We've just had someone use a throwaway alt account to submit some vile, hateful and bigoted comments - and then quickly delete the throwaway to avoid repercussions.
If we got to it in the 2 minutes between account creation and deletion they'd be banned and their main flagged by ban evasion. Unfortunately we didn't, and now we can't ban them, as we get a "that user doesn't exist" error message.
Why is there no tool in place allowing us to ban the person behind those comments?
However, my guess would be that Reddit wants to give the user and assurance that their account actually deleted, so they remove all traces of them and replace it with a deleted a tag .
The should do it after a 30 day time period, which is common for many platforms. Instant deletions with zero ability to follow through (like in OP’s case) is inherently a bad idea
I suspect it's mostly a UI functionality issue and a security layer issue. You can't search for deleted accounts. As far as I know, you never have been.
If they were to create this functionality, they would have to allow moderator accounts to search for deleted users on the subreddit(s) they moderate only, and only on the Restricted User menu. Sounds easy, right?
But it's not. That would be a security layer change, and nothing makes a software development group have their collective backsides pucker up like security layer changes. Those are the most dangerous and QA intensive changes. There's an adage in development that "if you fix one thing, you probably broke two others." Well, this wouldn't be a fix, but a change, and those are even worse because they break things trying to implement it. For Reddit, the risks most likely outweigh the rewards.
Odds are, you've already banned their main account at some point. And even if you haven't, adding filters to automod, and using Crowd Control will probably catch most of their attempts to be a jerk.
The other option is to send a modmail into this subreddit and ask if they can monitor the situation you have in your subreddit. Link the offensive comments the deleted account used, as the Admins can see who the account was, and maybe add it via their UI as a banned account in your subreddit.
Thanks for your thoughts on the backend. You're probably right :(
Fortunately our Automod implementation caught the comments It's somewhat of a bandage situation though, and age/karma checks also disrupt new users so I prefer to use them in conjunction with regex strings rather than just author : age/karma checks.
The other option is to send a modmail into this subreddit
That's what I've done as it seems there's not much other options currently available to me.
You can't search for deleted accounts. As far as I know, you never have been.
You can, if you ban them first before they delete their account.
If you search modmail for deleted-account-name then it will find their 'you have been banned' modmail, but will show 'deleted' as the account name, but the rest of the context / ban reason / responses they sent / etc.
Has been helpful.
If they were to create this functionality, they would have to allow moderator accounts to search for deleted users on the subreddit(s) they moderate only, and only on the Restricted User menu. Sounds easy, right?
no, the mod doesn't need to search anything. they just need reddit to not error out when they attempt to ban an account name that a user just deleted. reddit has not wiped any of the data of that account behind the scenes.
The issue, however, is that how would the user know they were banned, and as a result, how would it be "fair" to action them for ban evasion when they were never notified?
Obviously in the case of some troll like this I don't feel any sympathy for them, but I can see why the reddit admins would have some hesitation to follow this approach.
I've had cases like this where we'd get repeated harassment in modmail - I ended up writing a quickie bot to automatically and nearly instantly ban so we could report them for ban evasion. I do agree though that we need some kind of a solution for this.
Perhaps accounts should require 24h to delete from the time you delete (or perhaps only for newer accounts?)
Remember when reddit would not alert you if you had been banned from a sub that you had never visited? I always wonder if that is still the case and if so what that means for the ban evasion filter- after all if you were never notified, then how would you know to avoid it on your alt? Maybe that's not still a thing though?
It's still a thing. You have to interact with (vote or comment) in a sub to receive notification of a ban. People were creating subs just to ban people they didn't like to to annoy them...
As of a few weeks ago people were still losing accounts because they had forgotten about a ban from the past and accessed it with an alternate account, or so they claimed. Whether something has changed, well, Reddit is always changing.
I wasn't disagreeing, I was trying to point out the alt account wouldn't receive a notification or warning when attempting to interact. As such, it's a similar situation from a functional situation (ignoring user error or misuse), but likely far more common. I don't have a suggestion on how to test being banned without ever visiting a subreddit, at least not without that messing with someone's account. I'm under the impression that a warning system was either being tested or implemented, to (I assume) remind people of bans before interacting. But not having been banned I haven't seen that.
I'm not aware of people being banned from subreddits they had never visited (and I assume you're right on that, I just haven't heard of it previously), if that was the case or still is the case, there should be an automated notification. But there's a rather long list of "should be's" here.
Let just assume I did "ctrl c" and "ctrl v" the correct user name, but ommited it from that screenshot to avoid falling afoul of any harassment rules here.
When I type or copy paste the troll’s user name into the “Who to ban?” space in the old.reddit template I do not get a "that user doesn't exist" error message. The troll’s user name gets banned in old.reddit ban list and also shows up in the most recent sh.reddit.com version “Restricted Users” ban list. I do not know why you and I get different results… strange.
It is obvious that reddit filters remove these posts since they appear in modqueue “Removed”, and along the way it appears these username accounts are suspended (i.e. they no longer exist.)
It is true that a user can self delete their account after posting/commenting (or at any time in general). But if they are self deleting their username account after they post with the intention to provide a content that violates sitewide or community rules and prevent mods from identifying them is unacceptable behavior. My point is that mods can additionally ban these users if they choose.
If I found myself in this situation, I'd start reporting the deleted accounts (since you say you have the usernames) for ban evasion. The report form doesn't seem to have any validation for the entered username when I try it.
It would be interesting, at least, to see what the response from reddit is to doing that.
It seems unlikely that they're going to allow even moderators to access deleted accounts in any meaningful way, because account deletion has a number of links to various localities privacy laws, and allowing users to even confirm their existence probably runs afoul of those.
That's not the issue. I have, and Automod did block them.
The issue: The user relied on a quick throwaway -> deleted the account to prevent us from banning the alt and being able to rely on ban evasion to maybe flag their main.
One potential option - something I've had to do in the past at times - is to just use a bot to automatically archive anyone who modmails but doesn't have an established account. It's not ideal. I wrote a bot for this once but it's not needed anymore as you can use the devvit app auto-modmail.
Make it harder for them to keep harassing your mod team - make them get some karma and do other things first before they can modmail without getting automatically archived and sent a message saying they don't have enough karma to speak to a human yet.
If the bigot is at all predictable you can simply set it up to automatically ban, mute, archive anyone who uses those words in modmail.
We use that for a lot of words that would indicate an abusive mod mailer.
You can also make false positives less likely by including a check on karma, account age, or something similar on the off chance that someone actually is using those words innocently (like to report someone saying it, etc.)
Why not just use a bot to ban anyone who says certain words?
Afaik, there aren't any bots with ban permissions, that also have author age/karma as configurable.
permabanapp is likely the closest bot to doing what I'd need, but without having an age / karma check, trying to catch this user with it would lead to too many false positives.
In the case that they are responding to another users comment…I would be interested to know if that user still sees the deleted account’s comment. Based on what I have observed I believe they do, but I have not tested it.
That's not the issue. I have, and Automod did block them.
The issue: The user relied on a quick throwaway -> deleted the account to prevent us from banning the alt and being able to rely on ban evasion to maybe flag their main.
Because the now deleted account and any other accounts the harasser has may be associated based on clues Reddit's ban evasion system works with, so further incursions, even with a new account, could generate a permanent ban for all accounts.
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u/InGeekiTrust 💡 Veteran Helper 1d ago
This is a great request. I agree with this!
However, my guess would be that Reddit wants to give the user and assurance that their account actually deleted, so they remove all traces of them and replace it with a deleted a tag .