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Comment by kshacker | Hacker News Reader

Oh man, I have 8 reddit accounts (AFAIK) one for each purpose so that I am not branded based on my open comments. Anyways, one of them is abandoned because ... that's where I got started at reddit about 7-10 years back. Got hooked actually to the relationship subs. Very addictive to start with. Then I tried to play the "Indian family values" where I would advocate communication and compromise for small matters, of course I recommended "get a lawyer, divorce" once in a while, but more often than not, I would advocate reconciliation and provide practical solutions for that. And wow ... the amount of downvotes and pushback I will get on those. I just stopped using that account at one point because what is the point of discussions when either my values are totally out of sync with the mob, or the mob does not want to listen to me. Now I just read the best of redditor updates for vicious pleasure.

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That's amazing you have more than one account, aren't a power mod, and haven't been IP banned yet.

You can't use IP address to ban someone without significant abuse. All home network routers put everyone in the house behind the same IP address. For all reddit knows, there are 8 people in the house using reddit.

Want a new IP address? Reset your router or cycle it. Typically it'll procure a new IP address from the ISP.

I guess that makes IP banning residential nodes even more stupid.

CGNAT is a benefit in disguise

Having more than one account isn't against Reddit's ToS.

If you use your different accounts in different subreddits and never have your accounts interact, you won't be banned.

If you don't restrict each account to specific subreddits, it's quite likely that one will get banned somewhere without you noticing or remembering.

If you happen to post to the same subreddit with another account at some point, Reddit bans all of your accounts.

I've definitely posted to the same subreddit with two different accounts by accident without being banned.

The android reddit app annoyingly doesn't check for account matches. If you click a browser notification link on Account A it can open a reply form on App account B.

I meant if one of the accounts is already banned there, it counts as ban evasion and Reddit bans all of your accounts.

This might easily happen if you like to participate in political discussions.

In hindsight, I understand. But I did this 6-7 years back and no one has come after me, should I care at this point?

Anecdotal but I've noticed Reddit has gotten very ban happy in general in the past year.

I actually gave up using it because, perhaps in part because I'm behind a VPN (required in my country), any new accounts I create get banned very quickly once I start commenting.

I haven't been able to create a Reddit account by any method in years. It always happens in one of two ways: you create an account and instantly get the red banner at the top of the page saying you're banned, or you create an account, post a few comments, notice nobody's replying to you, try loading your profile page in private browsing and it says you don't exist (a shadow ban).

There's nothing of much value on that website, but sometimes I try creating an account to comment on something.

Sure but the background chances of an account getting banned for clashing with a mod is quite high.

Nope. Started my first maybe 8-10 years back, and then added the others over a year or 2. None since. I do not use them all nowadays, but I was very active in my early reddit days.

Since someone downvoted my parent comment, I am not hiding anything, this is just being safe in the modern world, and here are the 8 alts:

1. This same name - bay area / tech

2. entertainment - least used, but it becomes useful when i am watching something live. It was my place to be during game of thrones last season (and sadly so)

3. indian left politics + bollywood - pretty much unused.

4. indian right politics + bollywood. i got banned from one sub for an innocent comment, so i decided to just form personas. and maybe that's when i created health / finance / bay area accounts -- but memory fades after a long time. pretty much unused.

5. relationship advice - unused for a long time. it does not exist on my main phone, but i have all of them on my work phone so i know it exists

6. american politics. i do not participate much nowadays, with age my brain has dulled and it needs to shed load so this is used minimally, but at a point i was so active that my karma pulled me into the sweet reddit IPO. I kept only 100 shares btw

7. health - only health topics, also unused, but i go there and use that account when i need to read on a specific topic

8. finance - only investment, trading

nowadays you can hide reddit history, but earlier you could not, and my point is i do not want to 1) delete my comments, but 2) be hounded by them when i have a question about a different topic. but i did not care if people read my past 100 comments about politics when i talk about politics.

so i flip between 2-3 accounts on a daily basis, and maybe 4-5 in a good week. i have not been challenged by reddit, but if they do, i will adapt. Switching between them was much easier earlier in the Apollo days and even at reddit - they have made navigation worse for this specific use case.

> indian right politics + bollywood. i got banned from one sub for an innocent comment

You were banned from a Indian re subreddit or banned because being rw ?

FYI: I was banned from r/india for commenting basic info on how economy works.

I do not recall, it is long time back, I looked and could not find the ban notice or the specific comment that may have been the issue. But I was banned from /india - same as you. And I think it was barely political. I do not discuss politics much on India but once in a while a comment slips, or needs to slip. And when it needs to slip, I used to know how to lean ... but like the dirty harry movie ... at this point I have forgotten which one is which, so it is more a question of am I feeling lucky to comment about a hot topic.

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