, because the MBAs that have taken over Silicon Valley have no original ideas beyond copying each other.

If you want to have nuanced and deep discussion on a site, you can't let your most prominent forums be taken over by unaccountable mods with an agenda (like r/worldnews) or operate with zero-thought zero-tolerance policies like r/politics. Your biggest political forum cannot operate on a philosophy of "any mention of violence is a permaban," when the presence of violence and discussion of it is a key part of our current political landscape.

They don't want real discussion anymore, if they ever did. They just want zero-tolerance, zero-thought moderation policies that are easy to enforce algorithmically but stifle real and nuanced discussion. And their site-wide admin an appeal process is completely worthless. They want their site to be a cesspool of teenagers post memes and nothing else. And if that is what they want, so be it. I'm done contributing to their bullshit. Reddit is far from the only discussion forum I've used. I was reddit, but before that digg. And before that, slashdot. And there comes a time when sites sometimes just get so up their own assholes chasing quick and easy money that the only correct choice is to just walk away in disgust.

One of the main reasons quality of content on the site has plummeted so much in recent years is they've likely banned or driven away many of their best commenters and posters. They want their site to be clickbait trash, and they simply aren't willing to put in the effort to make it a place to hold good discussions.