Apologies up front for the long post, but I want to give a very detailed account, so that anyone who wants can have a clear picture of what happened and judge for themselves what they think.
A little over a half year ago, I woke up one day and could no longer login to my Reddit account. Eventually I learned that my account had been suspended and later permabanned. I legitimately do not know why I was banned. I've tried to appeal many times, but have never gotten a real response.
I don't think that I did anything ban-worthy. I had that account for 6 years and had never been banned from any subreddits nor have even received any warnings. I can't even check my previous posts anymore because (a) I can't login, and (b) most of them have been removed entirely (even completely uncontroversial ones). I have a few theories on why I was banned, but I don't know for certain for anything:
-Theory 1 (most likely): I may have been mistakenly flagged as a minor. This was kind of my own fault, but I made a joke post in r/littlenightmares roleplaying as one of the main characters who was a 9 year old girl doing an "AITA" style post. I thought that it was pretty obvious in context that it was a RP post (it was literally a retelling of the climax of Little Nightmares 2 posted on r/littlenightmares; most people got the joke). I also clearly explained in a comment in that thread that I was not in fact 9 years old, I was 31 years old at the time. I think that several people may have just didn't understand the context of the post and not read that comment and then reported me as underage and then Reddit banned me because they just counted the reports and I hit a critical threshold. I admit, it was stupid of me to make that post in the first place, but I still feel frustrated that that one post might have gotten me banned when spending even just 5 minutes of investigating would reveal that it was clearly a RP post.
-Theory 2 (plausible): It's possible that my account was mistaken for my brother's. He was banned from Reddit for unrelated reasons and I think that he has been doing some ban-evasion. I think that I logged onto Reddit when I was visiting my parents' house and maybe that IP was flagged by Reddit (my brother lived there for about a year or so) so maybe that's why they banned me.
-Theory 3 (plausible): My account may have been hacked. There was a "password reset" request in my email from the day before it was banned that I don't remember ever sending.
-Theory 4 (unlikely): Over a year before I was banned, I did make some posts just discussing death and suicide (not promoting it; I never even hinted that I thought that anyone should go through with suicide). I was in a pretty bad place emotionally at that time, and I just needed somewhere to talk about what was bothering me because I didn't have anywhere to do that at the time. For over a year or two before the ban though, I hadn't brought those up so I think that it's extremely unlikely that this got me banned, but I bring it up because it was probably the closest that I got to actually violating Reddit's rules.
-Theory 5 (unlikely): I could have been banned because I did give some criticism of Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip. Specifically I brought up a direct quote by a minister in the Israeli government about the need to make Gaza "unlivable" and "bringing hell" to the Palestinians and pointed out that it sounded like genocidal language. I brought up that quote, brought up the blockade of food, medicine, and supplies, and said that it sounded genocidal to me. I can't remember when I made these comments, I think it was several months before I was banned and I moved away from those kinds of discussions, so I seriously doubt that this was why I was banned, but I might have been reported as an antisemite by some overzealous people. I bring this up because this is probably the most controversial thing that I ever commented on Reddit.
I genuinely have no clue why I was banned. My general activity on Reddit was: go on r/writing or r/fanfiction and give and ask for advice or ideas on writing or share some of my own ideas and go on r/littlenightmares and present some theories for the story or react to other people's ideas; (occasionally) I'd go on r/selfawarewolves and give a reaction. I was mildly active in r/lgbt, r/girlgamers, and a few other subs (usually fandom ones). I rarely ever got into arguments and I made it a point to be respectful if I did. I never joined, participated in, nor trolled subreddits that I didn't agree with, I would just ignore them and remove them from my feed like I was supposed to.
I've been trying and trying to appeal the ban, but Reddit hasn't bothered responding. It's been a frustrating and demoralizing experience. I don't even have any answers, for all I know none of my above theories are even correct. I literally don't know why I was banned.
After a few weeks of not receiving any responses, I tried to make a new account. It was perma-banned after a day. I made another account a couple months later specifically to ask what was going on and what I was supposed to do, and that one was also perma-banned. And just a few weeks ago I made a third account which has since been perma-banned. I would not have tried to make these accounts (which was technically ban-evasion) if I was given any feedback by Reddit when I appealed, but no I was given no feedback and the admins apparently expected me to trust in their infallible judgment.
I had fun with Reddit, it was a nice resource for me with writing, and now it's just gone and I don't know why nor what I can do to change that. I'm upset with Reddit's administration. I think that they made a mistake and they don't care at all about rectifying it. Now I just want people to hear what happened to me because it might at least add some nuance to discussions about Reddit. Sometimes Reddit does make mistakes in banning people, and sometimes they don't fix them.
