I like to think that I’m a pretty nice guy, when you get right down to it. Sure, I’m opinionated, especially when it comes to politics, but I don’t go around wishing harm to others. That would be ridiculous, even if they absolutely suck (as in Trump and the MAGAts).
Now, I have a long commute to and from work. It is about an hour to get to work in the evening, and upwards of 90 minutes to get home in the morning. This only matters because I like to spend a few minutes checking my social media accounts, once I get home, just relaxing in my car. I check Bluesky, then Reddit, to see if anything interesting has popped up in the last few hours, before I head inside.
You might call it a morning ritual.
So, imagine my surprise when I opened up Reddit yesterday morning, only to find I had been given an official Warning for allegedly making a Threat. Which was funny, since I did no such thing. Like I said, I post a lot in political threads, and I have no love for Trump and his cultists, but I don’t make threats.
Anyway, the warning included a couple of links, one to the alleged threat post, and one to dispute the warning. What was funny was the link to the “threat” post just went to the start of the thread I had been replying to earlier, and showed no such “Threat” made by me at all. Then the link to dispute the warning just went to the homepage.
So basically I got hit with an official sanction for a ‘threatening post” that either didn’t exist, or had been deleted so I couldn’t see it, and I was being given no way to dispute this Warning at all. Yeah, that sounds like Reddit to me.
Look, I enjoy reading Reddit, or at least I used to. There were lots of good discussions to be had regarding games I enjoy, as well as plenty of memes and politics-based threads to chat about. I’ve literally been there for years, and have had almost no contact with moderators, because I didn’t do anything wrong… until now, apparently.
But here’s the thing: My Lovely Bride™ jumped on Reddit this morning, and looked over my recent post history. The worst thing she could see was where I agreed with others that someday there should be trials like there were in Nuremberg after WWII for those disappearing people from the US now. Is that a threat?
I don’t think so, unless you are someone who supports these disgusting, unconstitutional, and frankly anti-American actions. And that’s where the problem lies.
It is my opinion that I likely upset some conservative Moderator, who used their power to ‘squash’ me. Rather than come out and try to justify how any of what Trump and his Stormtroopers are doing, they just threw a warning at me, as a “Threat” to shut down my longtime account on the service.
But see, that’s okay… I’ll see myself out.
That’s the problem with services like Reddit. They give users way too much power over others, and some of them wield it like a cudgel. But you see, that’s what ruined Twitter/X, and will eventually pull down services like Facebook and Reddit. Letting MAGAt worms stifle conversation that happens to make their side look bad will just drive reasonable users to services like Mastodon or Bluesky, for example.
Screw Reddit. I’ll talk with reasonable people here and on Bluesky.
