I had an account of similar magnitude banned. Why? Because on January 6th, on the very day, I wondered aloud why there weren’t soldiers repelling the crowd of insurrectionists trying to overthrow our democracy with machine gun fire. I’m sorry, but if a crowd of thousands of people shows up with the intent of hanging the vice president and overthrowing the government? Well, you made your choice if you’re in that group. The correct response to a group like that is to first give them plenty of warning. But if they persist, use whatever force is necessary to repel them.

Other things I’ve been banned for:

• Telling an overt bigot posting in an LGBT sub to go kindly “go die in a fire.”
• Suggesting, before the ruling, that if SCOTUS ruled that the president was completely above the law that he should simply drone strike Supreme Court justices to produce a majority on the court that would repeal his new powers.
• Evading bogus bans.

At this point I’ve got a lifetime ban from there. And you know what? I’m fine with it. The policies on reddit remind me of the blind “zero tolerance” policies that have screwed over so many in American high schools. When I was in high school years ago, the standard was “zero tolerance” for violence of any kind. If a bully attacked a victim, they would both get in trouble. Being the victim was no defense. It was zero tolerance, zero thought. And that is the standard that is now used on reddit. They’ll still allow racist dogwhistles and entire subreddits run by hate groups, but as long as you don’t cross a handful of explicit lines, you’re fine. You can openly celebrate the deaths of tens of thousands of people in Gaza, but tell one bigot to go die in a fire, and suddenly you’re banned.

Civfanatics. I actually joined up long before I ever signed up for Reddit. It’s probably the one site besides Youtube that I’ve consistently used since middle school.

Gotta disagree with that. I remember the rampant elitism and tribalism, the shock-culture, isolation of communities, casual bigotry that would make modern 4chan blush, arbitrary forum rules irregularly enforced, etc etc etc.

For all the modern internet’s problems, its communities are much more connected, it’s much more accessible and less elitist, that shock-culture died out, the casual bigotry became contentious instead of accepted, and corporate running the show on most of these sites means that appeals and reversals are much easier than when you would rub some mod the wrong way and get permabanned from a forum you were a long-time member of. Never happened to me, but I saw it numerous times.

It had unique pieces, and a lot that I genuinely miss. But… there was also a LOT of bullshit that wouldn’t pass muster nowadays.

So much creativity, everyone has a normal voice,

…

You might be wearing nostalgia goggles.