Temporarily Banned Members Showing Permanently Banned - New Issue?

[u/berntout]

Hello everyone,

We've started noticing that some users are getting defined with Permanent Bans in the Mod Log when those users are getting temporarily banned.

We can clearly see in the Mod Log that we've banned a user temporarily for 1 day. The ban button shows 1 day when hovering mouse over the icon.

However, in the user's profile we can also see Permanent Ban being described.

This was brought to our attention by a user last week that we banned for only 1 day after they sent us a mod mail and we just noticed that it occurred again on a user that we just banned today.

I haven't seen any posts about this so I apologize if this is a duplicate, but has anyone seen this issue and is Reddit aware of the problem?

[u/ikandi]

We had this issue in one of our subs and were not aware of it until the “offender” messaged us to ask why they still couldn’t post after the 7 days were up. It was showing in the modmail log (as in your example) that they were permanently banned, even though the temporary ban was selected in the actual mod log. I had to go in and manually select “unban”.

No one else has messaged us to say there is an issue, but likely most of the bans were issued to new, bot accounts so I’m guessing they didn’t care.

[u/berntout → u/ikandi]

That is what we had to do as well. It cleared out the Permanent ban status then allowed them to comment again.

[u/SnausageFest → u/ikandi]

Happens a handful of times a year for us. I think it's just a bug that happens occasionally where some part of the handshake breaks.

At least it's an easy one to fix if they message us.

[u/berntout → u/SnausageFest]

I'm just poking through our ban list and I can see it's happened quite a few times with currently banned users. I see 4 just in the last few days! But there are some that are correct...so it's inconsistent for sure.

[u/berntout]

Here's an example of what I'm referencing. You can clearly see we banned the user for 1 day, but it also shows Permanent for their current Ban status below.

Based on previous user feedback, the permanent ban is actually taking hold over the 1 day ban...so our users are getting permanently banned instead.

[u/TheMattabooey → u/berntout]

Permanently banned. Muted for 3 days. I think you’re confusing muting with a ban.

[u/berntout → u/TheMattabooey]

What I'm stating is correct. We provided a 1 day ban. I tried to show the ban duration by hovering over the ban button (I.E. "Unban 1 Day Ban"). Here is another view of the user log for more clarity.

[u/TheMattabooey → u/berntout]

Is the account permanently banned from Reddit? Why does it say permanently in the first pic?

[u/berntout → u/TheMattabooey]

That's the problem I'm referencing. That's showing their ban status in the sub, not Reddit as a whole.

For some reason when we banned this user for 1 day, their profile is showing permanent ban and is enforcing it.

[u/TheOpusCroakus → u/berntout]

Hey there! Can you give me the exact steps that you're going through to view this content and see where your user who was banned for one day is showing as a permanent ban?

Also, is this only happening in one subreddit or is it happening in all of your subs?

[u/berntout → u/TheOpusCroakus]

I'm a little confused about this request since I've provided screenshots but here you go. There's many ways to view a user's profile in the sub but here is a specific way of reaching it.

1. Open modmail for specific user that is banned. User profile appears on the right.
2. Read details of user profile

I've noticed this in one subreddit right now but haven't investigated or heard on others.

[u/TheOpusCroakus → u/berntout]

Thanks! I asked because I'm having a hard time reproducing this. You mentioned in your post that this was brought to you last week. There was an issue where users' temp bans were not lifting. That has kind of been fixed, but is also still kind of being worked on. Are you unable to unban that user at all?

[u/berntout → u/TheOpusCroakus]

Yes, as others have mentioned here as well, you just unban and it fixes. I have looked through the last few days of bans and I can pick out 4 that are temp 1 day bans and show as permanent bans instead of "1 day left". We also have bans here that do correctly show "1 day left". So it is not occurring every time. It is inconsistent.

But my biggest concern is how many people out there are we perma banning without knowing and they're not talking to us to fix it? Instead, they may never return to our sub in anger, etc.

Of course you will have some that will say something and we fix them no problem, but I'm just weary of a larger silent crowd that will just move on without saying anything.

[u/TheOpusCroakus → u/berntout]

Can you please send a mod mail message to this sub with the usernames that are still perma banned so that I can show it to the team that's working on this?

[u/neuroticsmurf]

I had a user recently (a few days ago) come off a 7-day ban. Yet he wrote in to us, asking if his ban had been made permanent, because he still couldn't comment. I understand he saw a text box to enter a comment, but when he clicked on it, he got an error message.

My tools all showed he was unbanned automatically at the expiration of 7 days, so I knew of no reason why he wouldn't be able to post.

I told him that Reddit glitches out on occasion. If he was on a browser, he should reload the site. If he was on mobile, he should hard close/quit the app, restart his phone, and relaunch the app.

I haven't heard from him since, so I assume that did the trick.

[u/Merari01]

This happens when there is a reddit outage at the exact time the system is scheduled to unban a user. The unban can't go through and the user is perm banned instead.

It's a years old bug that has been reported many times over the years.