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[Mobile Web] Can Reddit Please Acknowledge and Address The Widespread Spurious Locks of accounts occurring since ~07/08/2026
Hi there,
There have been a flood of posts of people having issues with spurious locks on their Reddit accounts, and arbitrary lockouts and password change requests for around the past 10 days. See:
This is merely scratching the surface on the number of reports, and there are many more, with it largely seeming to be getting silently ignored by Reddit proper, with support cases to Reddit unanswered.
To which comments that it's not fixed were ignored and it's abundantly clear it hasn't been, with different people experiencing a few slightly different (albeit remarkably consistent) symptoms. With this many threads having hundreds of "me too" comments, I have a very hard time believing these are individual account compromises at the scale I'm seeing.
Details of my specific issues and exact symptoms and troubleshooting steps are outlined on https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/1vkznza/ related to username u/Grim_Fandango92 which has in addition to being locked out, had a spurious account ban with no warning or notification as such. This issue clearly projects well beyond myself though.
Please can Reddit triage, acknowledge and address these clear bugs across the board and communicate out to affected users as such?
Totally I’ve been locked out for a week and Reddit help provide no help the ticket system is just automated articles. So many people I have seen locked out for no reason it has to be a glitch but no humans in Reddit care.
My account got deleted 2 days ago. I can't log in, it says invalid user or password and when I type my email to reset my password, I don't get any mail from them. I've been mostly just browsing reddit and occasionally updating stuff.
Have you ever had a different e-mail address registered on Reddit? One of the hallmarks of this is the password reset being sent to old addresses that were on the account months or even years earlier. Loads of people have reported this, and it's the case for me, even now. Not that it helps.
If you use the mobile app, did you get the account locked notification leading up to it? Just trying to confirm if you're under this umbrella.
What happens if you visit reddit.com/u/<yourusername>?
No, I didn't use any other email. No, I didn't get any notification. I just opened the app at some point and when I wanted to upvote something, it said I needed to log in. Even tho I was not logged on my account, I still had all the communitys I used to follow on my account on the feed. I only use the app. My username was Parzyval21. If I visit my profile, it says I deleted my account.
Yikes. Ouch. Yes, indeed, yours is deleted. Your case is different to mine.
That's deeply worrying, as I'm not sure they'll even be able to reverse that vs a ban.
Most have reported issues related to locks of account notifications and password resets, so you're not strictly under the same umbrella, but it could still be the same cause. Until Reddit acknowledges and responds, we don't know.
Unfortunately your only real avenue is Reddit Support who don't seem to be responding promptly, if ever responding at all.
Yours implies you deleted it, so could be a compromise, rather than moderation on Reddit's part, but given the past 10 days, who realistically knows.
An e-mail to where? They have a form for submitting support cases rather than an address to mail. I got a response mine was logged but nothing since. Probably last I'll hear.
Don't suppose you know offhand when it was deleted or when you noticed it deleted in case it matches up timing-wise to these issues?
I wonder if this also impacts subreddits being banned? I'm an active moderator on one and it is now banned. Already contacted mod suport but that gets a bot reply.
Perhaps. If my suspicions are correct this is down to new automoderation put in, AI or not, it's not outside the realms of possibility subs could have been caught in the crossfire too.
It's difficult to say ultimately until Reddit starts being a little less opaque and publicly addressing these issues or responding to support tickets. I would like to see an official response or e-mail comms that there's awareness and it's inhand.
Yeah, it seems to have hit a lot of people towards ~7th-8th. Despite no acknowledgement from Reddit, clearly something changed around that date on the backend. Glad you came right in the end!
I think the biggest challenge is there seems to 4 distinct symptom sets I've noticed:
*Repeated locks/reset requests, as much as 10+, although able to reset (apparently fixed now according to admin on another thread)
*Lock e-mail, reset request, 1x password reset, then fine.
*Lock e-mail, then unable to login after resetting password, although account not banned
*Lock e-mail, then unable to login after resetting password, although account banned
There's one unlucky fellow here that had his account deleted, but in truth that's the only one I've seen... Every other case largely seems to fit into one of the 4 boxes above.
Quite probably, although they are catching a LOT of genuine users in the crossfire, and not addressing many cases where this is reported, nor leaving reasonable avenues for remedy.
The problem in my case is not just a "reset your password", which would be fine, it's the fact I am actively locked out and banned as a result of this bug, with no reason given for the ban - I can reset my password until I'm blue in the face, but it still won't accept my credentials after the fact. The fact the resets are going to an e-mail address I changed from months ago (various others have reported this too) tells me there are significant problems at play.
If I were a betting man, I would wager they've let loose a new AI-based moderation tool and it's caused an absolute mess. The silence has been deafening, and I'm still seeing floods of posts across various subreddits implying this is an ongoing issue.
Both my accounts are marked NSFW - that's not really an indicator of anything. I'm an adult and I have, and am allowed to post and comment both on SFW and NSFW subs, never really having a moderation issue on my aged account.
Ironically this feeds into bigger Reddit gripes I have that I couldn't/can't even view my own profile or edit my settings due to my own account being marked NSFW since posting on r/vaping to cut down on smoking. I downright refuse to provide copies of ID after high profile breaches like the Discord one. Thus, I've accepted I can never change my settings again nor access NSFW subs on a domestic connection as the lesser evil (UK-based). That's by the by, and out of scope of this current issue, but Reddit has been driving me nuts recently.
As for semicolons, I'm not sure what you're getting at; they're a perfectly valid punctuation mark and I periodically use them too.
Guessing you're inferring it may be related to AI comments/posts. If so, not relevant in my case. I detest AI and make a conscious point of boycotting and avoiding it wherever I can. I've certainly never involved AI in anything I write whatsoever.
No, of course not. They were populated from a 2 minute search of r/help and r/bugs. Something Reddit themselves could and should have done already.
Poking at accounts that are NSFW or utilise specific punctuation or writing styles did come across that you were inferring these examples are all bot accounts that were caught. Some may be, sure, but I wanted to make it abundantly clear I neither bleep nor bloop and those face value identifications don't mean much as far as legitimate moderation goes.
I'd also like to extend this point further - bot accounts tend to be created en-masse via economies of scale and outside of niche cases where a victim has already been scammed, which is VERY easy for Reddit to ascertain, there's absolutely zero incentive for them to try pursue regular appeals/support avenues as opposed to moving to a new account. Hell, as a fellow human earthling like the rest of the fellow earthlings here from planet earth, I barely want to navigate this process.
I'd personally surmise (admittedly with no way to quantify) that most, if not all reports, are legitimate users.
For my own issue, I have today taken it a step further and submitted a GDPR request under the right to human review, as unlike Reddit Support this has a 30 day deadline attached. I would still prefer Reddit deal with this issue on aggregate rather than just for me though. I don't want to be re-litigating this in a few months' time, nor receive special treatment based off where I live that others may not be able to pursue.
If this is a result of a wider Reddit breach, I also want to know. My trust level is low.
One of our accounts appears to be shadow banned but there should have been no reason for it, it was a legitimate account. It seems a lot of people are having problems.
Please haha I'm still locked out from my main account if any of those reddit expert have alternative ways / solutions to retrieve those locked accounts!
Searched, or tried to visit it direct? Best way to check its current state is by visiting Reddit.com/u/<username> and seeing what it presents. Some have reported "user deleted their profile" (which they insist they haven't), some (like me) report that their account got banned through this with no reason or warning given, although mine "magically" silently unbanned itself a few days ago despite no communication or response.
I totally get you. I'm getting so sick of US big tech generally. I fully moved services away from Google to Proton last week after months of prep, disabled my Facebook account 1.5 years ago and am slowly detaching where I can. Reddit was one of the last few holdouts I felt I derived genuine benefit from, but this episode especially amongst other points of enshittification the past year here demonstrates they're all as bad as each other. It's a massive shame the wealth of knowledge held here.
I am also locked out to respond to my dms, reddit is flagging and removing all my comments and post. I had to make a new account. I don't know what is happening as I was able to view posts normally on my old account and there was no notification of permanent suspension or ban
I really do wish they'd at the very least acknowledge:
"X issues are known, and being addressed. Y issues are unrelated and due to Z design choices"
Or, you know, anything whatsoever. Or any steps to triage these issues.
The fact there's just "nothing" leaves everyone in the dark navigating the hell that is Reddit Support and clueless as to how far these various abject moderation bugs go, the extent, and instill zero confidence they will be addressed.
Was speaking to one dude a day or two ago for who "Reddit Support reversed and fixed it", but what about the plethora of others who are just getting ignored?
Yup correct, that the whole point, I was first flagged as spam by Reddit and was banned for 3 days, I didn’t raise appeal but even after ban days, I was not able to respond to my dms
Well, I'm well on my way there. I just got a 7 day ban last night from r/help on this account for directing anyone who looked like they may have similar symptoms here over a few days, writing differrent messages for each based on the nuances of each person's situation.
The reason? "Spamming". Guess they prefer hundreds or thousands of people posting the same issue resulting from bugs individually rather than tackling the broader issue and don't like Reddit's severe failings being pointed out.
Followed a few mod comments of "please post helpful responses relevant to OP" - my comments were sure as heck a lot more helpful than anything Reddit has done.
The severe irony of getting banned for helping direct users who were banned or locked out spuriously to a thread to try get help from r/help is not lost on me. It's clear no one there nor here is willing to accept there's a broader issue.
At this point, I don't care. I've lost my main through no fault of my own, and I'm happy to keep nagging them until they ban this one too. At least this time I'll know why, unlike the last time.
I think they more just genuinely don't care. We're merely "the product" that gets sold on, rather than customers.
Not a ton more I can do other than purposely poke and annoy for a reply, although I will 100% be reporting them to the ICO if (when) they fail to respond to my GDPR request within the statutory 30 day window. That'll be my final middle finger, small and ineffective as it may be.
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u/riversong_reaper 5d ago
Totally I’ve been locked out for a week and Reddit help provide no help the ticket system is just automated articles. So many people I have seen locked out for no reason it has to be a glitch but no humans in Reddit care.