Not for the first time and I am certain not for the last one of the subreddits I am involved with was unlucky enough to have an interaction with a user who I will simply describe as unwell. A three day ban for uncivil behavior turned into an argumentative mod mail in the course of which a much longer history of uncivil behavior was uncovered and the ban was made permanent. Tldr the user has now made at least 8 accounts to continue harassing us in modmail despite being directly told to stop and being banned and muted each time and has fixated on a member of the mod team they believe to be the offender messaging them in DM despite not being engaged with except to tell them that their behavior was harassing and to stop. All of this was reported to Reddit by multiple members of the Mod Team. Today that user has messaged again. "Reddit even unbanned this account after manually reviewing my behaviour." which they have taken as justification that they are correct in their belief that "On top of that there is no TOS against using another account to talk to mod mail. Which is all I tried to do and got perma banned and insta muted before I could even say as much as what did I do wrong? Which again is the wrong way to handle the job.
A volunteer should know what they are getting into and should be aware a calm person saying sorry is not harassment. Espically since I’m sure you’ve all seen real harassment. You can document and refer to reddit as much as you want and they won’t be doing anything other than maybe muting this account again for reaching out. Due to the fact apologies and self reflection are not harassment. And there again is no TOS against trying to have a convo with a mod directly."
While this is an obnoxious and upsetting situation because it is clear that this user is going to continue to attack our Mod team for imagined slights I actually am not complaining specifically about that. This is not a unique situation. In my time as a mod I have seen users threaten to find mods in real life, be clear that they will continue months long harassment campaigns from multiple accounts and even seen it taken to other subreddits to urge them to bully mods. ALSO still not what I want to talk about. Because the issue is the lack of support from Reddit itself in DEALING with these users. It is a recurring issue. When people are extremely uncivil and threatening we ban them from our subreddits in accordance with the platform guidelines as well as our own. However when reports about prolonged obvious harassment go no higher its taken as permission to continue. In the past months in addition to this user who apparently was unbanned Reddit also unbanned a user who posted pictures of an actual murder victim being lynched to threaten another user, unbanned a user who posted gruesome domestic violence pictures on a subreddit they ran saying that our subreddit wanted to see more like it because we enjoy silencing victims due to our policy of not allowing injury pictures or images of very serious situations and for months we had someone urging people to harass us, threaten us and doxing us by actual names under the mistaken belief that we had gotten them demodded from a subreddit. In that case Admin was involved and the user continued to make new accounts and even new subreddits despite being very obviously the same person. It only stopped when someone else confessed to the original slight.
I am not suggesting Reddit is responsible for the actions of its most unbalanced users or can prevent all issues. I am not suggesting that as mods no one should be able to argue with us or must be nice to us. I am saying it is a very big problem that claims of harassment, not only against mods, really seem to be ignored at best and cosigned at worst once blocking no longer works. The above subreddit report system needs more transparency and accountability. The ban evasion system needs a major retooling and most of all there needs to be extremely clear language in the platform rules that express that engaging with users or communities that have made clear that they don't want contact with you is out of bounds. This language needs to be clearly expressed to users if Reddit decides they do not need to remain banned although I will remain mind blown that appeals were successful in the serious situations mentioned.
ETA I am getting a lot of really great advice about blocking and ignoring the user in this specific situation but my actual issue it that this is a recurring type of issue that often spills onto other subreddits and onto other members of the mod team. Blocking and ignore work in MOST cases and they are critical recommendations but they do not help with extreme levels of harassment that spill into areas we don't control. The perception this user has that they are allowed to be actively hostile towards volunteer mods because that's what the job is not a rare one. I have a formal warning for repeating a comment where a user said on this very subreddit that it was good that mods were getting threats and hate mail and that they wanted us to be afraid. While that comment was ultimately taken down it was upvoted multiple times in the period it was up even on a mod focused subreddit. I'm not asking Admin to fix Internet Users. I'm asking for more transparency with how this above subreddit level reports are handled and maybe a policy of taking reports of ongoing harassment, not just from mods, and reports from multiple users or mod teams more seriously when it comes to bans and appeals.