Have you ever been banned from an online community? Tell us everything.

I’m still surprised over something that happened earlier today. An article I submitted on Reddit’s /r/politics was rejected unread by a bot. I’m not going to go into the entangled histories of Gawker Media and Reddit; you can go googling if you’re really curious. Suffice it to say, I perfectly understand why Reddit isn’t inclined towards Gawker Media content; and I get why some Gawker Media blogs have covered Reddit’s policies and problems. But I thought the “ban” had lessened as years passed, and I see our stuff on Reddit pretty frequently these days. I thought I’d give it a shot.

I think I was taken aback by this rejection because I used to once live in /r/politics, all day, every day. And nothing seemed more made-for-Reddit than Gizmodo reporter Adam Clark Estes’ fascinating look at why we should be even angrier about Hillary Clinton’s homebrew email antics than we already are. So even though I guess I understand why the mods have made a decision not to accept content from Gizmodo, I shook my head at the summary dismissal, because in my experience no one likes a solid, debate-worthy story more than /r/politics.

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