Why were so many users suspended in 2024?

Question

I was just looking at the 2024: A year in moderation post and noticed there were more than 95 times the amount of users suspended in 2024 compared to 2023; 566,371 users were suspended in 2024 and only 8,389 in 2023. I know there was a strike last year and that may have affected it, but it shouldn't have affected it that much, and regardless 2022 also had much less suspensions, with 2024 having more than 180 times the number of suspensions that 2022.

This doesn't seem to be just the result of a huge wave of spammers or something, because the number of user suspensions lifted early also increased very dramatically. 2024 had more than 159 times more suspensions lifted early than 2023 and 332 times more than in 2022.

Strangely enough, other similar stats weren't hugely different. The number of users contacted was extremely close between 2024 and 2022, and reasonably similar in 2023 as well. The number of users destroyed was quite similar between 2023 and 2024, and only about double that in 2022. Also, the number of users deleted even significantly decreased from 2022/2023 to 2024 (although nowhere near enough to account for the suspension increase).

So, why were there so many suspensions in 2024 compared to other years?

There were various "attacks" on the site(s) in 2024, such as the spam waves on Discussions. That might be related. — Thom A, Commented Jan 15 at 16:29
More users suspended than flags handled is certainly amusing. — Bhargav Rao, Commented Jan 15 at 16:30
I have seen a significant increase in spam to my primary community. I will see 10+ spam questions, dozens of spam answers, and dozens of comments all submitted in a short timeframe. Prior to last year I would see some spam but nothing like it is today. It's so bad my primary community has a dedicated "hall of shame" chat for these spam users. — Security Hound, Commented Jan 15 at 17:29
Pretty sure there's an error there - I don't think that's possible. Spam posters gets destroyed, not suspended. — Catija, Commented Jan 15 at 17:55
I recall a lot of users being suspended to cool down for defacing/mass-deleting their posts in protest of the OpenAI Partnership announced in May 2024. At some point in May 2024 you could go to the Disciplined badge page and find pages upon pages of suspended users. Based on the views of the announcement, this is not enough to account for the extreme surplus, but this did contribute. — CPlus, Commented Jan 15 at 17:56
Half a million though...seems really unlikely. Really really unlikely. That would mean only 1 in 500 users willing to get themselves suspended deleting and defacing their posts bothered to downvote the announcement...!?!? — Starship, Commented Jan 15 at 17:59
Suspended Georg, being suspended 500000 times, was an outlier and should not have been counted. /s — Lino, Commented Jan 15 at 18:00
@willeM_VanOnsem That was my first guess as well, but based on this comment that doesn't seem to be the explanation either. — John Montgomery, Commented Jan 15 at 19:15
@Starship-OnDiscussionsStrike "Five Hundred Twenty-Five Thousand Six Hundred Suspensions", I see what you did there. — Drew Reese, Commented Jan 15 at 22:10
@Starship-OnDiscussionsStrike It's likely a joke referencing the musical Rent, which includes a song "Five Hundred Twenty Five Thousand Six Hundred Minutes", a song about how time passes by for people during the span of a given year (525,600 is the number of minutes in a year). My guess is Drew was approximating the number of users being suspended in order to make the joke. — TylerH, Commented Jan 15 at 23:08
@Catija You make a good point. That's more than one user suspended every minute of the year! Given that there are two 3s at the end, it's quite possible that the number of users suspended by mods is actually supposed to be 56413, not 564133, which would still be a massive amount, but an order of magnitude lower/more realistic. — TylerH, Commented Jan 15 at 23:11
While TylerH's theory is a reasonable one, it really isn't that hard for me to believe that 564,133 users could be suspended when you consider the footnote: "The system will suspend users . . . when a user is recreated after being destroyed for spam or abuse". That spammers reincarnate destroyed user accounts is quite well known. In fact, the system makes it shocking easy for them to do so. It is not at all surprising that this could happen more than once every minute of the year, on average. A large portion of it is likely automated. — Cody Gray, Commented Jan 16 at 0:36
We should be so lucky if there is a total of half a million somewhat active users on the site. Somewhat active as in posting at least one Q or A during the past year. — Lundin, Commented Jan 16 at 10:37

khelwood · Accepted Answer · 2025-01-17 05:03:21Z

31

Community Managers bulk-suspended several thousand accounts. All the accounts I have seen have the same creation date, meaning they were likely made via automation. All of them received 100-year network-wide suspensions.

Why not delete them? Long-duration suspensions are used to ensure nobody can re-register or use the accounts. (Tim Post, former CM, once talked about suspensions like this on Meta.SE.)

edited Jan 17 at 5:03

khelwood

59.6k44 gold badges2222 silver badges2929 bronze badges

answered Jan 16 at 14:28

MachavityMod

31.8k3838 gold badges289289 silver badges389389 bronze badges

4

Several thousands is not equal to half a million though

Starship
– Starship

2025-01-16 14:42:47 +00:00
Commented Jan 16 at 14:42
11

@Starship-OnDiscussionsStrike I'm being colloquial since I can't see hard numbers. I have no reason to believe this doesn't explain the bulk of the suspensions.

Machavity
– Machavity Mod

2025-01-16 14:53:57 +00:00
Commented Jan 16 at 14:53
10

How do you know this? Was this information public?

Dharman
– Dharman Mod

2025-01-16 15:12:27 +00:00
Commented Jan 16 at 15:12
3

I'm also wondering if network suspension is counted as mod's suspension. This is because staff must choose the site origin of the network suspension. As a hint for non-mods, this will be recorded in the user's history as "Automated network suspension for [Duration] days from [OriginSiteName]" by the Community bot on other sites.

Andrew T.
– Andrew T.

2025-01-16 16:08:18 +00:00
Commented Jan 16 at 16:08
4

@Dharman I'm assuming you guys have a private channel where you can figure that out, instead of questioning your colleague...

Cerbrus
– Cerbrus

2025-01-17 08:25:05 +00:00
Commented Jan 17 at 8:25
27

We reserve that strictly for plotting world domination, @Cerbrus. All the conversations that reveal we have no idea what we're talking about happen in full public view.

Cody Gray
– Cody Gray Mod

2025-01-17 10:25:39 +00:00
Commented Jan 17 at 10:25
1

Well then, carry on @CodyGray xD

Cerbrus
– Cerbrus

2025-01-17 10:51:23 +00:00
Commented Jan 17 at 10:51
14

tl;dr this is pretty much correct. At some point last year, I don't remember when, we got hit with a flood of illegitimate users. Normally we'd just bulk destroy them, but due to [redacted], an exceptional factor in this case, there was a tiny chance normal users got caught up in the fray if we did that. Rather than do anything to annoy users (or tricky to reverse), we just suspended 'em all forever. Has a couple system benefits too, but not sure how heavily that mattered. Guess we never went back and did the cleanup, but it doesn't really matter in the end. Does screw up the stats a bit tho.

Slate
– Slate StaffMod

2025-03-26 20:47:45 +00:00
Commented Mar 26 at 20:47

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