Context:
/r/ProgrammerHumor/ closed for a couple of days, then - “because mods have to listen to the community or otherwise they get replaced by more /u/Spez compliant mods” opened up again, and held a voting which new rules to enforce. The sub opened up with the new rule allTitlesMustBeCamelCase.
I made the first post about 15 minutes after the sub re-opened (because I’m in their discord, I was aware it opened up again, it wasn’t announced yet, I think) - and of course I just make a shit-post about John Oliver since it’s the /r/pics (and a bunch of other) subreddits way to protesting the API changes.
It wasn’t even that good of a post to be honest, it got temporary taken down by the subs’ mods since they mentioned “it’s only anecdotally related [to programmer humor]” - but after messaging them explaining the context they put it back up. So it’s basically approved by the moderators of the subreddit. And not against the content policy of the sub
It got like 3k upvotes in about an hour, so I got a message from some bot that I was on the frontpage of /all/ as well. At the end of the day it had 13.5k upvotes
About 48 hours later I got an automated message:
Your account has been permanently suspended for breaking the rules. This account is permanently suspended due to violations of Reddit’s content policy
I posted an “appeal” basically just asking “Lol you banned me for posting John Oliver?”
And the only response I got was:
Thanks for submitting an appeal to the Reddit admin team. We have reviewed your request and unfortunately, your appeal will not be granted and your suspension will remain in place. For future reference, we recommend you to familiarize yourself with Reddit’s Content Policy. -Reddit Admin Team This is an automated message; responses will not be received by Reddit admins.
I posted another “appeal” yesterday asking “Could you clarify which Content Policy rule I broke?” To which they haven’t responded yet.
It’s the only post I made in the last 2 weeks, so there wasn’t any other reason to suddenly ban me besides this post…
My reddit account was 12 years old at this point. I was going to leave anyways because the Reddit client I use (sync) already announced it would be shutting down June 30 - so I don’t care that much that they banned me - just though it was a pretty weird approach from the Reddit Admins to start banning people for getting John Oliver on the front-page
At least they told you you were banned. I was shadowbanned and didn’t figure it out for a week.
How do you know/realize you are shadow banned?
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People not responding to your comments or posts, or not voting, even though it’s a post that you may reasonably expect a lot of engagement with. Not an obvious way to tell, but if you’ve made a ton of comments or posts for a week and there’s no engagement with anything, you may get reasonably suspicious.
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Log out of reddit or use another account to check your original comment. If nothing comes up, it’s been shadow deleted. You might figure it out this way if you have multiple accounts or if you share your posts with a friend. If every one of your posts has been shadow deleted, you’re almost certainly shadowbanned
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No one commented or voted on my comments for a few days. So I logged out and ran a search for my username, and got told I didn’t exist.
My guess: when you hit r/all someone looked through your comment history and found stuff that got you banned.
Could be… that’s why I asked them to clarify which content rules I broke, maybe they’d clarify what rule I broke, or linked to something
but literately my entire post history was either programmerhumor memes, or answering programming related questions.
It’s hard to find any archived version, since it cuts off after the first page, but this is the gist of it. https://web.archive.org/web/20230528122136/https://old.reddit.com/user/RonSijm
I don’t know if there are better “reddit archivers” out there that would show more history, but I don’t think there’s any “stuff that gets me banned” in there. If anyone knows a better reddit archive lemmy know
That’s extra-absurd considering it is related to programming and is actually funny. They must be feeling very sensitive over there these days.
Time to request full gdpr info. Also they don’t delete your posts if you request account deletion and tell you to do it yourself.
After the request tell them through an E-Mail to delete every single comment with remotely identifiying info for you since you dont have access.
Yep, I submitted a GDRP request for all my data as well. After they’ve complied with my data request I intent to submit a delete request
I practically work as devops / sysops so know the GDRP rules since I had to deal with them myself…
After my account was suspended I can no longer do any “write” actions on reddit; upvote, downvote, delete posts/comments. “Luckily” my username is/was RonSijm - which is also my real-life name, therefore everything I’ve posted falls under GDRP. So they’ll have to comply with my request to nuke everything. “do it yourself” is not an option
Careful, when you delete an account they just mark the username as [deleted] and claim it sufficiently anonymizes the data. Explicitly tell them to delete all comments or at least send then a specific list of comments with anything identifiable.
Forgive me for posting a LinkedIn link but it’s an article. That said, here is a “nightmare” GDRP letter to send if you are from the EU
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nightmare-letter-subject-access-request-under-gdpr-karbaliotis
Eh… damage control, “Hey, we’ve got enough of this shit and we saw you on the front page so get nuked nerd”, etcetc. If anything, that’ll be a nice thing to tell to you grandsons, “Back in the day I got lots of fake internet points and got nuked into oblivion because I made a pun out of a random person.”
“ok zoomer”
Holy shit! That’s a great story, what a way to go out!
By the way, sync for Lemmy is coming ;)
But why use a proprietary app when there are awesome people making Free and Open Source applications? For example Jerboa or wefwef.app. Anyone can audit their source code and make sure they don’t spy on you or do anything malicious.
Because the developer has years of experience in crafting a near perfect app for Reddit, much of which applies to Lemmy as well.
Over the years this dev definitely earned the community’s trust and I see no reason to assume he will pull sneaky shit now.
FOSS is awesome, but I kind of dislike the militant push towards it here on Lemmy. As soon as someone does not release their source code people go “But have you thought about open source?”, “Why not open source?”, “No source, no install” and the likes.
Over the years this dev definitely earned the community’s trust and I see no reason to assume he will pull sneaky shit now.
The fact that he puts you in a position where you have to trust him makes him not trustworthy. There is no place for trust in computer security or privacy. If you have to trust something, it is bad for you. For example it would be ridiculous if encryption relied only on trust and nobody could verify that it’s actually secure. I’m not saying the developer is malicious, but he should know better than this (all programmers should).
FOSS is awesome, but I kind of dislike the militant push towards it here on Lemmy. As soon as someone does not release their source code people go “But have you thought about open source?”, “Why not open source?”, “No source, no install” and the likes.
Why do you dislike that? Do you not want to have control over your own devices and software that runs on them? Free and Open Source software gives you the freedom to study the program, modify it and distribute the original and any modifications you make to it. This way not only we can verify what the program does, but we can also change it to fit our needs. But also this makes it impractical to implement any malicious functionality, because users can easily remove it and share the modified version with others. So instead of the developer having power over users, the users are the ones in control. They can have privacy and security, which is impossible with proprietary software. That’s why proprietary software is unethical.
That is an awful way to go about it. Have you verified your bank’s computer systems? What about the servers your health data is stored on? I hope you use an Android AOSP ROM with a public source code. Do you even trust your microwave to not send death rays because of a malicious programmer?
I don’t dislike it in general, I just think that FOSS is not a good fit for every project. A good and recent example: I work as a software engineer in a pretty niche market and my team and I have developed what we believe is a really neat algorithm for a pretty niche problem. There are already other players trying to replicate the solution, but thankfully they are falling short compared to our approach so far.
Suppose instead of keeping the library proprietary we would make it open-source (and free). Well, now every competitor in the market just needs to look at our GitHub, and months of R&D budget would be basically wasted while at the same time, our competitors would get our IP handed on a silver plate.
I’m pretty sure that Sync for Lemmy will have a pro version priced similarly to the Sync for Reddit pro version (~ $4.99 one-time). The dev would be stupid to release it as FOSS, if he intends to make money on premium features, when literally anyone with a computer and two brain cells could just compile the premium app from a public GitHub.
Now take good examples of FOSS: Blender, Gimp, Inkscape, and the likes. The main difference is that there is no obvious monetization happening besides donations and sponsorships and for such passion projects FOSS is absolutely the way to go as you can pool in the knowledge of the community if your project generates enough traction. Blender wouldn’t be what it is today without all the volunteer devs contributing to it.
Have you verified your bank’s computer systems?
No, it doesn’t run on my computer, so that’s impossible.
I hope you use an Android AOSP ROM with a public source code.
I don’t use Android. I have a PinePhone - it runs GNU/Linux.
Do you even trust your microwave to not send death rays because of a malicious programmer?
I have to trust it, because if it has any firmware, the source code is not public. But I’m pretty sure there are standards for electromagnetic radiation, which are regulated by the government. It would be nice to be able to modify such firmware though and change how much the microwave beeps after it finishes. But anyway, the Free Software movement recognises that it is currently impossible to write replacements for all firmware for every possible device. So if a program isn’t running on a computer, it’s ok if it’s proprietary (for now at least).
I work as a software engineer in a pretty niche market and my team and I have developed what we believe is a really neat algorithm for a pretty niche problem. There are already other players trying to replicate the solution, but thankfully they are falling short compared to our approach so far.
You could release it under AGPL license. Since it’s a Copyleft license, your code couldn’t be used (legally) in proprietary software. If other companies wanted to use your code in their product, they would have to release the source code for the entire program (or they can pay you for MIT licensed version - this is called dual licensing). If they make improvements to your AGPL licensed code, they would have to release those changes. Win-win for the society. I don’t release my code under anything weaker than GPL. You don’t have to use permissive licenses and you probably shouldn’t.
Think of all those companies developing almost the exact same thing you are and wasting time and money on it, while they could all contribute to your solution instead and spend the saved money on something more important. How many other areas of development are there where this happens?
I’m pretty sure that Sync for Lemmy will have a pro version priced similarly to the Sync for Reddit pro version (~ $4.99 one-time). The dev would be stupid to release it as FOSS, if he intends to make money on premium features, when literally anyone with a computer and two brain cells could just compile the premium app from a public GitHub.
I’m pretty sure nobody has to pay for any software ever. People choose to pay for it. Checkout the game Mindustry on Steam. It’s Libre Software, you can not only get the code for free from GitHub and compile it, but the author ever releases the builds there for free. Yet me and tons of other people still bought a copy.
I think most people probably don’t even know what GitHub is, but yes the more technical users could compile it. That doesn’t mean none of them will buy it though.
Blender, Gimp, Inkscape are developed by non-profits. But that doesn’t mean that commercial Libre software doesn’t exist or that it can’t exist.
I’m using Jerboa now and it’s pretty good. A few hiccups here and there, but all in all not bad.
I’m not so sure about that…
I’ve been nagging /u/ljdawson (the sync dev) to comment on whether he’d open-source sync or whether he’d make it compatible with Lemmy: https://www.reddit.com/r/redditsync/comments/145vvjg/reddit_clients_can_support_lemmy_just_by_changing/jnog4ag/?context=3
The news so far is
No plans to open source right now but potentially lemmy
ReVanced has patched sync to be compatible with any reddit API key, in case /u/ljdawson nukes it. And people have been working on decompiling sync and making it compatible with lemmy, and then recompiling it, but that’s not a long term solution. Making large changes on decompiled source is not ideal in the long run. Best case scenario would be for sync to become open source
What is the problem with it being closed software? I mean it is his decision after all.
The problem is not knowing what the program does on your device (if it spies on you or if it shows you what you want to see instead of what the developers want you to see). It’s his app, but your device and you deserve to have control over it. The author doesn’t think so apparently, but fortunately other Lemmy developers have better standards.
True… But are people reviewing open source software and code to make sure they aren’t malicious? I’m not. I haven’t looked at the Lemmy code once, just saw there was a repo.
I think the bigger issue is what motivates the dev. If it’s freeware, then the project probably isn’t backed by greed VS passion. In saying that, I paid $3 for an android music app (Symfonium) and it’s closed source. I absolutely love it way more than plex Amp and the dev is active. I have no issues with closed source unless development halters.
Yes, people look at software’s code all the time, if it’s popular enough. Lemmy seems to have multiple people contributing right now and each of them knows some portion of the code. You don’t have to do that yourself to benefit from this. When a program is Free and Open Source, it doesn’t automatically mean that it’s secure and private, but it can be. With proprietary software that’s not possible at all, because it’s very difficult to verify what the program does and when authors do add malicious features, the users can’t do anything about it.
With Free and Open Source software, users can study what the program does, make changes to it and share their modifications with others. It wouldn’t make sense to add malware to such program, because users can easily remove it.
Isnt the logic in the case lemmy kinda flawed? Sure the main instance is open source but you never know if any other instance may added tracker and such stuff since you cant directly verify what it runs.
you never know if any other instance may added tracker and such stuff since you cant directly
Technically, because of the AGPL license that Lemmy users, instance owners have a legal obligation to disclose any changes they made to the source code upon request. But you are right that we can’t verify what is running on somebody else’s server. There is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to verify what runs on your computer/phone though and that’s more important.
I’m not so sure about that…
There is always Lemmy, et al!
My Reddit account was permabanned because I posted (about a guy who killed a teenager who came to his house) “You know, I’ve changed my mind. Give this guy the chair. Not as a punishment but as a mercy. If I had grandkids like that I’d want to be mercy killed too!” The grandkid I was referring to was a screenshot of his grandon’s Twitter calling him a Nazi.
Banned for “inciting violence” or some horse shit. Appealed for 30 days straight, now every one of my appeals is instantly denied by some bot.
Just be glad you don’t have to spend more time in that shithole.
Redditor for 13 years I think. Same username as the one I sport on here.
the less I have to see that guy the better.
Reddit needs to go down like the Titan.
Preach it.
If this is true it’s insane.
That post is actually funny IMO, how thin skinned do you have to be to suspend people permanently for that? It obviously doesn’t break any rules. If it was ambiguous whether it did, a warning would be more fitting.
Yes I can see it’s not directly about programming, but close enough IMO.
If this is true it’s insane.
It’s true. Since my account is suspended, I’m unable to delete or edit any post or comment. So anyone is completely free to Doxx my account, find it on a waybackmachine or any another other reddit archive and see if I posted anything even mildly problematic, or prove that I’m lying or leaving out details for no apparent reason or whatever
If it was ambiguous whether it did, a warning would be more fitting.
When something is ambiguous whether it fits a specific subreddit or not - is up to the mods to decide, and they deemed it ok. Sub-offtopic stuff just gets your posts removed by the mods, and normally wouldn’t get you side-wide ban
Are you not allowed to get everything deleted through GDPR or something similar?
I read somewhere that even if you don’t live in Europe you should try to ask to delete everything through GDPR because it’s an automated process and some companies don’t check where you live. It’s worth a try
I doubt they check.
Because any mistake would be fairly expensive.
I was permanently banned for reporting bots as spam on my 12 year account, but u was still able to edit my comments. I need to finish doing so on the rest of them…
I’m sure Reddit will remain for many years, but I seriously hope this is the beginning of a major shift in peoples approach to large sites like them. Many smaller communities can only be a good thing for the internet. Lemmy/Beehaw are exactly what I hope become more commonplace. Mega social media platforms all need to go.
They banned me forever for quoting historical facts. It was a 16 year old account. It really did turn to shit.
Anyway, I’m sure degenerates from /r/palestine will contribute much better content to their community.
reddit admins have been going on a purge like ive never seen. welcome to the club!
Gotta protect that IPO.
