I got banned from Lobsters for writing like an LLM

I've been banned from Lobsters. If you're bored, you can read about my experience.

If you don't know it, Lobsters is a news aggregator focused on technology and computing, although other topics of general interest also come up. The most interesting part is the comments on each thread or link, where the topics are discussed. As alternatives, there are Hacker News, Lemmy and, to some extent, Reddit.

To give you some background, I've been a Lobsters user for a few years. I've contributed comments and links, and I'm also the author of the Emacs client. On top of that, the IRC channel I hang out in the most is #lobsters on Libera.Chat.

Chapter 1: Your domain has been blocked

A year ago, around Christmas 2025, I tried to share an article on Lobsters. My usual style, educational but fun. When I did, I ran into a warning telling me that my website's domain was blocked for self-promotion. My domain?

This surprised me, since I hadn't shared content from my website on Lobsters before, and I had read the odd unhappy comment. But blocking the whole domain seemed a bit much.

I didn't make a big deal of it! I sent an email to the moderators explaining the situation.

I got no reply.

Chapter 2: Contributing again

Almost a year later, with a few articles on the Hacker News front page, I thought about Lobsters again.

I decided to contribute again with a simple post: my experience building a modern BBS. Improvements over older systems like BBJ, and an explanation of some design decisions.

It ended with an invitation to try it, and I shared it with the show tag. Nothing more.

Same result: domain blocked for self-promotion. They hadn't lifted the block after a year, and they never answered my message.

I didn't make a big deal of it.

By chance, I found a way to post a blocked domain. It looked like a small bug.

I was posting again after a year in exile.

Chapter 3: The rise

Little by little, the points went up and the comments came in, nothing out of the ordinary. At 8 points I could see it on the front page.

I took my time to reply; the conversation was constructive. One user even found a design flaw. Fantastic! But... the joy didn't last long.

Soon after, the trouble started.

Chapter 4: Down the well

Several users accused me of using AI, not in my code but in my replies to the comments. One of them even included a link where an external service claimed that one of my replies was 100% AI-generated.

The evidence was irrefutable.

According to the tool, there wasn't the slightest doubt. I started to doubt my own self-awareness. What if I was an LLM and didn't know it?

Obviously I replied that it wasn't true (probably not). But the damage was done. Other users joined in with similar accusations, and the snowball kept rolling and getting bigger and bigger. They even called me a self-promotion bot! My existence had less and less dignity.

When I asked why they thought I was an LLM, I got a detailed explanation.

The number of users flagging the thread as spam kept growing. The situation became unsustainable.

The greyed-out, faded color means the thread has been hidden by many users.

If you try to open the thread now, you won't be able to unless you have an account. So how do I have screenshots? Well, that's a topic for another article.

I sent an urgent message to a moderator with the subject "Help!", along with a short explanation.

Again, I got no reply.

Some time later, with all hope lost, I saw a notification in the Lobsters menu. I had a new message, this time from a moderator.

Your story has been removed for breaking the community rules. Self-promotional content is not allowed.

My face was a picture when I read it.

It came with a link to the community rules, specifically this section:

Self-promotion: It's great to have authors participate in the community, but not to exploit it as a write-only tool for product announcements or driving traffic to their work. As a rule of thumb, self-promo should be less than a quarter of one's stories and comments in the last year. New users (first 70 days) are not allowed to submit self-promo.

Now I made a big deal of it!

I replied, asking where the fine line was between sharing knowledge and self-promotion, and whether there was any way to appeal the decision. The answer was that I had to improve my ratio of what they considered self-promotion.

Okay, I committed to it. I would write more comments and fewer links. It could be a discussion forum for me.

But the hardest blow was yet to come.

Chapter 5: Your account has been banned

Two hours later, I got the following message in my personal email:

Subject: [Lobsters] account X banned

You have been banned from Lobsters by ** ** ** For:

Only self-promo, slop.

You are no longer allowed to login to the site. If you wish, you can discuss this ban with the moderator by replying to this e-mail.

What happened? I thought the matter had been cleared up and settled.

I replied. I wasn't going to miss the chance to appeal the decision:

Hi *******,

I think there has been a misunderstanding.

[Here was an explanation of what happened]

[Here were my interactions with the moderators]

It has been an unfortunate situation, and I felt completely helpless.

At this point, could my account be reactivated? I don't think I'll find the courage to share more content after what happened, but I'd still like to contribute in the comments. I'm an active user on IRC. Also, I'd rather not live with the cognitive dissonance of maintaining an Emacs client for an aggregator/community I've been banned from.

Best regards

And the answer? The usual: silence, and nothing more.

Epilogue

Some questions are still on my mind. Will they be able to read me? If my domain is blocked, a regular user won't be able to submit this article, let alone comment on it (unless they use the same trick). Will they ever answer my messages? What would happen if I ran their own comments through the same AI detector?

On the other hand, it seems that writing long, detailed replies has become dangerous. Not long ago, when you took the time to write a careful text, with references or quotes, it was received with respect and admiration. Although you ran the risk of coming across as pretentious and pedantic. Today, however, the trend is short replies, without punctuation or embellishments. If you want to prove you're human, you have to write like a teenager chatting with their friends.

As for the moderation, I'm nobody to judge anyone. Who do you favor when there are problems? Individual users, or the group that contributes content and keeps the site alive? Maybe we would have done the same in their place, or maybe we would have tried to mediate. Who knows! There are also many variables we don't know. Still, silence is not pleasant.

If they lifted the ban, would I come back? Yes, but only to comment. My content fits better elsewhere, and that's fine. Every community has its own rules.

And for everything else... Hacker News, Reddit and other forums.