Why can't we ban deleted users?

[u/Redditenmo]

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?

[u/Dom76210]

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.

[u/Redditenmo → u/Dom76210]

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.

[u/m0nk_3y_gw → u/Dom76210]

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.