• batmangrundies@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I pointed out that the Australian subreddits were being very obviously astro-turfed. And then I made a post naming the Aus PR companies that were openly running bot campaigns on Reddit and who was using them.

    That account got banned in record fucking time lol. And no reason was given either, it was a site-wide IP ban. Luckily one call to my ISP and that was sorted lol.

    • PoliticalAgitator@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      They welcome the evasion since they don’t actually want their number of ad impressions going down. They were just letting you know that under no circumstances were you to show anyone what’s behind the curtain.

    • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Mind if I ask how long ago you were banned? It seems like over the last 6-9 months nationalist subreddits have ended up with a huge amount of sway in gettting people banned for arguing with them.

      IP ban isn’t the only way they can get you though. I’ve had them catch me out even with a fresh IP. They fingerprint browsers, using their own implementation of backend Google captcha (you don’t connect to gstatic.com, but redditstatic.com).

      • wheeldawg@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        I think they use the email too. I once made a second with the same email and it was fine for a few minutes and then banned. I hadn’t voted or commented on anything yet.

        Then I made another with a brand new email on a different service and it too was banned pretty quick before I engaged with anything. That one I think was fingerprinted because my home IP changes every couple months naturally, so I wasn’t on the same IP that would have been banned. Also sometime around then I started using a VPN and it was still banned, so I’m thinking it was a fingerprint.

        At that point I was kinda over it but I was curious about the system. So I tried once more with another new service email, on a different IP from being on a mobile away from home. That one worked. It probably still works, but I don’t remember it or the password or the email I made for it. So it’s out there somewhere, but I don’t care any more because this all finished up around the time reddit killed third party apps, so I found this and my app came over, so I just entered the fediverse.

        I still have my NSFW account there which does still have all of my niche interests in far greater supply than I’ve found here so far. I’ve got my NSFW account here, but all the communities die pretty quick, so it’s not much use yet.

        • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Somewhat, yes. I had a bunch of alts that used similar emails, they all got axed, but one was spared, perhaps because I never clicked to confirm the email. Then I suspect they linked any remaining or new accounts with different emails via a recent desktop browser.

          It was kind of cool looking into when everything was banned. Accounts I hadn’t logged into for years had been banned, all together - but not immediately with the first main ban.

          I think IP alone isn’t enough for them to decide to ban, though.