I don’t know much about how Reddit and moderation works behind the scenes but recently everything I post in different subs keeps getting auto-removed without any explanation whatsoever. If I message the mods of those subs, then there are only three responses: 1) no response whatsoever, 2) sarcasm and unkindness without actually assisting me, and worse 3) a permanent ban without further elaboration.
If you were getting auto-removed on all subs you were either shadowbanned (Reddit admins thought you were a spammer or evading bans) or you were running afoul of commonly copied automod rules. Every sub has their own automod code, but there’s a lot of copying of rules, so you could just end up getting removed by the same rule copied to multiple subs. Some common rules remove content from new accounts or accounts without a certain amount of karma. Filters for slurs are pretty common as well.
If you were getting negative responses from all the mods, you either had really bad luck with the mods you contacted or something about your account made them think you weren’t joining their sub for positive interaction. Having a lot of negative karma or an initial post or history that looked like you were joining to fight the sub’s groupthink might get you sorted into the “don’t feel the trolls” bucket. Or you were shadowbanned and the mods just assumed you must have done something wrong. There’s no real rules on what legit modding is, so if they get a bad impression they won’t assume good faith and spend time explaining things.
Frankly, if everyone is being mean to you it seems kind of unlikely it was totally a “them” problem. A random mod getting off on abusing a user, ok, but multiple mods in different subs just picking on you for no good reason?
I’m personally curious whether Reddit actually has any ability to protect that database. I don’t remember Reddit TOS, but usually those things give them license to use and copy the data, maybe even to sell it, but not actually the copyright on it. So if someone made a Reddit scraper and copied the comments, wouldn’t only the actual commenter be able to sue?
$60M may be reflecting that, in that it’s more a convenience fee to shield Google against individual Redditors going after them than something that Reddit itself could actually sue over.