Session drops on Nexus are being read as account bans

Being logged out of Nexus mid-visit used to feel like a hiccup. Newer readers are now reading the same logout as an account ban and acting on that reading.

How it read before

A dropped session on Nexus used to look like this. The reader clicked something, the login page came up, the reader logged back in, everything they had been doing was still there. The order was where it had been. The message thread was where it had been. The balance was where it had been. The logout was read as a nuisance and got filed under "the internet did a thing", not under "something bad happened".

The session was also usually longer. A reader who left their tab alone for a while and came back would still be logged in. So a logout when they were actively doing things read as a fluke, not a rule.

How it reads now

The session is shorter than it was; see the Nexus session logs you out sooner than it used to. Newer readers who never learned the older behaviour see logout more often and interpret it as targeted. Their reading goes something like this: "I was logged in, now I am not, therefore the market has decided something about me." A reader who has just filed a dispute, or just placed a large order, will file the logout under "I am being banned for that thing I did".

What they do next follows from the reading. They try to log in on a different browser. They try to make a fresh account. They open a support ticket accusing the market of banning them without notice. They mention the logout in a public thread and warn others. Meanwhile the actual account is fine and their existing order is proceeding normally.

The most costly of those actions is the second one. A new account, created because the old one felt banned, is not the same object as the old one. Funds in the old wallet do not transfer. Orders in escrow on the old account are not visible from the new one. If the market later flags the duplicate registration, the account that gets sanctioned is often the fresh one, because it was made in reaction to a phantom ban and therefore looks like an evasion attempt when there was nothing to evade.

Why this probably shifted

The shorter session on its own does not explain the ban reading. What explains it is the shorter session plus a lack of feedback. When the reader is bumped, the login page just draws; there is no message saying "your session expired because of inactivity, please log in again". The absence of a stated reason invites the reader to invent one, and the invented reason tends to be the worst plausible one.

The presence of other changes in the same period does not help. The messages tab moved and grew a small badge (see the messages tab moved and grew a small badge); the escrow hold changed (see escrow hold days on Nexus shifted upward). Any of these can look like a punitive change if the reader is already primed to see one.

What to change on your side

Recalibrate. A logout is not a ban.

• When you are bumped, log back in on the same address, same browser, same account. If you come back into your account and see your order, your balance, and your messages, nothing has been done to you.
• Do not create a second account to "get around" the imagined ban. A duplicate account can actually cause a ban and will lose the money in the first one.
• Do not fire a public accusation before you have logged back in and checked. The accusation is very hard to unsend.
• If your session drops during a sensitive step, such as reading an update on a dispute, log back in and read the messages tab first before doing anything else. That thread will tell you far more than a support ticket about the logout will.

What this entry is not claiming

The entry is not claiming Nexus does not ban anyone. It sometimes does, for reasons that get stated. The entry only says that the current session behaviour is being read as a ban far more often than it actually is one, and the false read is causing damage that the real event would not.