Ask HN: Is anyone else feeling bad about Reddit's mechanisms

Hello, I recently encountered a slew of events that didn't quite sit right with me and I needed to get this off my chest. Note that this is NOT an appeal to get un-infracted. I just feel really unhappy and I need to talk about it in relation to the question in the title.

For context, Reddit encourages use of alts/alternative accounts, which is baked into its own app UX (same device alt switching).

#### Incident 1 Slightly under a year ago, r/Glowups had a rule where all accounts who have previously commented on a NSFW subreddit get permanently banned from the sub, of which you can find multiple supporting references:

https://imgur.com/xzaosHR source: https://www.reddit.com/r/unfairbanning/comments/1nmn0u6/banned_from_glowups_because_i_have_nsfw_content/

https://imgur.com/Wm2S9xY source: https://www.reddit.com/r/acotar/comments/1gczet6/comment/ltywbum/

https://imgur.com/Uy4P6Rp source: https://www.reddit.com/r/RandomThoughts/comments/1mauak8/comment/n5hhl2k/

At the time (2025) this was a site-wide, automatic, and enforceable ban on any NSFW tagged account (eg. especially if you were following NSFW jokes like r/chairsunderwater or NSFW advice like r/sexadvice).

- I was (unknowingly) caught in the automated blanket ban on one of my accounts.

- Because I follow similarly themed subs (r/UglyDuckling, r/Glowups) on all of my alts, Reddit's algorithm pushed r/Glowups to the fyp of one of my accounts.

Result: I commented on algo-pushed content from r/Glowups BEFORE I had even logged into the banned account to realize I had been banned.

All of my accounts therefore received the "ban evasion serious infraction" strike from something that was essentially not yet visible to me.

I didn't even try to appeal this because (1) I was busy jobhunting at the time and (2) the reddit appeal textbox is only 250 characters long.

#### Incident 2 I posted a suggestion that there should be a way to block subreddits cross-account so that binding and permanent penalties are not so easily tripped

https://imgur.com/gDeqvfg source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ideasfortheadmins/s/BPrmbihDue

My suggestion received support (refer to the links) and was removed because "aim to focus on ... constructive, and avoid being destructive..."

The last line is what got me thinking- it suggests that features assisting rule compliance is dangerous for Reddit somehow?

#### Incident 3 I was helping someone who appeared to be overpaying for a helper service. I was wrongfully banned for a fuzzy keyword match that later repealed.

https://imgur.com/0q58xMd (ban)

https://imgur.com/PnXbrj8 (repeal)

However, due to the ban (before the repeal) I went on an alt which was 5 years old. Guess what happens when the reddit algorithm pushes you content from subs from 5 years ago... I tripped the ban evasion filter again. Permanent ban.

I have been very addicted to Reddit in the past two weeks, so maybe it is good that I got permabanned so I can give myself some space and reclaim my life. I am just kind of sad that I will not be able to contribute to or interact with the less neurotic reddit LLM/data/cs spaces ever again.

In tl;dr: my sensing from my 3 incident experiences is that Reddit's design has zero intention of encouraging compliance to its rules (the opposite, actually): - Their own algorithm encourages "ban evasion" - Any suggestion to let users comply with rules by self-exclusion from subreddits is censored/suppressed

I think the only way I could ever have avoided this was if I had obsessively devoted more of my 9-5 working hours chasing Reddit absolution through the numerous subreddits with automated blanket banning capabilities. Which I honestly don't think is ever realistic f...