
Anxieyote
Sobriety over everything else • 31 • Midwest
- Mar 24, 2021
- 444
I'm going to start off by saying that I think Reddit could be an absolutely amazing resource for people. The last shreds of what I would consider to be "free speech" on the internet existed there when it first started, and there were communities for every conceivable subject.
But everything took a nosedive when controversial communities started getting too much attention (r/fatpeoplehate, r/sanctionedsuicide, r/The_Donald, etc.) and Reddit started cracking down on everything.
I have 3 Reddit accounts. In an ideal world, I'd only have one because that's all I need. But I had to make a 2nd account because my main account kept getting banned in communities I liked to participate in. I used to be really active on the r/antiwork and r/latestagecapitalism subreddits, but I was forced out for wrongthink during the 2016 election because the political discourse was reaching insane levels. I wasn't even going to those subreddits to discuss politics, but one tiny comment was all it took for trigger-happy mods to ban one of their most active members. I loved that place, and I would still contribute if I could. I even appealed a few times, but I would always get dismissive responses from power-hungry mods who would just reply "no lol" when I asked politely.
I also used r/ForeverAlone and r/depression fairly regularly to cope with my feelings, but even those places aren't safe. I forget what I got banned for there, but I had to create a 3rd Reddit account to start participating again. I was walking on eggshells this time, being as careful as I possibly could to be an upstanding member of those communities (because I needed them; I still do), but somehow they were able to detect that I was using an alt-account and I got shawdowbanned.
I don't consider myself to be a bad person, and I don't deserve to get exiled from communities like these. They were made for people like me (referring to the depression, anxiety, and mental illness subreddits), and mods are putting people's mental health in jeopardy when they silence them as regularly as they do. And then the people who aren't banned in those communities start walking on eggshells too when they speak, so even they won't get the support they truly need because of how militant the mods and site-wide rules are.
I hate Reddit because of how much potential it has (or had, I should say). I don't feel comfortable participating in any community on there at this point, because I'll probably end up accidentally breaking some stupid rule on the list of 500 rules they have in the sidebar.
But everything took a nosedive when controversial communities started getting too much attention (r/fatpeoplehate, r/sanctionedsuicide, r/The_Donald, etc.) and Reddit started cracking down on everything.
I have 3 Reddit accounts. In an ideal world, I'd only have one because that's all I need. But I had to make a 2nd account because my main account kept getting banned in communities I liked to participate in. I used to be really active on the r/antiwork and r/latestagecapitalism subreddits, but I was forced out for wrongthink during the 2016 election because the political discourse was reaching insane levels. I wasn't even going to those subreddits to discuss politics, but one tiny comment was all it took for trigger-happy mods to ban one of their most active members. I loved that place, and I would still contribute if I could. I even appealed a few times, but I would always get dismissive responses from power-hungry mods who would just reply "no lol" when I asked politely.
I also used r/ForeverAlone and r/depression fairly regularly to cope with my feelings, but even those places aren't safe. I forget what I got banned for there, but I had to create a 3rd Reddit account to start participating again. I was walking on eggshells this time, being as careful as I possibly could to be an upstanding member of those communities (because I needed them; I still do), but somehow they were able to detect that I was using an alt-account and I got shawdowbanned.
I don't consider myself to be a bad person, and I don't deserve to get exiled from communities like these. They were made for people like me (referring to the depression, anxiety, and mental illness subreddits), and mods are putting people's mental health in jeopardy when they silence them as regularly as they do. And then the people who aren't banned in those communities start walking on eggshells too when they speak, so even they won't get the support they truly need because of how militant the mods and site-wide rules are.
I hate Reddit because of how much potential it has (or had, I should say). I don't feel comfortable participating in any community on there at this point, because I'll probably end up accidentally breaking some stupid rule on the list of 500 rules they have in the sidebar.