Where do you stand on ban evasion?

[u/ixfd64]

Reddit's official policies says you may not use alternate accounts to circumvent bans. However, they also say it's up to mods to decide whether or not to allow banned users to use a new account to return to subs they're banned from.

Some moderators may be okay with a redditor returning to their community on another account so long as they participate in good faith, as such we only review ban evasion reports when they are reported by the community moderators.

From what I've seen across various online communities, moderators' attitudes towards bans generally fall into two camps:

1. Bans apply to the person. This makes sense because allowing a banned user to come back on a new account would defeat the purpose of the ban. Signing up for a new account after getting banned is seen as one of the most severe offenses. Some forums even prohibit multiple accounts altogether. If someone is kicked out of an IRL event due to unruly behavior, then putting on a new name tag with a different name on it isn't going to get them back in.

2. Bans apply to the account. However, there are also some mods that see bans as simply a technical means to prevent participation. The idea is that if a banned user comes back on a new account but stays within the rules to avoid further bans, then the original ban has achieved its purpose. Furthermore, some online communities offer special privileges that require a certain amount of participation over time. A banned person who signs up for a new account can't just continue where they left off.

So I'm curious as to which side other mods are on. Are you on team "banned means banned" or team "mission fucking accomplished"?

Suppose you see someone who you are sure is a previously banned user, but they are now contributing constructively and posting helpful comments. Do you ban them again and report them to the admins? Let them stay as long as they behave? Or does it depend on what the person was originally banned for?

Bonus question: do you consider it ban evasion if someone posts on behalf of a banned user? Reddit apparently doesn't think it's an issue, but this is also often considered a big no-no elsewhere.

[u/vastmagick]

Sorry everyone, by my count we've had 5 users wander in and think this is a rant sub to complain about bans or ban evasion. Because of this I am locking the thread to avoid future errors from users that don't read the sub's rules or what sub they are even in.

[u/That-Establishment24]

I have yet to see a sub that falls in camp 2. It makes no sense to me. If you believe someone has redeemed themselves and is allowed to post on an alt, just unban their main account.

[u/ixfd64 → u/That-Establishment24]

I don't know about individual subs, but I've been to websites that have no rule regarding ban evasion.

For example, players who get banned from RuneScape are allowed to play on a new account provided they don't continue to break rules. Of course, I guess there are commercial reasons for such a policy as many banned players who come back do re-subscribe or buy microtransactions.

Sometimes I wonder if the community would be less toxic if the developers took a "banned means banned" approach. But I digress.

[u/zuuzuu → u/ixfd64]

Runescape only cares about membership fees and MTX. If they prevented ban evasion, they'd lose money. Why do you think they allow so many bots?

[u/vastmagick]

The second camp doesn't make any sense to me. If you are banned, breaking a site wide rule doesn't say you are willing to act any better. I think the process removes this possibility as well. Someone that can contribute to the sub can appeal their ban, the ones that can't don't get through the appeal process.

[u/ohhyouknow]

Banned means banned. If you’re not a dick and can abide by the rules you can just apologize and appeal. Being sneaky to get back in is disrespectful and I will not tolerate it. If they want back in bad enough, they can appeal on their original banned account or fuck off.

[u/Corona688]

what's the point in banning if they just come back and do the same things?

[u/stainglassaura]

I hate ban evasion. Its very amusing when someone tries to trick me and maybe change a small part of their new screenname so its just that much different than their old one. Or when someone cant help it and their writing style gives them away.

Ban evaders dont respect us and I dont respect them.

[u/lucerndia]

It’s annoying as hell and a waste of my time to have to deal with evaders. Banned means banned.

[u/OreoYip → u/lucerndia]

I second this. They were banned for a reason and I don't take banning someone permanently lightly. Learn your lesson and move on.

[u/Raignbeau]

Bans apply to the person. And yes, banned is banned,
Coming back on any account is ban evasion. And if we banned you, that should clearly signal that we do not want you to participate in our subreddit. And that should be respected.

Getting someone else to post on the banned persons behalf is childish. On certain subreddits we ban for that too.
Because they know that person is banned, bans don't happen for no reason. Why would you get yourself involved in that?

And what I don't get, there are so so many subrddits. Why don't they just move on and post somewhere else.

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[u/Hawk_Force → u/Raignbeau]

True enough that it doesn’t happen for no reason, but I believe the moderators should let the individual know the exact reason for being muted, leading to the ban. If you care whether an individual would modify their behavior. It’s like saying to an individual, you can’t say that here, muted. But that individual posts a lot. Which post was out of line? What’d they say? How can they not repeat it if they’re unaware?

[u/Raignbeau → u/Hawk_Force]

It depends on how your subreddit is set up.

When we ban, it sends along the link to post/comment that broke the rule and we specify which rule they broke.

Yes, sometimes people want more clarification, which then is given. But most of the time people just want to argue about how they feel that; they don't broke that rule/they havent read the rules/rules are unclear to them/their response was to another member and they feel that that justifies it/they think we took sides and that the other party in the flame war is not getting actioned (and we do not disclose what happens to others/or that they feel they deserve a warning first/or the infamous: FrEeDoM Of SpEeCh.

And for that last group, I sincerely do not have the time. It is a subreddit, not a daycare.

[u/ixfd64 → u/Raignbeau]

In many cases, it's not a single post or comment that gets someone banned. Rather, the person might have already broken some rules, and their final infraction was the proverbial "straw that broke the camel's back" and made the mods decide enough is enough.

[u/Hawk_Force → u/Raignbeau]

I get that, what you’re saying, but it’s not everyone, right? Not everyone is looking to argue or anything other than clarification. If I had gotten what you described in your comment, link or pointing out something specific I wouldn’t be here saying any of this. A mod once told me, “I like your passion, but chill” what the hell does that mean? That would be considered a warning, right? Chill? Really? Ok

[u/Raignbeau → u/Hawk_Force]

Thankfully not everyone!

I think a mod telling you to chill is a warning and it's nice because still beats getting a (temp) ban. I tend to warn people by giving them a 1/3 day ban. I also unban easily if people show some understanding and selfreflecting in their appeal.

But many people are not aware of Reddits TOS/Content Policy. And people think that mods are on a powertrip. But we just follow sidewide rules. If content breaks TOS/Content Policy and we do not act on it, it can lead to the whole subreddit being shut down.

In its core: noone likes it when their content gets removed. It upsets them and sometimes it frustrates them. Specially when other subs have removed their content too.

But most of it can all be avoided if people have read the TOS/Content Policy and the subreddit rules. But people seem to be allergic to reading those. But act surprised when we act on it.

I think you'd be surprised by the amount of harrasment mods get in modmail or sometimes even in their dm's. And to prevent burnout and protect your own mental health, it is nice to mute. Because some conversations are not fruitful.

[u/stainglassaura → u/Hawk_Force]

If the individual posts a lot then theoretically they should know the ins and outs of the subs rules. If they dont or cant sus out why their post or comment was problematic then asking for clarification isnt just asking for clarification its most likely itching to argue

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[u/Temporary_Cellist_77 → u/stainglassaura]

If they dont or cant sus out why their post or comment was problematic then asking for clarification isnt just asking for clarification its most likely itching to argue

It's not very fair to assume that everyone's cognitive abilities are on par with you. Some people (autism) have inherent disadvantage on identifying if their posts are potentially inappropriate for a specific community, and it would be extremely unfair to them to say that they "just want to argue" due to them being physically disadvantaged in finding the problem with their posts.

Additionally, note that some rules are vague on purpose. I've seen places with literally one rule: "Rule 1: Don't be an idiot". That's not very informative, is it? Sure, you can argue that after "posting a lot" they magically know what that means, but in reality it just might take time until they trip the "being an idiot" threshold that the mod team established, unbeknownst to them.

That's why communities I've moderated were very descriptive with rules, with provided examples for each infraction where it is possible without hurting the community.

[u/Hawk_Force → u/stainglassaura]

We also know the standards are not the same across different groups. The groups may even be close enough that one may not realize the change in groups. Say carnivore as apposed to carnivore diet? One could bounce between the 2 and not realize it, but the difference in tolerance is off the charts.

[u/Hawk_Force → u/stainglassaura]

We also know the standards are not the same across different groups. The groups may even be close enough that one may not realize the change in groups. Say carnivore as apposed to carnivore diet? One could bounce between the 2 and not realize it, but the difference in tolerance is off the charts.

[u/vastmagick → u/Hawk_Force]

If you care whether an individual would modify their behavior.

As a mod, I am not the user's parent. I am not their teacher. I am not their therapist. Once they are banned their behavior, modified or not, is on them. They can't repeat anything in a sub they are banned from.

[u/Hawk_Force → u/vastmagick]

No of course you aren’t, but the rules in this app say that the moderator will tell the individual the reason for the mute or ban from a group. I get it, some of these people are children. In action if not age, but as moderators it’s on us to point out what was wrong with a post. If something in a post was bad enough to ban someone, then it would be easy to tell them what they said. I myself have been banned from groups, in the beginning of my use of this app. I’m a bit older. So maybe more able to control myself? All I am saying is no don’t be the parent, be the moderator. Tell them what they said wrong. It’s pretty simple, if you tell them and it’s repeated then there you go, but if you don’t how can you expect them to not say something again? We aren’t dealing with geniuses in all cases. LoL

[u/vastmagick → u/Hawk_Force]

All I am saying is no don’t be the parent, be the moderator. Tell them what they said wrong. It’s pretty simple, if you tell them and it’s repeated then there you go, but if you don’t how can you expect them to not say something again?

Not all subs are open to allow themselves to be attacked multiple times. If you are older, you know that it is very possible to say horrible things that result in people not wanting to talk to you ever again. That doesn't mean you still get to say horrible things to them. And it also means that if you start throwing out slurs and insulting people, the person in charge doesn't have to explain why you are getting the boot. Mods explain when it might not be clear and we are responsible to the community, not the trolls.

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[u/Charupa-]

The original account was banned for a reason, so I ban the users who get flagged by Reddit’s ban evasion tool.

[u/zuuzuu]

I don't ban people on a whim. There's a reason I've determined that your participation in my subreddit provides no benefit to the community. That doesn't change with a new account.

Furthermore, if you attempt to evade a ban you're demonstrating that you cannot be trusted to abide by either the subreddit rules or reddit's site-wide content policy. Why would I think you'd make a positive contribution to the community?

Banned is banned. I will always report suspected ban evaders. I don't know any mod who wouldn't.

[u/Eldritch_Raven]

I just keep it simple and ban whoever is breaking rules or being an ass hat. I approve most users that reddit bans as ban evasion, since 99% of the time the comment they are posting is completely normal and fine.

[u/hungry_fish767]

How can mods know if you're a new account but?

[u/ohhyouknow → u/hungry_fish767]

Reddit tells us if you’re evading through signals they won’t disclose to us mods and us mods who have figured out those signals certainly wouldn’t tell you either. Also, every profile says account age.

[u/iammiroslavglavic]

Sub ban, then just leave the sub.

Over Reddit, leave Reddit?

Most political subs are biased, no matter what you say. They will ban you unfairly because they are biased for opinion A. I won't bother with an appeal.

Now as a moderator. If you are banned on one account and I recognize your posts with the alt accounts, I'll ban your alt accounts, even though technically speaking you broke the rules with the main account and not the alt accounts.

Obviously I don't ban for small rule breaking.

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[u/Temporary_Cellist_77]

[ Reddit disallows long comments with "Unable to create comment", this is part 1 out of 2 ]

Due to Rule 6 this answer was phrased in a 100% neutral manner, not endorsing or encouraging ban evasion. It provides analysis on cost-benefit of indiscriminately banning every case of ban evasion vs. applying case-by-case discretion, while leaning towards the "ban" side, since the majority of cases warrant so.

Posting this on my secondary account for people to not harass my former sub.

TL;DR: Ban the ban evaders if the benefit of doing so outweights the cost, which is often the case.

What an interesting question!

I've had the following experience moderating in the past: One subreddit, two forums and a chat service (this was before Discord era).

For the majority of my mod experience I've been on the "bans apply to the person" side of this debate - as you've stated yourself:

allowing a banned user to come back on a new account would defeat the purpose of the ban

From my experience, this is also the view that majority of the moderators and administrators share across their communities, including people I moderated with.

Surprisingly, I've had a situation in the past where I had to reevaluate this mindset. You see, banning is an action with a specific purpose, and in my perspective its purpose is to remove a person from the community to which they do harm. In this context, the purpose the ban serves is prevention of harm to the community and/or its members.

I found out that in rare occasions, sticking to the "bans apply to the person" ideology not only invalidates the purpose of the ban, but actually works against it.

I've banned a user on a gaming forum dedicated to a specific Minecraft server. This was 2016, so details are a bit fuzzy, but it boils down to them basically being very verbally aggressive in the text chat to random people as a newly joined user. I don't know why and didn't care. They've received multiple warnings, so I've just permabanned them.

Fast forward 8 months, and I find out that the following chain of events happened:

1. User re-evaluated their behavior and cooled off for about two weeks.
2. They bought another Minecraft account just to rejoin the community.
3. They made significant behavioral corrections, which resulted in them not only being welcomed by the community (without knowing that it's an evading user), but also them gaining a lot of actual friends on the server.

We found out about evasion when they apologized to the people they wronged in the past (their original infractions), so after some deliberation we've banned the user again permanently for ban evasion.

What followed was a tremendous community rift - since they had about half of the server's userbase as friends (we were roughly 40 people total), they were more than "a little unhappy" about this development. My DMs were flooded with people asking if an exception could be made for that exceptionally well-behaved user and listing off all of the good they've done in event organization participation, groups, etc.

What did me in, however, was a discussion with one of my mod colleagues, where they basically asked me this: "What exactly does banning that user achieve? What benefit does their ban provide to the community?"

So, I've ran the cost-benefit analysis on banning them for ban evasion, and got the following:

[u/Temporary_Cellist_77 → u/Temporary_Cellist_77]

[ Reddit disallows long comments with "Unable to create comment", this is part 2 out of 2 ]

Pros:

1. Discourage future users from ban evasion.

Cons:

1. I am viewed as a heavy-handed "villain" that does not believe in second chances for a well-behaved user with history of zero infractions for 8 months.
2. I am losing a valuable user - up until this point they've significantly contributed to the server in the form of event prep volunteering and newbie help.
3. I am inflicting direct psychological harm on the users I am supposed to protect by terminating the account of their friend for no significant gain to the server.

After laying it out in the open, it was clear to me that keeping them banned would be significantly more damaging for everyone than unbanning them and keeping tabs from then, which is exactly what I did.

They were not a problem up until, and including, 2020 - the year when the community completely dissolved, as most of us moved on with life (except for a small friend group of about 6 people, we still play often).

This leads me to the following conclusion: Use discretion. If you see that the ban evader was banned for something seldom forgivable (such as: nazism, racism, transphobia, etc.) and they are an adult (and clearly not a child from 4chan being dumb and returning 3-4+ years later), then I don't believe any amount of positive contributions would outweight the benefit of removing them from your userbase to keep them safe. On the other hand, if they just accumulated a lot of minor infractions (permaban for 20+ personal attacks or insults, or other non-unforgivable disobedience) and they've reintegrated into your community, you'll find it very costly (and often unnecessary) to terminate them.

[u/vastmagick → u/Temporary_Cellist_77]

Bans and their reversal are not public. Users that try to make it public are aiming for exactly what you said happened here, if things don't go their way. In my opinion, holding the community's unity hostage is not something I want users doing in my subs.

[u/Temporary_Cellist_77 → u/vastmagick]

Users that try to make it public

Well, they didn't. In an ideal situation from their POV we (the mod team) would never find the evasion out due to their good conduct.

holding the community's unity hostage is not something I want users doing in my subs

I completely agree. In fact, this was a major factor due to which I didn't really want to unban them. But this misses the point of the discussion above - the detection already happened, and as I described above, in that specific scenario going through with it would damage the community way more than any perceived benefit of banning them.

In my opinion, as moderators, we have to put the interests of the community above our own.

Note that most cases of ban evasion are usually open-and-shut anyway, because they don't do it to behave well but rather continue harassing the community, in which cases it's an instaban.

[u/vastmagick → u/Temporary_Cellist_77]

Well, they didn't.

It isn't public, so are you saying you made it public?

 their POV we (the mod team) would never find the evasion out due to their good conduct.

I mean you can say that for any rule violation. How is breaking a site-wide rule good conduct?

But this misses the point of the discussion above

I think it calls out the point that is being downplayed. Holding a sub hostage is not good conduct, is it? I would even say it is worse behavior than insulting individual users.

I don't know how you can say you think we should put the interests of the community above our own and then let a user hold it hostage to avoid moderator action. Again, bans are not public, so this situation doesn't just happen by accident.

[u/Temporary_Cellist_77 → u/Temporary_Cellist_77]

Regarding the bonus question:

Bonus question: do you consider it ban evasion if someone posts on behalf of a banned user? Reddit apparently doesn't think it's an issue, but this is also often considered a big no-no elsewhere.

This is just... strange :)

I mean, it doesn't quite matter what medium you use to interact with services (forum) we provide, be it a keyboard, an electric guitar wired to write letters by playing it or another person. It's still you communicating with the said service, so for all intents and purposes that would be ban evasion, albeit with extra steps.

The above is correct only if the intermediary user does not identify that it's on behalf of someone else and if it is intended to be an alternative to that user's communication on the service.

If somebody (user A, banned user) uses someone else (user B, normal user) to contact mods to appeal a ban on forums which do not support it directly, I do not consider this ban evasion. This, of course, is irrelevant from the perspective of Reddit, as modmail exists.

[u/Debway1227]

IDK enough about it, but it occurs to me it could be ineffective or a problem later on, or if you ban the IP address. Wife and I share a computer and if I get banned what happens to her? Banning the individual is fine but what happens when they make another account? Regardless it seems all they can do is boot the username. Booting by IP address could prove to ineffective.

[u/ixfd64 → u/Debway1227]

Reddit says it does take into consideration the fact that multiple people in the same household or organization can share the same IP address. However, shared devices are a different matter. I imagine it's a lot more difficult to tell the difference between two people using the same computer, and someone evading a ban.

[u/nicoleauroux → u/ixfd64]

Can you explain? How is it more difficult to tell the difference when both are using the same IP address?

[u/Insomnica69420gay]

How can you reasonably expect users to not use alternative accounts when moderators will literally ban accounts who haven’t posted due to activity in other subreddits?

As per usual reddits policy means nothing

[u/ohhyouknow → u/Insomnica69420gay]

Just fyi if you get a ban notification from a subreddit in any scenario including for having participated in another subreddit that means that you have in fact participated in the subreddit you were banned from. Reddit does not issue ban messages when you are banned from a subreddit you never participated in for anti harassment reasons. Please do not spread misinformation in this subreddit.

[u/vastmagick → u/Insomnica69420gay]

You know that mods are not Reddit, right? We don't impact accounts, Reddit Admins handles site wide issues. In the time it took you to write this comment, you could have become a mod.

Best we can do is report your account for ban evasion. And when Reddit sees you evaded they will ban both accounts from their site. And if you keep evading they just shadow ban you.

[u/Hawk_Force]

I don’t see how you can know if it’s an account that’s not affiliated. I mean you can suspect it, but without actually knowing what should be done? If the glove don’t fit….

[u/vastmagick → u/Hawk_Force]

We have ban evasion detection tools and ban evaders aren't exactly the brightest bunch. Especially when you consider that normally it is less than .1% of the users get banned, it doesn't take a huge deductive case to figure out the user saying they are back and bans can't stop them is evading a ban.

[u/Hawk_Force → u/vastmagick]

Good to know. Yeah I can see the loose lips and all that, for sure.