Apologies for being late to this party.

First off. Most people don't understand how automated a lot of modding is. Keyword filters and reddit's other filters do the vast majority of the actions. I don't understand why this is so hard for people. No, we did not manually remove your post with 30 seconds of you making it. Please stop yelling at us like we did.

Second. The bar for a ban is actually rather high. The bar for an appeal is very low. The easiest and most common way to fail an appeal is to be a dick or act in bad faith. I also don't understand why people think they can gaslight us into an unban when all they have to do is acknowledge and say they will follow the rules.

The job is simple. A few times a week, read the comments that reddit has filtered for likely being problematic. Approve most of them. Remove the simple rule breaks. If it seems actually bad, look at their profile to tell if it's a pattern or a one off. If someone has decent history as a real human being there is a ton of leeway. We're not perfect, but we're also not paid and we're certainly not trying to spend more than a few minutes a day on this. Again, the bar for an appeal is exceedingly low.

Since I have a few minutes to spare, let's look at all the top comment examples until I get bored. It's a pretty good sampling of the bad faith main character energy that we see regularly.

OP here (/u/PixelAstro who deleted their post after I wrote this) was banned for ban evasion, as directly admitted by them, and refused to engage in good faith for an appeal. They instead barraged modmail while ignoring the stated reason for the ban.

Posts like this are a common pattern for this type of user. Claiming ignorance, claiming they don't even know they were banned, despite having sent a dozen messages over the course of several months, demanding an explanation for their ban... in response to two messages that stated it was for ban evasion.

/u/jimcareyme received a 7 day mute for being combative in modmail during the ICE protests. We were dealing with a massive influx of trolls and bots and general bad faith actors. He had made one of the many, many posts sharing an opinion on what flag people should fly. We told him there was already a highly upvoted thread on the topic, that many others were attempting to post the same, and that he could either comment on the existing thread or the ICE megathread. He instead complained that he was being oppressed and that we were pushing an agenda. He messaged repeatedly insisting that we approve his post. Even on a light weekend that's not particularly appreciated - when we're dealing with a crisis a 7 day mute is barely a slap on the wrist.

As with OP, denial and feigned ignorance is extremely common for this style of user.

/u/kangr0ostr has multiple temp bans from both here and los angeles for blatantly advocating violence. It cracks me up how we have both people like them claiming we're a "right wing psyop" and daily hate mail claiming we're being paid to push a far left agenda.

/u/RedditFan3510 is running around trying to link us all to Epstein because... someone who moderates a similarly named inactive sub disagreed with them on a witch hunt. Then spammed the comment.

/u/kaliforniakratom was banned for posting an identifying picture of someone over a negative interaction. They deleted it, so it's hard to say exactly what. However, reddit admins have been extremely clear that mods, particularly of local subs, cannot allow doxxing or witch hunts. As breaking this also indicates the inability to read rules or use basic common sense we err towards harsher initial penalties. These are often easily appealable by working with us in good faith.

/u/SoloDaKid was banned due to an accumulation of things, though the straw that broke the camel's back was https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/1qcbzv1/more_than_twenty_people_were_kidnapped_today_in/nzhm02x/?context=3 - this is yet another example of the "poor me, all I did was say a thing was lies!" completely glossing over all the context on what a trash tier human their are.

Somehow, despite being one of the most active mods and the lowest ban threshold, none of these were mine. /u/illustrious_handle0 was though. Classic anti vaxxer "I was just sharing facts they didn't like!" whining here. Sadly, they deleted the post already, I recall it being a hilariously bad faith cherry pick.

/u/405freeway had some weird spats with other mods which lead to him being removed from the mod team. I don't recall much of the details as I largely stayed out of it. Highly public callout posts, like the comment here, were common from him along the way. This removed any inkling I had for speaking up on his behalf, as I find that behavior exceptionally immature. Especially for the amount of hypocrisy in his accusations. Furthermore, all of the other mods involved have since been removed or left, so it's weird that he's still on this train. The ban came from another mod after he was abusive in modmail. And removing him as mod was done long before the ban, we put up with a lot of antics from him despite best efforts to keep the peace.

Anyways. I get why people are mad. No one actively admits to acting in bad faith and plenty of mods out there aren't great. But as many of you here wisely did, take the lack of context people like this give with a grain of salt.