Reddit

Me. I had 11 years. Same name as here, it's probably all on the wayback machine or something, I did delete my account before I learned about the thing that scrambles your entire history into nonsense, I would definitely have waited if I had known that existed.

It was a process, and overall the site worked well enough for me, but a few specific things made it less and less useful over time.

The one-two punch that made me say fuck it was, I was basically down to doing two things there that I cared about: posting my animals to the cute subs, and interacting in r/Winnipeg, and less often, r/Manitoba, which were directly relevant subs to my life. I also subscribed to a lot of other ones, but the content was all kinda take-it-or-leave-it stuff. I also do shitpost a lot, and I appreciate that we have places for that too, I have historically shitposted where others were trying to eatpost more than I wish I had, though I am referring to a question of tone rather than trolling or ratfucking or any of that 4chan crap. I just don't read the room well sometimes.

Anyways, first, I got shadowbanned in r/Winnipeg, which was the last space on Reddit that I found both relevant and somewhat harmonious to my viewpoint - the sub is an echo chamber, and I was aware of that and didn't particularly like it, but I would rather be in a chamber that echoes my voice if I must, and at the time it seemed like there were no other such spaces available. The internet used to have places where you could have a really lively debate with people you don't agree with and look forward to seeing them and hearing about their gardens the next day. It was really like that here, once. It's kinda weird looking back at it now, I should look in on some of those folks.

Anyways, I will never know what happened exactly, because shadowban, your accuser not being required to face you is a feature. If a mod had ever told me what it was I did, there is actually an extremely high possibility that I would have agreed that it was not acceptable, cause I go back and wish I had played stuff differently all the time, really. I can trace that it was about three weeks before I noticed, because my posts were typically good for 5-20 points of upvotes when I posted, sometimes a 100+ jackpot even, but they all started getting consistent zeroes. Logout, check, oh hey, I don't exist now! The cowardliness of it, the fact that whoever did it will never take ownership of it and justify it, and that being the unchanging reality of Reddit, was extremely eye-opening.

Digression Incoming: This shadowban did not make me leave Reddit, but now that I have, I basically won't participate in a space that has shadowbanning. Last I heard they don't have that here (indeed, the public mod logs are a big feature for me) but I will be gone if it's ever implemented. I also don't believe it will ever be seen as necessary here the way it became necessary on Reddit; Reddit mods can ban accounts, but they can't ban IPs or IP blocks or any such. Why? Reddit needs lots of users to get those profits happening. If they start banning IP blocks or domains willy nilly that is failure out of the gate. The tone, or even the integrity of communities, takes a backseat to the IPO.

Here, on the other hand, we are a community of people running these servers out of pocket or community supported, and therefore, no Instance admin is incentivized to do anything but ban/defed a troublesome IP or domain; everyone here despises the trolls, from top to bottom, and none of us, from top to bottom, have any use for them. The Reddit board, on the other hand, they actually NEED the trolls, they need big numbers to accomplish their goals, and what those numbers represent - trolls, bots, AI - it does not matter. The difference is capitalism. Everyone should really be noticing that, imo.

Anyways I still had one community that was somewhat relevant, r/Manitoba, which positions itself as the "free speech" alternative to r/Winnipeg's echo chamber. This one, I know exactly what happened, someone posted an article where a bunch of F350 drivers from a small Conservative-voting community were out protesting the state of the highways, which are atrocious and getting worse every year; I used to do asphalt, and we used to put down a few inches every summer on the road up to my place; the last four years it's either been no work done, or else that thing where they spray tar and then cover it with fine gravel.

Anyways, these being the people who have laughed at protestors for decades and also voted this shit in, I got a little up in my blood and posted a comment that included the line "Enjoy the world you voted for, hicks." I guess I figured as a rural-dwelling white dude I get to use that one. Anyways, reported, and next thing I know, three day ban. So much for that free speech absolutism eh?

Either way though, it was no longer an amenable place to my viewpoint, so that was that; since there are many places one can post one's cats for oos an aws, the ban lasted about an hour, which is how long it took me to sit down at my PC and delete my account.