390
19 yrs on Reddit, permanently banned.
(thelemmy.club)
No warning, not even a "Don't do it again email" - I had a work account, that was logged in on my works laptop, I made a comment critical of Netanyahu, and the Gaza genocide, which got that account banned from /pics. This was months ago, then I made a comment on pics, on my main account. That's it, gone, banned.
I even have another spare account, from 2008, logged in to that, that's banned too. FFS!
No luck on appeals, so I guess no more reddit, ever again. Anyone managed to get around this?
An IP address can't be linked to a single user. The IP address can just be tracked to an area of roughly five square miles.
When I was a web developer in the 2000s and 2010s the hit counters I used would give me, for each visitor, the browser they used, the operating system, the screen resolution, the IP address, and the internet provider company they were using like Xfinity and, most importantly for this discussion, if they were a return visitor.
So if I was running a forum and I banned someone who was from an IP address in Luckenbach, TX using Bubba’s Fish and Tackle and HiSpeed Internet Service, using Internet Explorer 7 on Windows XP, with a screen resolution of 800x600. And then, an hour later someone from Luckenbach, TX using Bubba’s Fish and Tackle and HiSpeed Internet Service, using Internet Explorer 7 on Windows XP, with a screen resolution of 800x600 marked as a return visitor tried to register a new account, I could safely assume this is the same guy I just banned.
The return visitor thing narrows it down to a single person or at least the same computer and the same browser. Theoretically, I could have written some PHP code that automatically checked this type of thing and automatically handled ban evasions.
I’m pretty sure this is how Reddit does it too. Mainly that cookie that tells them this is the same computer and browser that the banned person used. I think phones have this type of cookie built into their hardware. The Trusted Platform Module (TPM) in modern computers can be used for this as well but I don't think they're using it for that yet because Windows fucked up and decided to try and force everyone to buy a new computer with TPM during an AI bubble.
Plus, they might have Discord type somewhat-secret partnerships where if you’re logged in to gmail, and then visit Discord, gmail automatically sends Discord your email address so you can automatically log in there. I’ve never given Reddit my email so I don’t know if they have this kind of thing. But if you didn’t know and tried to re-register and your banned account had the same email that gmail is sending to Reddit to automatically log you in, gmail is accidentally snitching on you.