Last week, I was proud to finally publish my Rust implementation of MuSig2. In the daily discussion on r/bitcoin, (October 30th I believe), I submitted a comment which went something like this:
Today I finally put the finishing touches on my new MuSig2 crate. As far as I'm aware, this is the first publicly available rust crate for MuSig2. Would love any feedback.
I received this message in my inbox shortly afterward:
Message text in case the above image is taken down:
Hello, You have been permanently banned from participating in r/Bitcoin because you broke this community's rules. You won't be able to post or comment, but you can still view and subscribe to it.
Note from the moderators:
Reddit has suspended your account. Subreddit moderators don't know why and can't help you. You will need to contact site admins directly via this link. https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360045734511
If you have a question regarding your ban, you can contact the moderator team by replying to this message.
Reminder from the Reddit staff: If you use another account to circumvent this subreddit ban, that will be considered a violation of the Content Policy and can result in your account being suspended from the site as a whole.
The message seems to point fingers in opposite directions at once.
  • On one hand, it claims i was banned only specifically from r/bitcoin by the mods there.
  • On the other hand, it claims my whole account was suspended by reddit's admins.
This is quite disappointing. I was hoping to elicit community discussion on an open source library which might prove very useful to other ecosystem developers, and provoke technical interest in newbies. Seems like a sign that r/bitcoin's mods are, for god-knows-why, trying desperately to avoid hosting technical content discussion on their sub.
Has anyone experienced this before? Maybe I'm entirely misunderstanding this whole escapade.
Other notes:
  • I can still access my account and apparently I can still post in other subreddits.
  • I followed the mentioned link (https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360045734511) and submitted an appeal to reddit. I haven't gotten any reply on this yet.
  • I do everything over TOR. Maybe this is related somehow.
  • I posted a link to the same blog URL in r/cryptography and that post is still up.
  • I haven't yet replied to this message, in case it might inflame them further or earn me a complete account ban.
I'm very thankful to have stacker.news. I've always felt open technical discussion is welcomed here.
deleted by author
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And Nostr ofc šŸ’œ
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Fuck yeah
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You should thank them. Reddit is a dumpster fire. Don't waste your time there. Here are some sats. Try hanging around here. Vote with your feet.
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wake up neo.. reddit has you no more
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I was reading the notice and preparing for some kind of explanation when it read,
"You have been banned from participating in r/Bitcoin because..."
How disappointing. You broke the (unknown) rule. I feel bad for you, as I would anyone that develops and tries to make the world a little better.
IMO. reddit come across like some angry school principal. You'r better off eliciting elsewhere.
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FUCK reddit, welcome to SN ! In 2023 is pointless to post on reddit...
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Why reddit?
I thought discussion on bitcoin had moved on from there.
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2009-2012: bitcoin talk forums era 2013-2015: reddit era 2016-2020: twitter era 2021-2022: twitter, but worse 2023- : Nostr and StackerNews
I think it went something like this?
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https://delvingbitcoin.org/ Seems like a good addition.
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Early reddit era was great. You could tip people in most subreddits and not get side eye. Altcoins have done a lot of near irreversible damage to bitcoin's optics.
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Mod from r/bitcoin here.
so I'm surprised you can post in other subreddits, since your reddit account doesn't seem to exist publicly.
Pretty sure this is a reddit.com issue, not a r/bitcoin issue...
edit: for some reason you were in the ban list...I unbanned you...I have no idea why you were banned by r/bitcoin mods...and I am one.
contact the mod team here https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/Bitcoin and make some hey...i'll be digging more into this
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Many thanks @BITC0IN! Perhaps this is some kind of backend bug on Reddit. I'll try to contact the admins about the weird limbo state my account seems to be in. I suspect this might be automatic, and related to TOR use.
In the meantime I really do appreciate the unbanning. I've lurked on r/bitcoin a long time. You and the other mods put in a lot of work to keep things civil. You have my gratitude (and sats) for your time and attention =)
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update from another mod explaining the situation:
Their ban was an automated response to their Reddit account being shadowbanned. Every account that posts to r/Bitcoin is automatically checked to see if they are shadowbanned. Shadowbanned accounts are automatically banned from r/Bitcoin after posting in r/Bitcoin. Their Reddit account is shadowbanned. So they were automatically banned from this sub after they posted in it. They will be automatically banned from this sub again if they post in it again because their Reddit account is still shadowbanned.
so it looks like the subreddit auto bans anyone who is banned/shadow banned by reddit itself. Unfortunately, if you post again in the subreddit with that account, the automod will ban you again, unless reddit has lifted your shadow ban/ban.
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Huh. That's interesting, i had heard of shadow bans before but never knew what they were exactly. I just found this guide. The number of things that lead to shadow bans is surprising.
  • Don't post links to your own blog, unless you post a lot of content from other places.
  • Don't use a VPN to create your account
I think maybe these might be the cause of the shadow ban for me. Thanks for the info here, very enlightening.
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Interesting insight
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I have no idea why you were banned by r/bitcoin mods...and I am one.
This is the fucking reddit... a garbage moderated by idiots.
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what is redit? never heard. useless and irrelevant
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I find it disastrous how subs moderators on Reddit generally behave.
The way they use their censorship power indiscriminately is symptomatic of why the current centralized system will collapse.
More than that, it's why everyone needs to understand that the future lies on the side of decentralization so that we can communicate and exchange freely, sharing our opinions without the risk of censorship from people who are turned off by a little power.
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r/bitcoin cannot handle anything other than Bitcoin-core
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that sub is full of shitcoining anyway. on MuSig2 and Rust, have you contributed to BDK? Iā€™m using it in my project and rely on smart folk like you.
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In addition to Reddit, I've been worrying for a long time that GitHub could turn rogue especially given that they are owned by Microsoft. That is a scary thought given all the major repos in the Freedom Tech space are hosted there.
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Good, the internet should be purged of people that mention something was written in Rust before mentioning what said thing even is.
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By the way, nice work! Hope that means we see more rust-based wallets and signers
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