About a year ago I created my one and only reddit account. Never had one before. I work at a place that is semi virtual. We are required to come into the office 2 days a week. No one has their own dedicated PC. You just pick whatever is available and sign in. Obviously everyone is using the same internet access.
When at the office and I need a break I would visit a few groups of interest on Reddit. Groups that have ZERO to do with politics or anything controversial. I have never made a post or comment about anything political or controversial. I’m in groups like NFL and Dogs.
A week ago I get a message that my account is suspended for 7 days because of a violation of a “linked” account. I have NO linked account. I only use reddit while at work and no where else. I didn’t appeal when I saw the message, I just said whatever. But yesterday I log in and now I am permanently banned.
Anyone have an explanation of what is going on and how to actually get unbanned.
Companies collect a bunch of telemetry about everyone they can, that’s the basis of their ad revenue. The data is used to identify you, your devices, and your preferences, and is called a digital fingerprint.
They also use this fingerprint to detect people doing things like making an account to avoid a ban.
Your fingerprint, when you made a reddit account at work, will have virtually identical devices attached as anyone else using reddit at work. Lots of people have alt accounts for normal reasons, so Reddit decided yours and someone else’s belonged to the same fingerprint, probably since you made the account.
But now they got banned. Maybe even got caught actually using a second account to circumvent it, and reddit is cracking down on the whole digital fingerprint because that’s “you”.