Hello,
I have been a dedicated member of Reddit for 5 years (60k+ karma, ~700 followers, 600+ posts, 2k+ comments) primarily spending my time helping people in the photo restoration community and sharing my restoration art.
My account was recently locked for "technical irregularities" immediately after I posted examples of my work - according to the subreddit’s rules, one day a week is set aside for such posts. I accidentally included formatted text in the description while using the “Rich Text Editor” instead of the “Markdown Editor.” As soon as I noticed the mistake and deleted the post, I received a message: “Hi Antony_vintage, At Reddit, we’re always watching out for your privacy, safety, and security. Recently, after detecting some technical irregularities on your Antony_vintage account, we took the extra precaution of locking your account.” It could also be due to a link to my portfolio in the description, or the potential use of a VPN, even though I hadn’t had any issues with either of those before. The saddest part is that I still don’t know the reason, and it’s unclear whether there’s a chance the block will be lifted or if I need to create a new account - but in that case, there’s a risk of being permanently locked for ban evasion. Besides, it makes sense to find out what the mistake was so I don’t repeat it.
I have already changed my password, updated my email and enabled 2FA to secure everything, but the automated recovery process via the Reddit appeal form has failed / trapped the account in a ban loop (?). I still have access to my data logs and I’m still receiving my weekly digests and some notifications, so I can see that my karma and post history are still there.
I can easily prove I'm the original owner by providing the original source photos or high-res PSDs of results with the layers for any of the restoration projects I've posted over the years.
Thank you,
Antony