“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.” – Noam Chomsky

Reddit turned 21 this year. I was a loyal user for many of those years and used it as a place to connect with people over shared interests/obsessions, find answers to oddly specific problems, and curate a feed of interests. Then, in 2021, I deleted my decade-old account…but that’s a story for another day.  This is the story of why I returned to Reddit in October 2025 with a brand-new account, how I ended up permanently banned just 11 days later, and what the whole experience taught me about true power.

Just before incorporating My Data Union in October 2025, I rejoined Reddit to research how people think and talk about their data. My goal was to gauge people’s awareness of how much value they create and give away for free. So I created u/MyDataUnion account on October 8^th and made about 43 comments and a 4 posts over the next 11 days. I posted these three questions, submitted in r/AskReddit:

1. Tile bluetooth tracker users, how did you react when you learned the parent company (Life360) sells your location data?
2. What trivial thing is shockingly valuable?
3. Your data companies take from you is worth at least $700 per year, what would you spend that money on if you could get it?

Despite the initial warm reception and productive conversation sparked by the questions, every single post was removed. Shortly after and without explanation, the account was banned across the site. After my 20+ appeals and messages went unanswered, I assumed I screwed up and was almost ready to move on. But because I have some sort of obsession that doesn’t allow me to simply move on from things like this, I kept digging for clues.

The digging led me to a dusty corner of the account settings where you can ask Reddit for a copy of everything it keeps about you. What I discovered rewarded my inner skeptic.

On Reddit’s platform, there are only three people who can delete a comment or post: the author, the subreddit’s moderator, or Reddit’s internal team. A subreddit moderator’s actions are contained within one subreddit and do not impact the user’s activities in different subreddits. A sitewide suspension is issued exclusively by Reddit’s own team, and it’s their policy to inform users why the ban was issued.[1]

The post where I cited a dollar figure got the strangest treatment of all. Before anyone could see it, the post landed on my profile page instead of r/AskReddit, effectively invisible because my account was banned very shortly afterward. A question about what your data is worth, asked in a soundproof room.

And that’s not all, each comment I left in different subreddits also vanished. My comments were all squarely focused on sharing education and helpful links to policies, lawsuits, and public filings pertaining to various companies being discussed in a thread.

So why was I really banned from the site? Reddit never responded to any of my formal appeals or mod messages, and based on my account’s data files, Reddit never bothered to record my inquiries. I have theories drawn from the company’s public documents and its CEO Steven Huffman’s words to investors. Based on my research of Reddit’s public filings and disclosures, I believe my account was banned because the questions I asked, and the receipts I brought, conflicted with Reddit’s financial incentives.

Following the money

What separates me from a typical Reddit user is my expertise in the financial markets and ability to perform in-depth research about companies. For publicly traded companies, such as Reddit, the first step is to listen to its executives speak during its quarterly earnings calls. It’s essential for current and prospective investors to learn what’s going on inside the company and how Reddit’s executives think about the business. The following quotes from Huffman during recent earnings calls succinctly summarized what he thinks about users and the content they generate:

“Reddit’s conversations are like oil for the modern Internet, a foundational resource powering the next generation of technology.”

Reddit’s “deeply engaged users who come to Reddit for high-intent uses, authentic recommendations, and answers to questions” are “Reddit’s raw materials.”

“Our goal is to maximize the value return to Reddit.”

Putting my investor cap on, I hear Huffman saying he treats Reddit’s users like commodities, objects that can be owned and controlled. Like an oil executive, he wants to lower the cost of raw materials as much as possible to maximize profits, and paying people $0 for their valuable property is a great price for Reddit! And giving people no say over how Reddit monetizes people’s data allows Reddit to sell user data to whomever they can, including companies and governments. I perceive Huffman and the management team as people who will squeeze Reddit’s users as hard as possible to hit Reddit’s growth projections. Even if it’s at the expense of the very people producing the data.

Structuring a business to treat people like raw materials is a foundational mistake at best, exploitation at worst. The morality of treating people like property aside, true raw materials, like oil, cannot get up and walk away. It sits underground and cannot make demands. Google did not pay Reddit $60m for having a cute avatar in their logo.[2] OpenAI didn’t pay Reddit $70m because Sam Altman was its CEO for four days.[3],[4] They paid to access a place where real people show up and write something worth knowing. Reddit’s entire value proposition to its customers (and investors) is what users bring to the table. If the users walked away, they would migrate to a new place, and Reddit would have nothing to sell. Conversely, Reddit cannot walk away from its users under any circumstance.

I cannot overstate how much leverage users have over Reddit in this relationship.

Most users don’t see the world through the eyes of a skeptical investor who really loves to find inconvenient truths. I see Reddit’s platform as the actual commodity, and its users as the ones who should be receiving the lion’s share of the profits. Once that view becomes shared knowledge and users make their demands known, people can get treated equitably.

Instead, the profits made from the users’ data are exclusively captured by Reddit. In 2023, that math worked out well for Huffman in particular; Huffman’s total compensation was $193 million, nearly all of it stock, on a $341,346 salary.[5] His own explanation: “If the company does well, I will do well. If the company does not do well, I don’t either.” Reddit’s revenues have nearly tripled since then. Meanwhile, Reddit users got no say over how their data was used and received no money when it was licensed away.

So how does this happen? Fragmentation. People cannot solve a problem they cannot discuss. Discreetly silencing discussion that could undermine a company’s leverage is a means to that end. Reddit’s team seems to ban those who dare talk about the concept of users controlling and monetizing their own data. Huffman needs his “raw materials” not to act like that. Because if they did, investors would question Huffman’s story and Reddit’s stock price.

As Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” People hold a significant amount of leverage over powerful companies like Reddit, but don’t know it and need help wielding their advantage. My next article will discuss what can happen if people do not seize the opportunity to take the reins and how they can do it sooner and easier than they think.

[1] https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360045734511-My-account-was-banned-for-violating-Reddit-Rules

[2] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/google-reddit-60-million-deal-ai-training/

[3] https://searchengineland.com/openai-may-pay-reddit-70m-for-licensing-deal-451882

[4] https://news.sky.com/story/who-is-sam-altman-the-openai-boss-and-chatgpt-guru-who-is-now-one-of-ais-biggest-players-12898698

[5] https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1713445/000171344526000060/rddt-20260423.htm#i326cf3c3ff3b4133823ff5195484be8e_40 , page 36