Reddit's AI banned me for suggesting UK deport a murderer

AI says no

Reddit's automated AI censor has banned me from their site for three days.

Still, look on the bright side: at least I'm not going to be "rehabilitated" by a monster truck like in Idiocracy:

Why was I banned?

The notification I got reads:

Banned 3-days for threatening violence

We flagged the following as a potential policy violation:

Content shared from PontifexMini on 05/12/2025 UTC

After reviewing, we found that you broke Rule 1 because you threatened violence or physical harm. Reddit is a place for creating community and belonging, not for threatening violence against people or animals. We don’t tolerate any behavior that threatens violence or physical harm against an individual, groups of people, places, or animals. Any communities or people that threaten violence towards an individual, group, animals, or place will be banned.

As a result, we’re issuing a temporary 3-day ban on your PontifexMini account, removing the violating content, and asking you not to break this rule again.

Reddit and its communities are only what we make of them together, and we want you to continue enjoying Reddit while helping your fellow redditors and communities stay safe. We suggest reading and getting acquainted with the Reddit Rules. A better understanding of these rules will help you avoid further actions from our admin team. If you do continue to break Reddit’s rules through this or any other Reddit account, you may face additional actions such as a permanent ban from the platform.

If you feel like you didn’t break the rules, you can file an appeal any time within the next six months and we’ll take a second look.

If you live in the European Union, you can also contact a settlement body to dispute the decision. You may also have the right to have this decision reviewed by a competent court under the applicable laws of your country.

– Reddit Admin Team

Note: This content was flagged by Reddit's automated systems. This decision was made using automation.

See screenshot here:

This is bad for four reasons:

1. it's an automated system

2. they have scrubbed my message, even from me

3. I didn't threaten violence

4. it interferes with the UK's democratic process as it is an assault on free speech

Going over these one by one...

It's an automated system

In the overall scheme of things the fact that I got banned by an automated system is no big deal.

But you can be sure that in the coming years plenty of people will suffer real problems and hardships from incorrect AI decisions that they have no recourse against, nor any ability to escalate the situation to being dealt with by a human.

It will simply be "AI says no" and you're fucked.

They have scrubbed my message, even from me

The message I wrote is here. It now reads:

[ Removed by Reddit ]

If they want to remove the message from what is displayed to the public, fine, I can see the point of that. But they have also removed it from my user account so I can't see it either.

Presumably they have done this so that when their AI makes ridiculous decisions and mistakenly censors stuff, users will not have the evidence to show what the AI has removed, as this would open up Reddit to ridicule.

I didn't threaten violence

While I cannot recall the exact text I wrote, it was something like this:

This man has murdered a cyclist for annoying him. This behaviour is so far from the norms of acceptable conduct that he will always be a danger to the public and should be removed from society permanently. This means that after serving his 22 year prison sentence he should be deported to Somalia.

(The situation was that a man used his car as a weapon to chase and kill an e-bike rider because the rider was doing a wheelie, which annoyed him. He has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 22 years. The murderer, Abdirahman Ibrahim, is from Somalia, which I why I suggested he be deported to there.)

One could argue that deporting someone amounts to violence. I would argue that it doesn't, any more than imprisoning someone does; both have the effect of removing that person from society.

But even if we did accept that deportation is violence, I still haven't threatened anyone with violence, because I am just an ordinary citizen with no ability to deport anyone. Keir Starmer, on the other hand, is the prime minister, and does have the ability to deport people. He's recently made an announcement on immigration, which will probably lead to more deportations -- and this is linked to all over Reddit -- for example here. So if Reddit argue that threats of deportation aren't allowed on their platform, then they have broken their own policy, but I haven't.

It interferes with the UK's democratic process

If foreign websites and online services can interfere with political debate in the UK, they can manipulate our democracy. (For those of you sniggering at the back and saying "the UK's not a democracy", sure it's an imperfect one, but it's what we've got).

The most effective way to influence UK opinion would not be to ban things outright, like Reddit have done here, but to greatly reduce the visibility of things they don't like, so people don't see them. And of course, to increase the prominence of points they want to get across.

Many foreign governments would like to influence UK public opinion. As would non-state actors such as social media companies, who want to prevent the public and politicians from wanting to regulate them. I am reminded of a few years back when Elizabeth Warren proposed that Facebook be split up -- and Facebook banned the massage, thus demonstrating that they are too powerful.

What the UK should do is regain its sovereignty by controlling all its computing and communications infrastructure, including social media. Ban Reddit, TikTok, etc, and set up UK-based equivalents.

Update:

Reddit have decided that I didn't break their rules after all, see screenshot:

My comment is back up.

It said:

I don't know but i hope after his sentence he is deported to Somalia and never allowed to return to the UK. People who commit murder because they found someone annoying have acted so far from the expected level of conduct that they should never be part of society again.

Maybe their dumb AI thought that because I used the word “murder” I was threatening to kill people.