42 upvotes, 5 direct replies (showing 5)
View submission: Improved ban evasion detection and mitigation
What have you been noticing since this change?
It's been touch and go. We've had a lot of edge cases that we have to call in big guns for because it's heavily active and forcefully aggressive. We had one user go a month making new accounts, sending dozens of messages to modmail full of racism and death threats, and then moving accounts. It took about a month for that to mostly subside (it's not every 4-5 days instead of daily). We also had someone who made about a dozen accounts in an hour and then move onto doxxing a mod. He seems to have finally laid off that thankfully. But both required us reaching out. We've also had a lot of ban evaders that we realize are evading 6-7 months out that we then action. No idea on how those kinds of cases get caught up in this sort of thing.
What types of edge cases do you think we should be thinking about here?
See above, really. The unlawful evil users are a huge problem and if it's someone hyper-active, then a few hours delay is too slow. Also cases where they're not looking to post but instead get around modmail mutes.
What are your ideas on behaviors we shouldn’t be concerned about as well as ways we might be able to expand this.
I'd love for ways where people who get banned for minimally malicious reasons that might be lifted down the line to be brought to our attention as way for us to have dialog of "ban evasion isn't okay, but talking with us can get it lifted." But that requires giving us either a far more robust way of doing "permanent" (really, indefinite) bans so we could tag them, or give ways of us connecting accounts, which I know y'all have no interest doing. Because there are people who we're interested in having that conversation, but we're not going to just ignore ban evasions at the same time. It's just not a good system to have so few options with such a wide variety of rules violation extremes.
Comment by worstnerd at 28/05/2020 at 23:13 UTC
31 upvotes, 17 direct replies
Yeah, we recognize that not all subreddit bans are intended to be permanent, and some mods welcome users back. Today we don't really have an effective way to communicate this at scale. One thought I had was giving an ability for mods to be able to select "Permanently ban this person" or "We will welcome this person back later". Other ideas we've heard are temporary suspensions, and wholly opting out for subreddits. What are your thoughts?
Comment by Agent_03 at 29/05/2020 at 00:01 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I agree with most of this.
I'd love for ways where people who get banned for minimally malicious reasons that might be lifted down the line to be brought to our attention as way for us to have dialog of "ban evasion isn't okay, but talking with us can get it lifted." But that requires giving us either a far more robust way of doing "permanent"
Maybe even just having a mod-visible *marker* on comments/submissions from accounts that are *probably* alts of a currently-banned account, without identifying which account they're linked to? Sort of like a flair, but with "possible ban evader'? Not knowing which account would maintain privacy, but give us an option to have that conversation with someone.
For larger/more active subreddits, we don't have any way to separate a normal troll from a ban evader unless they're extremely obvious about it. But if someone has at least 2 accounts permabanned, we'd love to make sure that sticks.
Comment by Fkfkdoe73 at 29/05/2020 at 03:57 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Regards the 6-7 month reapply thing maybe that's just because people forgot.
I tried to post on a subreddit last month and found that I couldn't. I didn't know why so I messaged the mods, asking for approval. They told me I'd been banned 3 or 4 years ago but I don't know what for. It's probably not someone else on the same IP as me. But then, I won't ever know because there's no records of all this and probably won't ever be because maybe it's a war that requires secrecy?
Comment by OneLostOstrich at 29/05/2020 at 18:32 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I can't agree more. There are many subs that are essentially unmoderated where the mods don't even log in to Reddit for months. Others are run by users who want to promote spam.
How can we report a sub for being unmoderated?
Comment by trai_dep at 29/05/2020 at 21:23 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
We had one user go a month making new accounts, sending dozens of messages to modmail full of racism and death threats, and then moving accounts.
Geezus. Sympathies and virtual hugs!