Did Reddit do something stupid to scare people away again?

They have bots roaming the site, banning people, seemingly at random. I went from never having been banned on reddit on a 10 year account, to banned for 3 days twice, and then permanently banned all in the span of a month.

And when did this happen? The week after the IPO went public.

And what kind of messages got me banned? Well one of them was in /r/Cleveland where a guy posted a security camera picture of the guy who stole his bike. I made the comment that the theif looks like a guy who stole MY bike in the early 90s, and that maybe this was his son. Keeping it in the family business.

I was banned for that comment for “Harassment and abuse of reddit users”. The action was performed by an AI bot. If I wanted an appeal I could appeal. So I did. It SAID the appeal was handled by a real human. They still sided with the bots decision, which tells me that it wasn’t handled by a real person.

So now I’m here. Just don’t steal my bike, ok guys?

Guys, I’ll distract him, you get his bike!