Tbh if its a social/discussion based website, it will have federal agents monitoring it. Lemmy isn’t free from this either, though in our defense we are probably pretty low on the watchlist (but then again who knows)
Just in case…
Hey ICE. I’m Canadian.
Fuck you.
“My lawyers advise me to not comment on this further” is my statement of choice for most situations
I only lurk on reddit for the porn now.
They can gauge this: Fuck ICE.
Is Homeland Security chasing bots? Because that’s the bottiest name I’ve ever seen. If so, please continue. 🍿
I find it odd, but a lot of newer users on Reddit go with the default suggested username and those follow the
word-word-0000template.At the same time, it might be better for privacy to do that since it’s less likely that someone can track you across platforms if you use the generator built into each platform.
Fair enough. Maybe I’m too old for the internet.
Maybe the internet truly is… No Country for Old Men…
I see it a lot, too. Reddit’s been around for 20 years, so all the good usernames are already taken.
Its been a long time since you could build relationships with other users in places like Reddit. The usernames don’t matter anymore so you may as well just use randoms. Your just going to get banned and make a new one anyways.
it has been flooded with bots since '16, when russia got involved with reddit through propaganda. so people are quite suspicious around other users, accusing them bots.
How can lemmy avoid that fate, if it ever gets really popular?
I think the current flow for Reddit account creation is they give you the auto generated username and you have to change it when you’re done creating the account. You don’t get to set it during creation. So because it’s an extra step I think some people don’t. (Though I may be misremembering. It’s been years since I used it.)
thats how they mass-create bot accounts, just create a large number without carefully making one that reddit wont immediately ban you on.
Hey, wait a minute…
I did that with my new user. It’s easier to use an account for a year or two and burn it. I don’t care about the fake points. And I am not doing anything wrong. But if tou give a lot of oppinions it’s a lot of data for social engineering, so for privacy reason it’s a good practice to not be attached to any account.
yes, and PALINTIR is active on reddit using propaganda bots, along side the russian and MOSSAD ones.
I don’t disbelieve it, do you recall where you read that?
I had a similar names. I didn’t care about “expressing myself” and didn’t want you link it to myself in any way, so every time I would just accept the random gibberish reddit suggests when creating a new account.
Like my current RailcarXxxx username. It was just suggested I think when creating my first Lemmy, and just reused it through instances
Yeah now I’m kind of worried about my pseudonym. This isn’t my first pseudonym mind you, and it won’t be the last, but this is the most “well known” around my internet friends.
Reddit suggested usernames are always dumb shit like that.
Fascists are the weakest and most brittle snowflakes.
Fascists are the weakest and most brittle snowflakes.
So, it should be easy to break them, right.
All Americans would have to do is organize themselves and end this increasing dystopia.
Reddit is State Department agitprop. This leak is probably a tiny fraction of their operations on reddit.
It’s crazy how successful that platform is because nobody suspects it. Redditors all hate the other social media platforms. They cannot fathom that reddit is just as bad or worse.
But why is that. Is it the illusion of control. Because ostensibly its a user curated site. Because they think they have voting power. All of these things have proven to be completely false time and again. Yet the illusion of reddit persists.
While I agree that Reddit is awash in (multiple) state propaganda, and that posting violent rhetoric, or even sympathy for it, there is likely to put you on a list (or multiple), I don’t think Reddit users really trust it’s that safe. In the last year and a half, since Luigi, there has been huge amounts of bitterness over the censorship of content and strict banning policies. People have discussed, and followed through on, leaving in droves. Huge amounts of old content are no longer available because people scrubbed their post history on the way out.
If the current discourse doesn’t reflect that, I would suggest it’s because :
- the real people still there remain to discuss uncontroversial niche topics
- political discussion there is largely driven by bots and paid actors now
It’s an addiction just like any other social media site, being cut off from the supplier is one of a few ways to end addiction, so I’ve appreciated their ban-happiness lately (for myself included).
Also, blocking it entirely in your browser / firewall can do wonders in keeping one from relapsing… helped me personaly a lot.
The user interaction metrics they’ve added have been interesting tho. Millions of south and SE Asians are flocking to reddit.
It’s been wild to watch how the site has grown over the past 15 years for me. Back durning trump’s first term I deleted my account and alts due to paranoia. I’m starting to think I should do the same for newer accounts or abandon the site entirely; hense my presence here.
I heard murmurs about Lemmy when the API shit was going down a few years ago but it was so small back then the switch didn’t really make sense for me. Now that the paranoia is back I don’t feel as comfortable/safe commenting on reddit anymore
Between reddit’s control freak mods, their selective enforcement of rules, their lack of mod behavior restrictions, ads made to look like postings, etc you have very little freedom outside of porn surprisingly. You have to stick to the groupthink in subs or get banned which makes most comments predictable, agreeable and milktoast.
Redditors all hate the other social media platforms.
What other examples of bullshit can you give us?
It’s kind of well-known and a long-running meme at this point that Redditors have a superiority complex about other platforms and think only theirs is the most “intelligent” and “rational” platform. It dates back to when it was mostly controlled by right-libertarian fedora-wearing raging atheist types.
Did you just log on to the Internet for the first time yesterday?
Those were the good ol days. Now it’s controlled by maga. It’s getting closer to twitter every day, soon it will just be another republican propaganda site
What the fuck are you people on about? Have you been on reddit? Go look at r/all right now, or any other time. You have to go to r/conservative to find magats, and even there you’ll find skeptical sentiments.
I used reddit long before the /r/thedonald showed up. Before /r/atheism became a default sub, which was terrible for the community of that sub. It became meme infested and caused /r/trueatheism to be made for sharing stories about religion intolerance from politicians, educators and employers. At a certain point, I started wholesale blocking any major sub and power user to reclaim some usability, but the API change signaled to me it wasn’t worth the effort anymore.
My reddit account is almost 18 years old so I know that you’re talking about. I came to lemmy at the time of the API change as well, but I stayed on reddit too. I’m not giving them any revenue: I use old.reddit and RES, so I don’t see and ads.
But blocking subs, as much as I also did that until I hit the limit of 100 blocked subs, is the wrong approach. Instead, you sub to the ones you like and avoid /r/all.
I was perma banned for saying “fuck all republicans”. They don’t want maga to be tied to the republican party for when trump is gone
Edit: this was when trump ‘won’ the second time and everyone was shouting “fuck maga”.
And that experience tainted your view of reddit. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of reasons not to like reddit as a company, but the community is not the company. It’s up to you to make your own experience good or bad there, same as in lemmy.
i used to use reddit from 2014 to 2024 and its gotten far more rightwing. The sheer amount of accepted racism and openly right wing stances on reddit these days is shocking to me. That kind of stuff would get you insta banned or downvoted into oblivion. Reddit culture has completely 180’d and it has no remnants of its former self.
I don’t know where you’re seeing that. Unless you go looking for it in right-wing subs, the vast majority of reddit is very clearly to the left and any right wing comments are immediately downvoted to hell.
Have you ever heard a twitter user talk about reddit? They all hate each other.
People in this thread are perfect examples of that. They hate reddit so much they have to talk shit about it, regardless of reality.
A lot of lemmy users are ex reddit users and have reason they switched. I switched because it started looking more and more like twitter.
Yes, that’s probably it. You and others had some bad experience there and fled reddit, and now your opinions are based on that bad experience instead of reality. I’m on both. I’m both lemmy and reddit you create your own experience. If you failed to do that, I’m not surprised you didn’t like it.
now your opinions are based on that bad experience instead of reality.
The fuck does this mean? How is my experience not reality? What else are my opinions suppose to be based on, if not my experience?
Reddit was showing signs of introducing a more algo based experience, so I fucked off. They would hardly be the first website I left because of shit like that.
As long as you recognize it’s a meme and not reality, I’ll forgive that ridiculous generalization.
Learned from growing up in a communist dictatorship: don’t discuss politics and religion with strangers. And even with friends or acquaintances, don’t discuss it in writing. It doesn’t mean you can’t have strong opinions, but don’t make them public. Talking (not writing) one-to-one or in small groups eventually toppled almost all communist dictatotships, so there’s absolutely no need to broadcast your opinions, unless your goal is to be martyred.
Communists were nice.
Well, there is no such thing as communism with a dictator. It’s simply two opposites.
Communism is without a state. Meaning no true communist country have ever existed in modern time.
Please don’t argue theory definitions with someone who lived through the reality, its just straight insensitive
I got shocked the other day stepping on live wires… I now have a degree in Electrical Engineering. (Actually Not: My experience is not the same as expertise)
they didn’t say they were wrong, just an asshole.
it’s like someone died to a live wire and you correct their family that it was the amps not the voltage that killed them. you’re not wrong, but you’re a tone deaf dickhead.
While I agree, there’s also a risk in letting the hypothetical family cause alarm about something false around electricity or whatever (misinformation).
They are arguing the definitions with someone who was “arguing” with someone who lived through the reality
I used reddit for over a decade, but I was never willing to buy reddit gold or support it because I didn’t trust any site where I shared my political opinions to have those opinions tied with by real name or any other billing info. Same with discord. At least with lemmy, you can support it without tying it to your account.
I tend to think that – for myself for sure but probably most other people – after a decade plus on Reddit, you’ve likely said and posted enough stuff that somebody could follow the breadcrumbs back to you. Theyd have to really want to and it would take a lot of reading your posts, but it could probably be done. Anonymity doesn’t exist without a vpn, and even then you’re probably still identifiable. Don’t say, post or do anything on the internet that youre not willing to defend/pay for in real life.
I’ve always isolated my username from irl stuff and I don’t make any social media posts from my irl stuff. You’d have to be very interested in me specifically and I’ve always tried to be slightly less noisy then the background noise.
Yeah, but the website owners have access to a lot more information than is just available publicly. You probably could be identified by a fed if reddit gave them that information.
You might not be worth the effort, especially since most other people would probably be less effort to track down. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible.
especially since most other people would probably be less effort to track down.
ding ding ding
I have politically active friends who are supposedly privacy minded blasting their takes on facebook and complaining when they get banned for inciting violence. Most people are terrible at this and the algos the feds use probably aren’t that great. I’m more likely to get grabbed randomly.
Also, other sites on the Net can collate links posted to reddit and the users and times that they were posted with users accessing pages on their own site. For example, if you’ve posted a sufficient number of youtube links, youtube can possibly link your reddit account and youtube account, say, as belonging to the same person. Just about any popular site can link your reddit account with your IP address. And your facebook account with your IP address. Etc. And thereby link reddit accounts with facebook accounts in cases with long-lived IP addresses. If X is a scrapable site on which users with fixed pseudonyms can submit links and Y is a site popular enough and has enough content, then Y can collate user accounts on X with IP addresses. This is not to say anyone is doing this. There are not many sites that meet the criteria to be a Y. I would say it includes mainstream news sites. The authorities could compromise some of the Ys or create their own through astroturf and thereby link users on the Xs with IP addresses and then with location.
These days, this might be a bit harder because reddit closed up when the AI companies started scraping. I don’t know the situation with Facebook with regard to scraping. If it’s scrapable, they’ve got your name linked to your reddit account.
What I’ve said about reddit equally applies to lemmy, even more so because lemmy is open by principle.
Budget-Chicken-2425, waking up one day to find out the entire world is reading your FBI domestic terrorist dossier:
That’s enough to radicalize a chicken.
Budget-Chicken-2425
Looks like his account is suspended now.
Ha, homeland security is back to it’s old tricks. Probably not just them now, but they were submitting lists of users and social media was finding other pretexts to violate/ban them. I’m pretty sure some of my previous accounts were on those lists.
As always, they got the support to do it by stressing these rw accounts denying vaccinations and elections and the like, and then the fascists in homeland security predictably went after the left with it primarily. Often going after things like parody accounts, allowed under the rules, for making fun of political leaders. It’s all dishonest. As per reporting in The Intercept at the time. The leak of information covered like twitter and FB and I forget, but I’ve no doubt it extends to other platforms, and other units than the one we learned about in homeland security, that is just the tip of the iceberg we can see above the reflection of that ocean of social media.
I am saying an agency gave lists of users to violate that included his, and that reddit found excuses to violate them, likely for unrelated reasons that are not even against the rules, they don’t have to try, so they don’t try, to enforce rules fairly. Which is why we need the fediverse to be constructed better to reach critical mass. We need clear rules and enforcements with appeals that end in jury trials of users for actions.
https://youtube.com/shorts/h9DRcWStaC4
“Some very rich old white men are exerting their power to suppress our own people, thus creating a feeling of civil war in the streets.”
Got permabanned for up voting a post about ice having their secret identities found out as it was ‘inciting violence’. Because law enforcement should be protected from public backlash as the piss on the Constitution and practice illegal acts on people, it seems to reddit mods.
Wtf you can be banned for upvoting?
Yup, Reddit has gone full mask off in the past year now. Spez is a known nazi simp.
I got permabanned for comparing israel to the Nazis. Fuck Reddit.
I’m certain the Reddit management allowed the tracking.
Of course, any time your information is on a privatized network you might as well just assume it’s for sale.
100% correct!
Although, do be mindful that the same applies to open protocols like activitypub too
i’m certain ghislaine is reddit management so…
If they get subpoenaed they have no choice.
Reddit has been leaking information to the feds for ages. They had a warrant canary that is no more, it has ceased to be, and bereft of life, it rests in peace since 2015: https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/bye-bye-birdie-reddits-warrant-canary-disappears
It has been a while since spez sold himself out completely. Leaking user information to special interests is part of the silent agreement that has kept them from being under investigation, but it also has gotten him invited to the sort of Epstein gatherings that other Silicon Valley tech bros have gotten invited to.
It’s not dead, it’s just pining for the fjords.
Fuck Reddit and Fuck Spez.
I’m 100% certain Reddit also fully cooperating with them. They run CBP recruitment ads. Fuck them, fascist collaborators
The first four years or so that I was on Reddit, I never once received a ban for anything. Since Trump was elected, I pretty much got temp bans every couple of months. Every one was from me being mean to obvious Russian trolls. And then this morning, I got permanently banned for a comment I made over a week ago, that according to Reddits own metrics, received a grand total of zero views. I called a fascist a, um, fascist, and that he wasn’t just licking boots, he was deep throating them. That was a step too far, according to Reddit. And now I’m here.
they have palintir bots which they know about but wont do anything, plus russian propaganda is almost rarely get cleaned out when they do actual purges, which targets real users instead. they also now have israeli mods/bots to gatekeep criticism against israel. all the purges have target the lowest hanging fruits, irl users, than OF/link spamming the ones that are cutting into thier profits somehow.
To summarise: it’s all just bots nowadays. Reddit is complete junk now.
exactly! It’s as if the website is used to train bots. You can immediately tell if when you see the posts, yet they ban humans.
