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Comment by huibf | Hacker News Reader

I don't know why you're going through all that effort instead of just creating a new account.

> I don't know why you're going through all that effort instead of just creating a new account.

I think there is some kind of IP or cookie based identification going on.

One of my accounts was permabanned on the German /r/de subreddit for publically questioning a mod decision. At the next login I found that ALL of my accounts that I used for serious and professional subreddits (netsec, python, learnmachinelearning) and never once used on /r/de had also been permabanned.

I wrote to the helpdesk but they only told me to contact the mods of /r/de which is impossible if you're permabanned.

I'm not exactly motivated to ever return now that I've learned that this how active community members in good standing can expect to be treated.

Seems you weren't in good standing.

Looking at the level of engagement and fake internet points my posts across the subs in this network received over the last 11 years, I can at least die happy knowing the community members thought I was a pretty cool guy.

The mods can go .. themselves.

Obviously your opinion is not wanted there. So why go the extra mile? Just move on.

Moderators do very rarely speak for the community they moderate.

By kicking out everyone they don't agree with over time they curate an echo chamber of the few that they do speak for.

True, but they are the ones with all the power. I think you’re fighting not just an uphill but an impossible battle. With very little upside to you if you win.

It takes about 10 seconds to create a new Reddit account so it's the moderators who'd be fighting the uphill, impossible battle to keep someone banned.

Reddit provides tooling to identify people on new accounts that have been banned in the past. I think you'd need to couple this with a VPN

Not true. Only admins can see alt accounts(based on IP address), and they never reveal alt accounts of others to even mods.

I've had new accounts banned for participating in subreddits where old accounts had been banned

Speaking as a Reddit mod, it's often possible to identify ban evaders through their use of language.

This was a very large subreddit and my new account had very little content at the time

VPNs dont matter anyway. Just make a new account. Unless you have some topic you constantly focus on, or have a tag line you repeat, you will be invisible.

This is not true (speaking from personal experience)

They will shadowban your new account unless you only use the new account through a VPN (and possibly take other steps to prevent them associating the two accounts).

If an account is banned (not shadow-banned) and reddit finds out the person uses other accounts to evade it, they suspend (but not ban) both temporarily.

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