Has reddit begun its slide to obscurity?
Several months ago, around June/July of 2007, reddit started considering blocking spammers by letting them see their own posts but hiding them from everyone else.
http://reddit.com/info/1vcyp/comments
"aberant 1 point 3 months ago
yah.. i think an ignore feature like in IRC would be a terrific idea, because if anything, we want these spammers to not get any clicks. if spamming is unprofitable, the problem will go away on it's own. So i vote for an ignore type function. Maybe it could be tied into the report link, so after a certain threshold is met for points and a certain number of reports, their comments wouldn't appear anymore to everyone but themselves..."
But it seems that reddit has started doing this to more than spammers who post spam. They have started doing this to legit users that hold differing opinions than the admins. It doesn't even take an argument with an admin to get banned, but simply for an admin to see you debating with another user. Will he ban both users? Will he warn both users? No, he'll quietly flag the one with which he disagrees and this user may never realize no one else sees his posts.
Why is this a problem? Is this not simply a form of moderation?
Not when it seems to be based on political views. Certain very obvious trolls aren't banned and yet others who aren't trolls are banned. Go into any ron paul discussion on reddit, and you'll see a few particular people who post a 5 page list they copied from their blog about why ron paul shouldn't win, the same list they repeatedly post everywhere.
So what? The admins have the right to ban who they wish!
Sure they do, except when they do it without warning, without even telling the user they are being banned, and without even giving a reason for it. Definitely not being given any recourse to inquire or refute the reason seems horribly similar to certain recent actions of our government.
So just register again as a new user and ignore it. They don't block the ip!
If they don't like someone under his login, why would they like him under a new login? There's nothing to prevent the reddit team from simply banning the same person again when they again disagree with his politics.
What will happen here is that the honest user will get banned and simply leave in disgust. The dishonest user and the real troll will continue under new logins. Reddit will become nothing but people who agree with the admins political views, and trolls and spammers who keep generating new identities.