So I just got *permabanned* without warning in r/fasting. My detestable, sinful breach of protocol was a comment made in this post.
https://www.reddit.com/r/fasting/comments/qfnwhz/is_doing_a_20_day_water_fast_okay/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
Despite having been in the sub with 2 other accounts for more than 2 years, I at the time was not aware of such strict regulations regarding any and all suggestions of fasting for underaged individuals. So I inadvertently made the comment I was banned for. Taking context into account, the OP was asking whether fasting was ok for OP, and I immediately told OP I didn't recommend it because of her age and told OP to opt for a less risky alternative. Everybody else commented along the same lines and my comment was among the top upvoted precisely because people shared my sentiment.
YET, without warning the moderation team permabanned my account from participating in the subreddit. I loved r/fasting. I spent years there uploading questions and answering them without any issues. YET, despite pleas, apologies, and clarifications of my intent and admission of my mistake the moderation team twice quoted how the rules were strict.
I conclusively told the moderation team that I accept the decision but regarded it as a form of unhealthy censorship. You see, where I live in South Korea we have a law allowing the criminally guilty a chance to learn from their mistakes by foregoing punishment once after taking context into account. For example, let's say I bought illegal drugs here, the authorities will give me a strict warning but let me go free so long as I admit my wrongdoing. Why? Because just throwing people and especially the young in jail for mistakes they can learn from and discourage others from doing is a waste of taxes, and does more harm to society than good. In the same spirit, I told the moderation it would be so much healtheir for r/fasting if users were given at least one warning so those who are well intentioned but mistaken can warn others in the community to spread awareness of such a strict regulation. How is it helpful to silence and censor the very people who have learnt from their errors and regulate themselves and others?
Yet the moderation team merely replied that "the rule is the warning." And banned me from contacting the moderation team altogether, hammering the nail on my coffin as a user. I was the only person to tell OP that nobody there were medical professionals so OP probably shouldn't fast and that should OP insist, perhaps intermittent fasting would be a safer alternative. And for this terrible sin, I was permabanned and treated as though I was a child molester or serial rapist to be silenced with extreme prejudice.
What the hell is wrong with r/fasting? What happened? Does r/intermittentfasting also ban users and silence them like this? Is this how we make the already bad enough problem of echochambers forming in Reddit worse??
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Apparently there are a number of subreddits whose moderators don’t know how to moderate a forum, and will go straight to permanent bans for the slightest rule violation with nothing in the way of warning, trial, or appeal. I don’t know if it’s laziness or ineptitude, but it is what it is. Nothing you can really do about the fact that the last shit you took could moderate their subreddit better than they do.
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Haven’t been there but I completely agree with the idea of giving an actual warning first before permanent and without any review. It’s like the safety guys at work saying the safety orientation is the warning. What gives?
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They’re super strict, and I think it’s because almost every day someone comes on with a variant of “17F, 19 BMI; how can I get down to 80 lbs?” They’re trying really hard to be a support for obese/overweight adults and not an eating disorder sub that gets kicked entirely.
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I suspect much of the reason r/fasting is such a mess is because anyone who contributes regularly inevitably ends up breaking a rule and gets banned no questions asked, so the entire sub is just drive-by posters and the mods. There’s pretty much only one active mod and they mod as they see fit, which is silencing anything they don’t personally agree with.
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Well, I honestly can’t understand this approach or the fact that some QUESTIONS posted are deleted by mods. I can’t understand why you can’t discuss some things that are on-topic. I posted a question a while back and my post was deleted, and I really needed some help from the community. I wasn’t advocating dangerous practices or anything, I just needed some advice on how to handle a situation. I kinda stopped being active in the sub. I see now they are banning people for nothing.
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I was banned from r/fasting from a post made about a year ago. I had just got started on changing my eating habits. I was having issues with not over doing my weekends eating too much. The decided I had an ED. When I confronted them they banned me from the mods.