30 upvotes, 17 direct replies (showing 17)
View submission: Improved ban evasion detection and mitigation
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 [deleted] at 29/05/2020 at 00:00 UTC
27 upvotes, 5 direct replies
Yeah, we recognize that not all subreddit bans are intended to be permanent, and some mods welcome users back.
IMO, if the intent of a ban is not to be permanent, the ban that's given should not be permanent. I do not hand out permanent bans to people that I want to come back, and neither should anyone else.
Comment by KKingler at 28/05/2020 at 23:31 UTC
11 upvotes, 1 direct replies
It may be a little bit confusing to moderators...
If you permanently ban people, you can easily misinterpret "We will welcome this person back later"
As for wholying oping out, I would say this could definitely be a toggle in subreddit settings. Maybe something along the lines of "Automatically report suspected ban evasion"
Would it be too much of a privacy concern to have a vague "We suspect this user may be ban evading, would you like to submit a report?" when banning a user?
Comment by techiesgoboom at 29/05/2020 at 02:03 UTC
6 upvotes, 0 direct replies
and some mods welcome users back
Isn't this what the unban option is for?
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"
Isn't this the difference between a temporary ban and a permanent one?
I'm coming at this from the perspective of a mod of a subreddit that uses bans as bans, and intends for them to work as intended. If someone wants to appeal a permanent ban and participate there's already a system in place: they message the mod team and we can unban them if we decide to. I mean, written directly in the ban message is the line you guys added saying:
**Reminder from the Reddit staff:** If you use another account to circumvent this subreddit ban, that will be considered a violation of the Content Policy and can result in your account being suspended from the site as a whole.
And it just seems weird for that to be included and not enforced. I mean, we've got the tools already, you've got the policy already. if it was enforced consistently and as it was written any subreddit that wanted to handle bans differently could work without that system and find the way to make it so.
Comment by eric_twinge at 28/05/2020 at 23:55 UTC
12 upvotes, 2 direct replies
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".
I don't understand. We already have this. If I don't want a person back, I perma-ban them. If I'm willing to welcome them back later, I temp-ban them.
Comment by Bardfinn at 28/05/2020 at 23:59 UTC
17 upvotes, 2 direct replies
/r/ContraPoints and /r/AgainstHateSubreddits have been doing Indefinite Bans and we provide a documented Ban Appeals Process; The pain point for us is that we don't have control over the site-infrastructurally-mandated "You have been ***permanently*** banned ..." messaging in those cases. We'd absolutely like to have the option to change that messaging from "You've been permanently banned" to "You've been indefinitely banned until you successfully file an appeal".
That's a pain point that we've identified where the site infrastructure doesn't line up with the expectations set forward in the moderator guidelines and etc.
and it would require just one more type of ban recognised by the infrastructure, and accompanying messaging, and that only at the ban modal - it would be functionally, from a site infrastructure perspective, no different than a permanent ban - the ***messaging*** would be different.
Comment by [deleted] at 28/05/2020 at 23:30 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I like the welcome back part, though that's difficult to decide sometimes. A lot of users are people who we think we just want to talk to and then modmail goes in a horribly wrong direction. For instance, the doxxer/dozen accounts in an hour guy was someone who were offering to lift the ban as long as he gave a tiny piece of evidence that what he was claiming was true. Even the dude with racism and death threats was initially banned for something we regularly lift after a conversation. So unless it's a toggle, I'm not sure. Even more, sometimes people will be a real wet fart of a user immediately after so it seems like it'd be something to toggle, but could be good down the line and we'd want to deal with it.
Unfortunately, being able to automate assumptions of good/bad is incredibly complex (and likely ultimately fruitless) because human are complex creatures. As much as I like the idea behind helping on this, the best solution is saying "hey, you've banned X, Y, and Z users. They're all the same. They're now using account C, do you want it actioned?"
Otherwise... I can't help you a ton there.
Comment by LividGrass at 28/05/2020 at 23:41 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I would love to see an "opt in/opt out" toggle for this in our community settings, with some of the information from this post like criteria 1/2 included in a pop up.
I think you've come up with a really powerful set of tools to hopefully reduce the burden on mods, which is much appreciated. But it relies on mod's sub specific ban philosophies falling in line with the way this works, since it is a system we won't be directly controlling and we won't have the power as mods to fix an improper edge case suspension (or even know that our actions caused said incorrect suspension). Having an opt-in toggle would hopefully mean that at least one mod per sub would see this information, and make sure that our teams ban practices work well with how this system operates.
Comment by aurelie_v at 29/05/2020 at 09:10 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Can you please make available a way to contact admins more easily about genuinely prejudicial bans, where mods are deliberately acting outside their ordinary understood scope to target a group of users? Presently there’s no way to speak to admins about this and while it’s probably not an endemic issue, it is hugely problematic in some sub-groups, including some very harmful and deliberate targeting of people with disabilities.
I, along with many others, was banned from r/disability permanently despite never breaking a rule, never behaving abusively, and having a strong need and wish to participate there (as a severely disabled woman reliant on full-time care, a wheelchair user, etc). It’s incredibly marginalising and harmful to be banned. The only reason for the banning of users like me is prior participation in the various “illness fakers” communities, which are focused on tracking people like Belle Gibson (notorious cancer faker and scammer), highlighting influencers who make antiscientific claims about vaccines causing genetic diseases, and so on. There is a campaign to force Reddit to classify these subs as hate groups - but they in fact are populated almost exclusively by *genuine patients* who perceive the profound harm caused by scammers, antivaxxers, etc. The fact that those of us who support evidence-based medicine - and who believe it is appropriate and acceptable to shine a light on people exploiting vulnerable patients for money - are then reactively banned from a community sub (r/disability) where we have never engaged in any negative behaviour, is against all Reddiquette and seriously merits a review of mod conduct.
Please find someone who can look into banning strategies like these, because the people being hit by them are those who really need this sort of peer networking.
Comment by trai_dep at 30/05/2020 at 17:15 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Nomenclature helps remove confusion, both for Mods and to users.
How about calling temporary bans “suspensions”, and permanent ones “bans”?
We do this on our Subs – we rarely ban people since we hope to educate them into becoming better Redditters – but we do issue suspensions, alway leaving a note, including the defined period, and which sidebar rule their comment violated.
Thanks!
Comment by BlatantConservative at 29/05/2020 at 00:38 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I like the idea of two different kinds of permabans, one permanent permanent and one that can be undone with a bit of talking and good faith
Comment by as-well at 29/05/2020 at 14:19 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
/r/askphilosophy and /r/philosophy give out temporary 3 day bans as the standard, and it's working quite nicely, usually. Mostly it's a warning to commenters who are well below the commenting standards we have.
Comment by ixfd64 at 29/06/2020 at 17:53 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
How about make it so that bans are not permanent by default?
At least in most other online communities, it's rare for users to be permanently banned except for egregious rule violations.
Comment by pcvcolin at 29/05/2020 at 16:02 UTC*
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Some subs are basically run by people who ban others on the basis of their own personal opinions, then claiming it is because of a rule (abusing the use of calling out a redditor for rule violation when there wasn't one, or targeting people with a minor rule violation with a ban, because of an underlying difference the mods have with the redditor's point of view).
In other words, censorship.
Example is r/technology which will ban you if they don't like your point of view, and perhaps a lesser example but worthy of mention is r/futurology where you may be serially downvoted if you mention something the sub mods don't like.
Don't get me started on r/politics.
There are subs such as the above for which censorship is the norm.
This comment if mine will be downvoted here and disregarded as is also the norm for bringing this topic up on reddit.
Note, edit: I was permabanned from r/technology for what mods there claimed to be a title rule violation. I don't expect to ever return to that sub because it was obvious the mods banned me because I held points of view counter to the coronavirus spyware narrative they were promoting - namely, they thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread and I didn't.
I don't expect a reply to this comment, since many bans on subs are really just censorship and I don't even wish to argue about that: search your hearts, you know it to be true.
Comment by Brimshae at 01/07/2020 at 10:16 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
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?
There's already an option for that[1].
1: https://i.imgur.com/fJ3KDpy.png
Two options, really, if you include the "note to include in the ban PM" section.
Comment by argetholo at 29/05/2020 at 03:01 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
It sounds to me that working on developing an option similar to the "spam filter strength" for each sub to indicate how much involvement they require would be ideal in the long term.
Replying here because another comment[1] you made suggested this was a better place to reply. =)
Comment by [deleted] at 29/05/2020 at 03:31 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
[removed]
Comment by FBI-01 at 29/05/2020 at 13:36 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
an ability to change the message would be nice
