Reddit's block function now lets strangers control your account

[Cpvr]

If you ask investors, Reddit is doing great. Its current market cap sits at nearly $22 billion, three times what it debuted at during its March 2024 IPO. Once a little-known successor to Fark and Digg, and a great place to engage in down-to-earth communication and meet interesting people, it's now one of the most well-known social (or anti-social) media platforms in the world.

From a user perspective, though, the site is less friendly than ever. The latest change — made with zero fanfare, as usual — now allows complete strangers to reduce your account's functionality for any reason they see fit. Now, if someone blocks you, you're no longer able to edit, delete, or even view your own comments,with exactly zero recourse for you, the person who originally posted them.

https://www.androidpolice.com/app-m...-api-ladder-will-it-be-a-bad-thing-for-users/

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User-made content, corporate-friendly rules​

And a general lack of transparency​

The mid-2023 API restrictions caused a sharp decline in variety and amount of unique, interesting content. In charging potentially prohibitive fees for third-party apps to access its data, and entering a contract with Google for exclusive web search crawling, users of the formerly grassroots, text-based website felt betrayed, to say the least. You'll periodically run across claims like, "Nobody really left Reddit. After all, I'm still here," but the obvious selection bias rests on the fact that those who left the site are not, logically, around to chime in on the topic.

Reddit's block function has prevented users from further participating in comment chains for quite some time, which already opened up the potential for abusing control over certain discussions. The latest update to blocking not only stops a user's ability to comment further, it makes it look like they never commented at all — but only to the blocked user. Others can still see and reply to the original comment, despite its invisibility to the apparent owner.

While Reddit never announced the change, it's seemingly been in place for some users — but not all — for varying lengths of time. Mentions of the change can be found as far back as June 2024, but got little widespread attention. Now, according to Android Police's and others' experience, the update appears to be rolling out even more widely.

https://www.androidpolice.com/dont-let-reddit-monetize-your-knowledge/

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Only the most recent anti-user policy change​

If the altered functionality weren't bad enough, the change has gone mostly unnoticed. It follows closely on the heels of Reddit temporarily banning the r/whitepeopletwitter community after it ran afoul of US executive branch special employee Elon Musk and his underlings. More recently, the website issued stern warnings against users upvoting "violent content," but failed to explicitly lay out what is and isn't allowed. The punishment for upvoting certain posts seems to address the rise of vaguely violence-approving comments following the December shooting of the United HealthCare CEO and vast references to certain green-wearing video game characters, but the site's precise reasoning and specific topics targeted remain less than perfectly clear.

Once a decent place to turn for uncensored discussion and sharing of first-hand experiences, it's harder than ever to parse what Reddit posts come from humans in good faith, and what results from LLM prompts, content-farming profiteers, or subversive propaganda campaigns. While the block function's nonsensically Draconian changes might not affect you directly, it's never been a better time to delete your Reddit accountand stop the corporate churn from taking advantage of your clicks.

Source: https://www.androidpolice.com/reddit-block-abuse-prevents-access-delete-edit-view-own-comments/

 

[fdk]

From time to time I find myself reading through a few threads on Reddit, and some I find quite entertaining. I haven't come across anything particularly violent or anything I thought should be immediately removed, but to be fair, I don't frequent any subreddits where these kind of things would be discussed anyway.

The thing that frustrates me most about Reddit is that, as a new account, I seem to be detected as a spammer automatically, and there's nothing I can do about it. Everytime I try to post a comment, it gets auto-removed within a couple minutes and I receive a generic message telling me I violated community standards, even if I literally said one word. It's strange. Tried creating a new account too but get the same result, so I'm forced to lurk Reddit and not participate... strange.

 

[Ravenfreak]

From time to time I find myself reading through a few threads on Reddit, and some I find quite entertaining. I haven't come across anything particularly violent or anything I thought should be immediately removed, but to be fair, I don't frequent any subreddits where these kind of things would be discussed anyway.

The thing that frustrates me most about Reddit is that, as a new account, I seem to be detected as a spammer automatically, and there's nothing I can do about it. Everytime I try to post a comment, it gets auto-removed within a couple minutes and I receive a generic message telling me I violated community standards, even if I literally said one word. It's strange. Tried creating a new account too but get the same result, so I'm forced to lurk Reddit and not participate... strange.

I remember when I first joined Reddit and couldn't really participate in a good number of subreddits because I had little to no karma. There's a reddit alternative called Lemmy that doesn't have these limitations and also don't have the other negative features listed in cpvr's post too. It might be worth checking out!

 

[Cpvr]

From time to time I find myself reading through a few threads on Reddit, and some I find quite entertaining. I haven't come across anything particularly violent or anything I thought should be immediately removed, but to be fair, I don't frequent any subreddits where these kind of things would be discussed anyway.

The thing that frustrates me most about Reddit is that, as a new account, I seem to be detected as a spammer automatically, and there's nothing I can do about it. Everytime I try to post a comment, it gets auto-removed within a couple minutes and I receive a generic message telling me I violated community standards, even if I literally said one word. It's strange. Tried creating a new account too but get the same result, so I'm forced to lurk Reddit and not participate... strange.

They have restrictions on new accounts, but generally it only lasts a week or two, sometines less.

Your posts still tend to go through, you’re just temporarily shadowbanned from the platform.

Ok, I am sure someone will correct me if I miss something.

Many subreddits have minimum requirements in terms of account age, karma or both to post or comment.

Most subreddits with these restrictions do not make known they have them or what they are. If they do, it will be in the rules, the right sidebar information, a pinned post, an FAQ or Wiki, or the message the bot sends you when it removes your post, if there is a message.

From what I have seen, the typical Karma requirement is between 10-200. I have seen as high as 500 to comment and 1000 to post, but have heard of 2500 to post.

For account age limits to posting or commenting, I have typically seen 1 day, 3 days, 7 days, 30 days. There can be others or longer as the longest I have heard of is 1 year.

Karma and account age will also play a part in how much commenting you can do without being told to take a break. Including commenting and chatting

For following people you account needs to be 7 days old

For sending PM messages your account needs to be 7 days old. Except for modmails.

Chat requests are restricted/limited until the account is 7 days old. Karma will also playa part in how much you an chat without needing a break.

You need to be 7 days old to use chat channels. After that, Chat Channels can be set to require a certain CQS. It could be anything or none.

There are some restrictions on new accounts on Reddit in an effort to reduce spam, scams, and other bad faith uses of the platform.

Chat, Private messaging, and Following are restricted. It's not public knowledge exactly what the limitations are. Typically, after a few days you can start to use these features, though karma is a factor too.

If you are seeing the message that you need an established account, we are guessing this may related to your contributor quality score. This includes a variety of signals such as a verified email or phone number, a history of good contributions, and past enforcement actions taken on your accounts. r/WhatIsMyCQS

Sending new chats is limited for all accounts, once you reach the limit you'll have to wait a while to send more.

You should be able to receive messages or chats and reply even if you can't initiate them.

https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360059271571-I-get-an-error-when-I-try-to-send-a-private-message-What-s-happening

https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360060638392-Why-can-t-I-start-a-chat

And each community can have it's own requirements. They can look at -

• ⁠Comment karma earned from upvotes on your comments
• ⁠Post karma earned from upvotes on your posts (aka submission karma)
⁠• ⁠Combined karma is both of these together.

Community restrictions can look at post, comment, or combined karma. And look at each for posting or commenting.

• ⁠Community karma - it's just post and comment karma but earned in a specific community and can be used for community restrictions - like you need to earn x community karma in comments before you can post. This can be for post, comment, or combined community karma.

Restrictions can also look at your account age, if you've verified your email, and the new contributor quality score.

 

[Al]

Anything which impacts Reddit negatively, is good for forums in general. Reddit is probably the leading cause for independent discussion forums falling out of favour. That, and Discord.