The Covid Era Auto Perma-Banning by a handful of power mods on Reddit has permanently damaged the platform, likely fatally.

The number of users who have been automatically permabanned from participation in so many of the core topic subs and regional/city/country subs is significant enough that I believe it has, is and will continue to effect the growth and usefullness of Reddit.

The bans were automatically triggered upon joining or any participation in any of the core/mainstream subs with zero recourse and arrogant power moderators doubling down on bans by muting anyone who even politely enquired as to the reason for their bans.

But such a broad list of subs that were chosen in the wacky minds of mentally ill, socially isolated power mods who single handedly oversee control of most of the subs that form the core of the site meant that a huge number of people from all backgrounds and beliefs and interests and perspectives were caught up in this broadly applied idiocy with a significant enough number of reddit users inadvertently experiencing an unexpected and undeserved ban from at least one or two subs at some point because of this - and even the ones who may have agreed with them were left with a nasty taste in their mouths after their experience in contacting the mods to find out what it was all about.

The overall user engagement levels have steadily dropped since and the users left in a lot of these subs are all of course "one of us! one of us! one of us!" - meaning they have become even more echo chambers fhan they aready were.

Old users who got burnt and treated like shit in the thick of it either disengaged completely or significantly. The continued application of these automated bans means they are unable to add further useful engagement to the site as a whole and the numbers are significant enough that there is no question that it has permanently damaged the future direction and growth of Reddit and I would argue that it has gone even further, poisoning and wounding the site so deeply that not only will it never recover, but it has triggered a slow but unstoppable decline in the Reddit site as a whole which will eventually fall below the critical mass that sustains it.