You have a great story you have found and you want to submit it to Reddit. So you go over and enter in the url and title like you have 100 times before and submit the story so others can enjoy it.
What if your submission was never shown to another user?
There is a different sort of ban on Reddit than you are used to. It is the 0 point ban. Normally when you submit a story on Reddit your submission will get 1 point, similar to 1 digg on Digg.com. When you have the 0 point ban, it doesn’t award your submission a point even though you have voted on it.
Pretty slick if you think about it. When you get a message saying you or the domain is banned, you can then know immediately to make a new account or find a new domain. If you are never aware of it then they actually can cut down on the overall bad they are trying to keep out.
Outside of being an indicator, the 0 point doesnt matter as the default setting is to show posts with -4 or better votes. What that means is that even if you go out and get a few up votes on the submission it will stay remain hidden to the public system.
You jump over to the “new” tab and check to see if the article is visible, but it is not there. I have seen slow servers on Digg so i waited for about 5 minutes while refreshing often, yet still nothing ever showed up.
Click on your overview tab and you can see that the article is indeed in the system but only visible to you.
Additionally the same thing happens when you try to submit a domain that has been banned.
So you have to check two things when you notice a 0 point ban. You have to check if it is the domain or if it is the account that is being penalized.
Test it out and see if the account you thought was rocking away on Reddit was actually worthless and a huge waste of your time.
Yeah, this happened to my account. No message, no explanation, no appeal process, all my comments and submissions get 0 points. I have no idea why, and they won’t tell me.
Same thing happened to me… Not only that but when I create a new username, regardless of how random, it says that that username is unavailable. I also have no idea why, I never broke any reddit rules and always followed reddiquette. I’ve decided it has something to do with the IP I am forced on because of my unique ISP (T-mobile Web and Walk). Regardless of the reason, it turned me off reddit completely. So frustrating!!
Maybe your vote is considered to not count for anything. Were previous articles voted up or down by the users? If your submissions are interesting to reddit users then you have a stronger point.
It has something to do with content, I’ve found.
This also happens to me, it seems to against everything Reddit is supposed to be, is this something implemented by by its new owners (Wired)? I’m just about done with Reddit, I seem to get a lot more respect on Digg.
The more common issue is when two people in the same household participate on Reddit (using two different accounts, one static IP). We’ve noticed that our votes are no longer counted. So, we’ve stopped participating. We’re only readers now.
Actually, when you’re on the new page, you have to click on “all” (as opposed to “rising”) to see your article, I think. It’s to the right of the list of articles, and the menu is called “style”.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who has noticed this.
This started about 3 months ago, I believe.
http://reddit.com/info/1vcyp/comments
I wrote about it on my own blog as well.
In fact, I made the blog just to announce it loud.
http://perturbed.blog.com/
Btw, forgot to mention, if you logout of reddit and try to view your user page : http://reddit.com/user/Burento/ you will see a 404 error, but if you log back in as Burento and try it, you see your page.
Same thing happened to me. I received a 0-pt ban for posting non-liberal or hippie stories. Anything that contradicts the liberal bias on reddit is censored. Creating a new account, however, solved the problem… so it’s obviously something that Reddit has implemented on individual accounts.
I’m afraid to say this is nothing new. Might as well call it a “Shadowban.”
http://ergh.org/farkdeceit/ – Fark has been doing it for years, putting a ban on you making you think that you still have normal access to the site while keeping every existing user from being able to see your posts. Only your logged IP addresses from your logins are able to see your posts if you are shadowbanned. Even then, sometimes clearing cookies or using another browser without any Fark account cookies is all it takes to see that the message you just posted basically doesn’t exist on the site.
A sad trend on sites, but shadowbans of any sort pretty much have always existed. Either through Fark, through Something Awful, Messaging Forums software, etc. Explained away as a method to deal with problem users without telling them they’re banned. Often used as a way to make people disappear from the site without letting them know they were banned just because one little abusive twerp (mod or admin) decided he didn’t like you.
So yeah. Nothing new, I’m afraid.
I go to http://bannination.com instead, now.
This kind of stuff happens on boards all over the internet. Fark does something similar, and tries to keep it under wraps.
it happens on reddit and digg often. if enough people flag you or the url, they will just make things disappear on reddit or digg will auto-bury it. people are competing so if they want to submit a similar news article they will bury or downmod yours. if that happens enough, you are on the black list. they don’t make it obvious because they don’t want complaints. on digg, some companies pay to be allowed on the front page and digg will autobury sites that get on there too often and knock the paying ones out.
@Johm: liberal bias? I find stories on reddit more leaning to conservativness than liberalness.
Unless you are an neocon (read new-conman) so utterly brainwashed and repeating the dogma then you would label everything else as “liberal bias”
I’ve given up commenting and I consider the 0-point ban disingenuous against Reddit’s users.
I suddenly could not reply to comments yesterday after posting a few comments. Now I cannot login or update the password. I had asked in a thread recently about possibly of being targeted by a ban brigrade, and I'm feeling even more than way now.
Yea i am getting that 2. I submit an article and my article is deleted within like 1 min… Why is this happening to me
I really think I've been banned from reddit, kinda sucks I had more than one account for different types of comments or posts. I can't contribute anymore it seems so I think I'll find a less controlling news site.
Following reddiquette doesn’t matter. You can have a reasonable argument and express it as politely as possible and if the content or opinion isn’t acceptable to the Reddit powers that be then you will get shadowbanned.