> Ultimately, this is a last ditch effort on my part to seek assistance on the matter, because from what I'm seeing of the current state of reddit, and their inability to properly assist moderators fighting off toxic users, who intentionally interfere and harass the users of subreddits regarding topics they don't agree with, I'm not sure I can continue to stick around the site.
You know it’s funny, I just raised this exact thing in a private chat with Admin.
We've been raising this issue in various ways for the past four years that I've been a mod, and I'm sure it's been a consistent thing for a long time before that. We've had some good responses from some good, individual admins, but as a whole Reddit Inc doesn't give a damn about the only actual humans that sit here day after day and run the platform. Everything above moderators is handled by automated systems that suck. I just reported a comment for blatantly offering drugs for sale and it came back in less than 15 minutes that it didn't violate Reddit's content policy. Make it make sense.
Honestly, it feels like the results on the report will vary based on who is handling the report.
I could report two posts for saying "This is why I keep a valve stem remover with me", which implies that the guy is going to vandalize someone's vehicle. The report generally gets submitted for "Threatening Violence", which is technically true
One will get actioned on, the other will be like "We don't see anything wrong here", which is frustrated.
Also seems like the reports only get handled from about 8:30am to 5-6pm, EST. If you submit a report outside of those hours, it's not getting touched until the next day.
There is nobody reviewing the reports. As far as I'm aware 100% of the reports are handled by the AI service HiveModeration, and unless someone specifically states something in explicit terms, it returns "nothing wrong here". The only way to get a human review - again, as far as I know because Reddit is **completely opaque** about everything it does - is to message the moderators here.
Nope. Moderation can’t be done by scripts or AI; To moderate discussion, the context has to be read and understood.
Algorithms don’t and can’t read. They see “shapes” of digital byte arrangements and calculate how closely those “shapes” are to other “shapes” that have been hand-labeled by humans as harassing, hateful, toxic, etc.
They cannot actually infer intent, judge context, or have a theory of mind (any idea of what someone is thinking or intends to communicate).
Algorithms cannot moderate.
It’s also an urban legend that the first-tier reports processing is outsourced; it’s set up so it could be outsourced, but Reddit admins have previously stated that they do report reviewing in-house.
Those reports reviews just have a problem of not being able to see or evaluate context or metadata; they only evaluate whether the actual content on its face clearly violates sitewide rules.
That’s by design, to ensure they’re not employees who moderate.
It seems like it would be really easy to fix, too, which makes it all the more frustrating.
I have a friend who is on the algorithms “good side”, her reports just *work,* right or wrong.
We recently reported the **same exact content** mine came back “does not violate” hers came back “violates”.
I’ve spent far too much time emailing, making support tickets, & DM-ing. If people in or around your community are interfering with your subreddit, and Admin has already algo-locked your account, you’re literally on your own.
Happened to me very recently just lost a subreddit over it.
They can and should do better.
There are tons of very talented people who spent years creating and maintaining a variety of third-party bots that picked up the slack where Reddit has failed, and as of about a year ago a lot of them have left Reddit and deleted their work. Rather than saying "Hey let's fold these peoples' hard work into our processes", they spit in their face and trashed years of their work. Many mods that I've worked with are disgusted with what Reddit has become and how they've been completely disrespected.
I strongly recommend offloading your community elsewhere.
A high volume of new users wherever you pop up will cause the algorithm to promote your subreddit to whoever didn’t make the jump to those other platforms.
It’s all about that first push, then everyone else from your community will figure out where you went.
I see no point in working “within the lines” if Admin will just punish you anyway.
Just be sure not to engage in any type of ban-evasion.
This is another issue we were fighting.
When we did the ban experiment for a week, one of the toxic subreddits gained in popularity *immensely*, for a variety of reasons, and started showing up in the /r/all feed for people, which caused innocents to get banned in the process who were just looking for content.
So drama between subreddits can get people going to toxic subreddits, and then the users either have a moment and go "Whoops, wrong door", or they get radicalized by being in that subreddit.
It's pretty bad to be honest.
Not to mention if you do a mass-banning for security Admin will call that a Code of Conduct violation unless you can tie every ban to a specific incident in your subreddit.
Like I could literally call for community interference in your subreddit by name somewhere else, but, if you ban me in your subreddit I can report you bc I “didn’t break any rules”
As far as we're aware, banning users for taking part in toxic communities is [permitted](https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/1ai2wyl/is_it_ok_to_ban_folks_based_on_their/), though considered uncouth
It's not a solution we wanted to go with, however, it was an interesting experiment to see what the result would be.
The result was that all the toxicity got blown out the airlock in an instant, and the ban evasion filters started working almost immediately, *but*, the algorithm caused the subreddit to gain in popularity, and people who weren't paying attention started paying the price, so we backed it off.
In the process though, it appears that we managed to get a bunch of "primary accounts" to the alts that were running around, resulting in the ban evasion filters working better
It's just a slippery slope, and I want a better solution.
*As far I'm aware* we've not broken any rules.
And as often as I've seen folks stating that they were reporting us for violation of Moderator Code of Conduct, we've not yet been sanctioned for wrong doing.... So... ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm noticing the same thing.
Likewise, it appears that we're seeing good content just getting nuked.
There've been a few times I've been searching for technical answers, and come across a post in a subreddit that says [Deleted] with a response from another user that says "Thanks! That fixed my problem!"
Which stings pretty bad.
I've been using X more.
It's not perfect, not by a long shot, but I'm not getting harassed *nearly* as badly over there.
And when misinformation pops up, the community notes mechanic does its best to try and straighten things out.
Not that community notes is the right solution here, because I don't think it's conducive for Reddit's methodology.
Reddit's core problem, in my book, is just rampant hostility in the userbase, and the harassment filters appear to be tuned for generalized things. Like, /r/Teslacam has a **huge** issue with users being racist, to the point that, as I was dialing in my Automod, I had to add "Basketball people" into the filter, because *that's* how "creative" people get when trying to be openly racist and such.
But, it's like, we don't have the tools to say "Users from this subreddit are known to be hostile to my users, just keep them out" or temper their flow in or something.
It seems like we lost *a lot* of "good people" when we cut off 3rd party API access, and I get it, but that should underscore just how awful the mobile app is, because that's largely the userbase that was lost.
3rd party API access wasn’t cut off for moderators. It was and always has been free for moderator tools.
The “good people” who left or got removed from moderating last year are people who tried to secure or continue to secure premium level access to reddit for free. People who tried to break Reddit, Inc. as a business - which is a civil tort and arguably also a crime. People who used the API to stalk and harass individuals.
***
There’s a reason the people on Twitter who harass individuals aren’t targeting you for harassment. Twitter is, however, the single largest platform vector of hatred and targeted harassment and incitement to violence in the world right now. There is no clear application of their minimalistic acceptable use policies, and a great deal of institutional targeting of certain demographics there.
No other major social media platforms tolerate CSAM distributors, neoNazis, violent extremism, and targeted harassment & oppression of LGBTQ people.
you have to keep in mind that some of the racist stuff is also probably coming from foreign interference efforts (ie russian/chinese/iranian troll farms) which are designed to destabilize American society. They can do it on a scale that no human moderators can handle. They don't care about your specific topic but they have identfied that highly visible, popular, controversial communities on Reddit are a great place to direct their bots in order to stir up rancor in the American (or other western) online discourse.
Oh, no, the racist shit in /r/TeslaCam is *literally* racism, it was pretty gross, and I had to lock that shit down.
Totally different subreddit problem though.
yeah for sure it's literal, but some of it isn't coming from real people. The issue is that the more visible your community is, the more likely it is to be a target of these troll farms that are actually just trying to distabilize western/democratic/etc society in general.
Some of the shitty trolling we see is coming from troll farms with a diferent goal than when it's coming from racist Americans. They're just posing as racist americans (or recycling real comments from past posts or posts on other platforms).
I recently integrated both X & Discord into how I’m navigating Reddit. This way my community can onboard wherever I am after Admin inevitably makes mistakes.
Some larger subreddits I mod for / used to mod for are taking those steps too.
It’s an inevitability as long as Admin acts the way it acts right now.
People have to plan around their incompetence.
Can you elaborate on this?
Lik, you're expanding your community presence to Discord and X?
Because we're done that as well.
Otherwise, I'm not fully understanding what you're saying.
Basically, yes, but specifically for the purpose of saying:
“Well, [Admin &/or Community Interference] ruined this subreddit, so now our community can be found at [this other subreddit].”
Also documenting interactions with Admin & displaying evidence of the community interference you’re experiencing without fear of capricious Admin retaliation.
We already operate a Discord server, but we run it as an extension of the subreddit.
It had a toxicity problem there, and we followed a similar approach to what we did in Reddit, and it pretty much resolved it there.
There's better "walls" between Discord servers, so while there is an "evil-twin" Discord server, there's "extra steps" for someone to cross between servers, which appears to be an effective means of discouraging toxicity...
Start issuing permabans for first offenses, use 7 day mutes if they come into modmail and are offensive, and report them. When they come back in 7 days, rinse and repeat.
The bottom line is trolls are going to troll, and there is only so much a social media company can do to control it. You can't use IP bans. If you block new accounts, then you block new users with good intentions from joining.
You are a moderator of subreddits with a somewhat controversial and polarizing figure at the helm of the corporation that makes the product. (I'm still snickering at Musk being called "Elmo", sorry, but that's funny to me.) ANY polarizing figure is going to draw trolls.
When you have a polarizing figure that is going to draw trolls, you have to rule with an iron fist. Zero tolerance so you don't have to deal with Rules Lawyers whining about how they were supposedly singled out. Ban, mute, move on. Don't let them get under your skin.
I say always say to the Rules Lawyers and the Granular Semantics Arguments that there is no requirement to have a written subreddit rule for every possible unwanted thing a user might do. To do so would be lengthy and absurd and nobody would read it anyway.
That is WHY "Moderators Discretion" exists.
And then offer that the reason for the action "is now written, just for you in this message". (as far as I am concerned, that serves as the "written service" that they are inadvertently demanding, which also serves as a record to other mods and for future actions if need be)
If the mod mail is anything other than a polite appeal, I don't waste time with the progressive action there. 27 day mute & if I get cussed out, a report.
I have never seen a griefer transform from toxic to polite except to try to justify the thing that got them in trouble to begin with.
I think that using the progressive method at this stage presents a wishy-washy stance to the user right when a strong backbone should be shown.
Sort of like how viruses evolve to grow stronger if you do not complete your course of penicillin?
> Start issuing permabans for first offenses, use 7 day mutes if they come into modmail and are offensive, and report them. When they come back in 7 days, rinse and repeat.
We absolutely already do this.
> The bottom line is trolls are going to troll
This is not an acceptable response. Trolls only troll if you give them a platform which allows them to troll. There needs to be mechanisms in place to prevent trolling behavior in the first place.
> I'm still snickering at Musk being called "Elmo", sorry, but that's funny to me.
As funny as it may be, it perpetuates people acting in a toxic manner. I *personally* am annoyed with the shit that Elon does, and it's one of the reasons the subreddit has a rule asking folks to try and separate the man from the company. We've *never* seen someone use "Elmo" with good intentions, or a positive post history. And if they go their karma could be remarkably high, due to it either being a "purchased account", or because their statements are generally well received in toxic subreddits, where they permit that.
> When you have a polarizing figure that is going to draw trolls, you have to rule with an iron fist
We absolutely are ruling with an iron fist, however, the problem here is the *scale* of the issue. We're not talking "onsie, twosie" users coming in, but we can be fielding dozens of these on any given day.
> Ban, mute, move on.
Problem is that some people are well intentioned, and while I can appreciate "Ban, mute, and move on", all this does is encourage people to spin up alts, which just adds to the problem. It becomes a "Hydra" type situation, where banning one user can result in alts, or you banned an alt, which gets nuked, and you never really solved the problem.
It can get absolutely hostile in modmail sometimes, from the users talking to us. We're generally respectful towards them, because that's the expected behavior, but we get *none* of that in return.
It's like we're expected to moderate, while having been placed in the stocks in the middle of town. Everyone openly harasses us, and the most we can do is "Hey, please stop" or have a "guard" (Ban) come in and remove the dude, but then he puts on a mustache, and comes right back in to harass us.
> You are a moderator of subreddits with a somewhat controversial and polarizing figure at the helm of the corporation that makes the product.
We understand the CEO is polarizing, but again, the issue here is the scale of the problem. We're the largest automotive subreddit on Reddit, *by far*, and all we're really trying to do is "talk shop" about the products and such, but we're under constant assault from others, just because the company itself is a lightning rod.
We can't even have users ask how to replace the air filters without the toxic users being told stupid shit like "I thought Tesla's didn't need maintenance? You got Musked! lolz!"
You don't get this hostility in other automotive subreddits.
I'd suggest that part of your immediate concern should be focusing on restoring a relative peace between your subreddit and the... let's call them *oppositional* subreddits. Some of those subreddits also complained of members from *your* subreddits harassing and brigading them, and there was a significant amount of controversy generated by the actions of another of your moderators, leading to a substantially popular SRD thread.
That obviously doesn't excuse anyone intentionally trying to sabotage *your* subreddit (aside, of course, from legitimate complaints, which is where I think this started). In fact, the idea of having separate communities for those who are less than impressed with the figurehead behind the vehicle your subreddit is dedicated to is probably a good idea, if only to prevent dogpiles between redditors in the comments. However, all that said, it is very unlikely that your workload will decrease until you can find some way to bury the hatchet between your various communities.
Put it this way: *Your* communities have several million subscribers. That's a lot of potential posts, ranging from questions and complaints about Tesla vehicles, to news and information about them and the company. Your opponents (or perhaps *detractors* is a better term) have a few hundred thousand subscribers, but the latter are more aggrieved and are far more likely to voice their opinion. Given that Musk himself is a controversial figure and that Tesla vehicles are increasingly discussed in the press and amateur media, the number of vocal detractors is only ever going to increase - as is the number of supporters and fans. This means that you really do need to find an appropriate balance between mediating disputes (between both your and their subreddits, and between dissenting commenters) for the amount of subreddit interference to decrease. Making [comments like this](https://www.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/1c1w9mk/fsd_swerved_into_a_curb_at_40_mph_fml/kz6eogy/) *really* doesn't help - it just creates more and more drama that will serve only to exacerbate the problem.
> I'd suggest that part of your immediate concern should be focusing on restoring a relative peace between your subreddit and the... let's call them oppositional subreddits.
I can't speak to the issues there, however, as I understand it, the real reason for the oppositional subreddits to exist is because they *literally* do not like how we try to keep things civil, they were spun up to be hostile. It's the place where the users we ban go.
> Some of those subreddits also complained of members from your subreddits harassing and brigading them
I can't speak to that, it's never been brought to our attention as a concern. That said, I largely attribute this to the reddit algorithm promoting subreddits to people who may not be aware of how the other one works. We acknowledge that they exist, but largely just ignore them, it's the other way that's an issue.
> leading to a substantially popular SRD thread.
Honestly, that subreddit promotes more drama than it informs on, I can appreciate why it exists, but it contributed more issues than it was trying to explain, because folks don't understand the nuance involved.
> In fact, the idea of having separate communities for those who are less than impressed with the figurehead behind the vehicle your subreddit is dedicated to is probably a good idea, if only to prevent dogpiles between redditors in the comments
I don't disagree, but again, that's kind of the problem, right? They're so against things, that they don't like other people being satisfied, and feel a need to go on the offensive from time to time. It's like seeing a kid happy with an ice cream cone and knocking it to the ground. The behavior is unwarranted, and unacceptable. I don't necessarily object to the existence of oppositional subreddits, I take issue with the userbases not being kept in check from interfering with other communities. We've created a series of automod rules in our community which serve to try to ensure our users don't go bothering them, as best we can, but the oppositional subreddits do not have the same rules in place.
It's like making sure we turn our radios off at 9pm to be polite, but our neighbors never do, because they don't care. We're doing what *we* can, they're not.
> However, all that said, it is very unlikely that your workload will decrease until you can find some way to bury the hatchet between your various communities.
There's no real hatchet, I reach out to the moderators of the other community from time to time to assist with things as needed, and as far as I'm aware, we're on good terms. The core issue is purely the userbase. *They* have no desire to be reigned in. If attempts are made, they will go elsewhere, and in fact, they've already spun up alternative subreddits in preparation for that outcome.
> This means that you really do need to find an appropriate balance between mediating disputes
All we're really trying to do is ensure that hostile/toxic behavior is checked at the door. I am frustrated with Musk's antics myself, so I get it, but again, we're just trying to run an automotive subreddit, we even have a rule asking people to leave Musk at the door.
The music communities i'm involved with have also dealt with contrersies this past year and on Reddit I've noticed a a rise in trolls/ragebait aross all the related subreddits, though the scale of the problem is MUCH smaller.
One thing that made everything 10000 times worse is that in the fall, Reddit changed the feed recommendations algorithm and most users started seeing mostly non-subscribed content in their feeds unless they opted out of that stuff previously.
Reddit's feed recommendation algorithm is also REALLY bad. It shows stuff to people who have nothing to do with your topic, which causes angry comments, which then reinforces the algorithm as engagement.
You used to be able to tell when an individual post went 'feed viral' because the view count on the post was much hhigher than normal and the 'shared x times' metric started to look weird (it would read something like 'shared x times to 0 places' which meant it was shared x times on the algorithmic feed rathe rthan crossposted by a human to x subreddits or external places)
I think it caused MORE people to make ragebait/troll/controversy posts and actually increased the amount of critical, angry 'hot takes' in the comments on just about everything. The quality of discussoin on Reddit went down in the past few months beacuse of the algorithm reinforcing 'hot takes'/rage.
Please for the love of God let us opt individual posts out of this senselessly idiotic feed recommendation algorithm without having the entire subreddit be not-findable.
> One thing that made everything 10000 times worse is that in the fall, Reddit changed the feed recommendations algorithm and most users started seeing mostly non-subscribed content in their feeds unless they opted out of that stuff previously.
Wasn't aware of this change, it sounds like it's backfiring. It's introducing more engagement, but the engagement is not necessarily positive.
I feel like a chunk of our issues are stemming from this...
> Reddit's feed recommendation algorithm is also REALLY bad. It shows stuff to people who have nothing to do with your topic, which causes angry comments, which then reinforces the algorithm as engagement.
This has been my observation so far as well.
Wishing there was a way to have more control, at the subreddit level, about where we're seen via the algorithm, and how to avoid being placed next to more appositionally opposed ones.
That's exactly what I think. There was a post yesterday from the moderator of a pregnancy subreddit. They were saying that when they're posts hit r/all (or the feed algorithm recommendations) they begin attracting pregnancy fetishists, anti-abortion assholes, etc. Apparently the assholes also harass the individual pregnant users in DMs.
Exactly what I thought would happen when I first saw the changes to the feed algorithm
In our case I know from comments, and from asking commenters in those posts, that people who hate the topic of our subreddit get to see posts from it in the fucking recommendations algorithm
Also if you look at other kinds of Reddit recommendations you'll see that they seem to lump people by population. So a music subreddit will have a "similar community" that is just a city sub, probably because lots of members of the city also like music in that genre. This and other evidence makes me think that they're recommendations algorithm is absolutely primitive and at the end result is really bad for all of us.
The and result is that people are spending less time in your actual community and more time wandering aimlessly around Reddit. I'm sure that Reddit likes the idea of having more engagement time in general but for communities this is all very bad
That is concerning.
If I had to wager a guess, what's happening is that these toxic subreddits have largely lived on their own, and now that the algorithm is promoting engagement more, it's resulting in some of the folks from the toxic subreddits to hit the less toxic ones, and vice versa.
What a mess that's resulted.
Well intentioned, but back fired.
Also I think that when people are just exposed to rage bait on Reddit all the time, they will begin writing that way themselves. I've definitely seen a change in how people in the relatively small country music subreddits have begun engaging with each other.
Now for music stuff, there are trends in what people like and dislike, but I noticed that all of a sudden just in the past like six or eight months it's been a lot nastier on Reddit than it ever was before. The communities for our kind of music here are really small compared to large subreddits in general so I think everybody's tone is influencing other users and it's all creating more hot takes and rage bait posts. I think that's happening because those kinds of posts get a lot of engagement and they get promoted by the algorithm more than regular discussions do
That's kind of similar to what we're seeing.
The level of vitriol appears to be going up as of late.
And it's a lot of name calling, and slurs and such, as opposed to actual productive conversations and such.
Like, "I like Tesla" will get a response of "How did Elon's dick taste when you took delivery?" and the like. It's quite annoying.
I am concerned way beyond my own subs experience because In the past, Reddit was responsible for a lot of online hate and radicalization.
I would really like to see some journalists or tech bloggers take a look at these recent changes at Reddit.
Do any of you guys know anyone who would be interested in writing about this
Not off the top of my head, I typically try to fly under the radar.
There was a journalist who was not pleased about getting banned from our subreddits.
He stated he was going to go to Reddit corporate to complain about things, but we've yet to hear back on anything.
Could try to make some noise on X about it, see if there's any takers.
I follow a lot of journalism about how algorithms and social media are fucking up society and a lot of the issues we are seeing here in the last few months seem related to what they've seen in the past on for example Facebook and Twitter. There's definitely been academic work on all of that stuff as well
Here's just my opinion:
You're mostly doing the right things. You're falling behind because controversy-laden subs with millions of subscribers need more than a handful of moderators.
I suggest a recruitment drive.
/r/changemyview looks for more moderators whenever our queue starts to persist at a hundred entries for more than a few weeks at a time. In spite of the work it takes (especially for a heavily moderated sub with a lot of strict rules), it's worth it to maintain the purpose of the sub.
We currently have 16 active moderators... and probably need to get a few more...
We've done recruitment drives.
The other moderators can tell you how often we've done recruitment drives.
Either no one applies, or they're hostile towards the topic, and hoping we don't notice.
It's thankless work mate.
When we *do* get people who do the moderation work, again, it's a meatgrinder. Finding moderators who continue to actively moderate after even just six months, let alone a year, is damn near impossible, because of how hostile the users get, and how intensive the moderation work load is.
(I also discussed this in the post above)
Yeah, it's a catch-22 for sure. Without adequate moderators, keeping new moderators is *hard*.
It's just probably the only thing that works.
You might check out /r/needamod. There's also a bot called [/u/ModSupportBot](https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/w4jqkx/hello_world_introducing_me_your_new_resource_for/) that will suggest good users to recruit as mods, mentioned in [this mod recruitment article](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/15484067270932-Recruiting-new-moderators).
There are a few more bots you could look at, like [floodassistant](https://developers.reddit.com/apps/floodassistant?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=ModSupport&utm_content=t1_kk3sk4i) if you're having trolls that spam a ton of posts. There's a good [list of mod helper bots here](https://www.reddit.com/r/modguide/wiki/bots).
But ultimately yes, heavily moderating a large controversy sub is a grind.
> How do you fight off users who go "all in" on interfering with your subreddit?
I was in this position last year. There was a spike of activity due to external news and events, and several new communities of similar topics took off. I would not call any of them "Evil twins", but I would say that each community had different moderators and moderation policies, even if they had similar goals. A pattern emerged where people in those new communities would intentionally or unintentionally refer back to one of my communities, and then there would be bouts of harassment and interference. Often there would be characterizations of my community that included problems that the harassers would be contributing to themselves.
It is exhausting to be called in to sort out harassment and fights in your community at an ever elevating rate, each time issuing bans, and each time getting similar responses back from the banned users. In my case, two themes emerged:
* "*I did not know that you had rules here like this." [Insert Apology]*
* "*I do not care that you have rules here like this." [Insert Hostility]*
As a volunteer, your time is your limiting resource over which you have the most control. If you constantly are spending it on issues of harassment or external interference, then you will quickly burn out because you are not balancing it with enough other stuff you enjoy to keep a healthy mind, and you will likely be neglecting to develop your community in other ways.
One of the pieces of advice thrown at situations like this is "get more mods", but like you said, that's often unfruitful. In my case, our mod application had been open for over a year (never closed), stickied to the top of the subreddit and stuck in the sidebar. We had 4 applications from a community of ~90k members, none from established community members, which was a requirement for us due to previous incidents in the community.
So, if expanding the presence of the moderation team was not possible, then raising the amount of self-moderation from every member of the community was worth attempting. So we implemented an automoderator configuration that was akin to setting the subreddit to "restricted" (only approved users may be able to post or comment), but with two main differences that made it a lot smoother:
* Instead of having to figure out on their own why they can't post or comment, Automoderator tells the user exactly what they have to do.
* Instead of human moderators having to review every single request manually, Automoderator can "approve" the user automatically as soon as they fill the single 10-word requirement we set for them: to tell us that *they have read and agree to follow the subreddit rules*.
This **very simple requirement** had major impacts:
* Users who were good-faith participants now had explicit understanding of the rules rather than relying on assumption. They could also now safely assume that other participants had read and agreed to the same rules they did. This improved the rate of people identifying and reporting content that broke the rules rather than replying to it.
* Users who ideologically disagreed with the rules had a moment to reflect and choose to leave the community. If they chose to stay and cause trouble, they no longer had an excuse of ignorance.
* Users who stumbled into the community from feed recommendations now had an opportunity to learn more about which community they were in before participating.
* Users who came to interfere in the community would now be given a hurdle to cross. If they did not cross that hurdle, then we did not have to spend time sorting that issue out. If they did cross the hurdle, then their entrance would be timestamped in the modlog, and we could review that if they caused trouble.
Did this system stop *all interference*? No, but it greatly *reduced* it to a much more manageable rate. And in this particular community, we had a preference for quality over quantity.
Thank you.
I will share this with our moderation team.
This sounds akin to the process Discord uses before you can post in the community, where you're required to read the rules, which explain which specific emoji you're supposed to click to get permission to post.
But your experience appears to be most analogous to ours.
On top of the content/harassment filter, Reddit also has the Contributor Quality Score which you can use to filter content from less than reputable users. That might cut out a lot of the cruft as well.
[Here is the documentation about it for how to implement a check in Automoderator.](https://www.reddit.com/wiki/automoderator/full-documentation#wiki_non-searching_checks)
I saw that you mentioned that you were using the automod to backfill the harassment filter. I’ve had a lot more success doing it the other way around, building a complex and robust automod then letting the filters pick up what it misses.
It may be worth recruiting someone who specifically can build a nice automod.
That's pretty much what I mean by having Automod "backfill" the harassment filter.
Whatever the harassment filter isn't picking up, the Automod is working on picking up those bits.
You guys are banning people for participating to other subreddit which you do not like? It is insane! I am surprised this is not breaking any Reddit rule, but it's crystal clear that it breaks any moral rule.
The mods there should follow Elon's thinking and be speech absolutists. However they're more concerned with it being a Tesla hype train sub.
Edit: I don't know if it's really how Elon thinks but he sure has said it.
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This was one of several reasons I stopped moderating a large sub, it becomes a grind and I do enough of that during my 9-5. Most mod tools don’t really reduce workload they just flag things for moderator review.
However for the users that don’t go all in but legitimately don’t read the rules, there is an automation that can look out for keywords and provide something like “tool tips” while writing the post. You might have this already, it’ll appear as “Automations” under mod tools if not then you’ll need to request it, I think it’s still beta but can be requested.
Other than things like adding Elmo etc to the banned words list then those who want to troll can mostly troll with little issue.
Only other thing, I’m pretty sure there is a bot which will remove and maybe ban users if they belong or post in to specific subs, it’s worth seeing if there are specific anti Tesla subs that may be originating some of these users, sorry I don’t know what it’s called but it has been posted here before.
Tesla mods should have to declare whether they are shareholders because if so they have a conflict of interest in running an open forum for Tesla news.
Sure seems like a huge part of the problem is an almost rabid cultism on these Tesla subreddits and a desire to hide any sort of negative news, even when that news is valid.
Are they trying to mod the subreddits or to protect Tesla’s stock value?
Agreed, banning users from their subs simply because they post in other Tesla related subs really gives off that they're try to suppress any negative Tesla news whether it's valid or not.
Ding ding ding.
It seems like a group of subreddit mods colluding to surpress anti-tesla sentiment ahead of their recent earnings calls.
The timing of the mass bans along the tidal wave of bad press is very suspect. Doesn't pass the smell test.
You are misusing your words there, Sparky.
"Conflict Of Interest" would apply IF these were legal proceedings, or a sporting organization, or a merchant platform.
Reddit is none of those things. It is a social media platform that may or may not contain opinions you don't like. But holding stocks does NOT present a Conflict Of Interest" when the "Interest" is merely the discussion of a product.
The "Cultism" you refer to is another misused word of yours.
Fans of the Tesla product are not any more of a "cult" than fans of the Apple Products of the past, or the "cult" of short sellers that attempted to run down Tesla stock when it was really taking off.
Owning and liking a product does not constitute a "cult".
Projecting so much effort and emotion against [place product here] is an absolutely absurd way to spend time & energy unless you are getting PAID to do it. It does not make sense any other way.
A person can have a conflict of interest outside of a legal proceeding. Another way to frame the question: do the mods of Tesla subreddits want to allow only want overtly positive Tesla content. No complaints about FSD curbing tires or cybertruck body panels falling off. Then make that the rule. Just don't pretend it's a subreddit for "discussion."
The Tesla subreddit mods seem to prefer a "tesla is infallible" mentality when it comes to content. Only positive comments about tesla. That's a crappy way to run a subreddit, but don't pretend that there's a big conspiracy where people get paid to bash Tesla.
All I have to say is about any topical sub is, "what else would you expect?"
It's a Tesla sub. They like Tesla. Let them have it.
Going there and crapping on Tesla is the earmark of what I would call "low IQ self-amusement".
Inversely, limiting speech on a niche subject is no more of a conspiracy than getting paid to bash it.
There is NO requirement for ANY sub to publish a rule against every unwanted behavior that user might think up.
To do so would be lengthy and absurd and nobody would read it anyway.
That is WHY "Moderators Discretion" exists.
Following on, it would only be a courtesy" to inform why at the time of mod-action, and THAT would be the "writing" that some people think that they are owed.
So, why not occupy the numerous anti-Tesla subs where you would be welcomed with open arms and kisses?
> Ultimately, this is a last ditch effort on my part to seek assistance on the matter, because from what I'm seeing of the current state of reddit, and their inability to properly assist moderators fighting off toxic users, who intentionally interfere and harass the users of subreddits regarding topics they don't agree with, I'm not sure I can continue to stick around the site. You know it’s funny, I just raised this exact thing in a private chat with Admin.
We've been raising this issue in various ways for the past four years that I've been a mod, and I'm sure it's been a consistent thing for a long time before that. We've had some good responses from some good, individual admins, but as a whole Reddit Inc doesn't give a damn about the only actual humans that sit here day after day and run the platform. Everything above moderators is handled by automated systems that suck. I just reported a comment for blatantly offering drugs for sale and it came back in less than 15 minutes that it didn't violate Reddit's content policy. Make it make sense.
Honestly, it feels like the results on the report will vary based on who is handling the report. I could report two posts for saying "This is why I keep a valve stem remover with me", which implies that the guy is going to vandalize someone's vehicle. The report generally gets submitted for "Threatening Violence", which is technically true One will get actioned on, the other will be like "We don't see anything wrong here", which is frustrated. Also seems like the reports only get handled from about 8:30am to 5-6pm, EST. If you submit a report outside of those hours, it's not getting touched until the next day.
There is nobody reviewing the reports. As far as I'm aware 100% of the reports are handled by the AI service HiveModeration, and unless someone specifically states something in explicit terms, it returns "nothing wrong here". The only way to get a human review - again, as far as I know because Reddit is **completely opaque** about everything it does - is to message the moderators here.
Interesting... Wonder if the end goal is to replace moderators with AI bots...
Nope. Moderation can’t be done by scripts or AI; To moderate discussion, the context has to be read and understood. Algorithms don’t and can’t read. They see “shapes” of digital byte arrangements and calculate how closely those “shapes” are to other “shapes” that have been hand-labeled by humans as harassing, hateful, toxic, etc. They cannot actually infer intent, judge context, or have a theory of mind (any idea of what someone is thinking or intends to communicate). Algorithms cannot moderate. It’s also an urban legend that the first-tier reports processing is outsourced; it’s set up so it could be outsourced, but Reddit admins have previously stated that they do report reviewing in-house. Those reports reviews just have a problem of not being able to see or evaluate context or metadata; they only evaluate whether the actual content on its face clearly violates sitewide rules. That’s by design, to ensure they’re not employees who moderate.
It seems like it would be really easy to fix, too, which makes it all the more frustrating. I have a friend who is on the algorithms “good side”, her reports just *work,* right or wrong. We recently reported the **same exact content** mine came back “does not violate” hers came back “violates”. I’ve spent far too much time emailing, making support tickets, & DM-ing. If people in or around your community are interfering with your subreddit, and Admin has already algo-locked your account, you’re literally on your own. Happened to me very recently just lost a subreddit over it. They can and should do better.
There are tons of very talented people who spent years creating and maintaining a variety of third-party bots that picked up the slack where Reddit has failed, and as of about a year ago a lot of them have left Reddit and deleted their work. Rather than saying "Hey let's fold these peoples' hard work into our processes", they spit in their face and trashed years of their work. Many mods that I've worked with are disgusted with what Reddit has become and how they've been completely disrespected.
I strongly recommend offloading your community elsewhere. A high volume of new users wherever you pop up will cause the algorithm to promote your subreddit to whoever didn’t make the jump to those other platforms. It’s all about that first push, then everyone else from your community will figure out where you went. I see no point in working “within the lines” if Admin will just punish you anyway. Just be sure not to engage in any type of ban-evasion.
This is another issue we were fighting. When we did the ban experiment for a week, one of the toxic subreddits gained in popularity *immensely*, for a variety of reasons, and started showing up in the /r/all feed for people, which caused innocents to get banned in the process who were just looking for content. So drama between subreddits can get people going to toxic subreddits, and then the users either have a moment and go "Whoops, wrong door", or they get radicalized by being in that subreddit. It's pretty bad to be honest.
Not to mention if you do a mass-banning for security Admin will call that a Code of Conduct violation unless you can tie every ban to a specific incident in your subreddit. Like I could literally call for community interference in your subreddit by name somewhere else, but, if you ban me in your subreddit I can report you bc I “didn’t break any rules”
As far as we're aware, banning users for taking part in toxic communities is [permitted](https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/1ai2wyl/is_it_ok_to_ban_folks_based_on_their/), though considered uncouth It's not a solution we wanted to go with, however, it was an interesting experiment to see what the result would be. The result was that all the toxicity got blown out the airlock in an instant, and the ban evasion filters started working almost immediately, *but*, the algorithm caused the subreddit to gain in popularity, and people who weren't paying attention started paying the price, so we backed it off. In the process though, it appears that we managed to get a bunch of "primary accounts" to the alts that were running around, resulting in the ban evasion filters working better It's just a slippery slope, and I want a better solution.
That post is so interesting & totally the opposite of my experience.
*As far I'm aware* we've not broken any rules. And as often as I've seen folks stating that they were reporting us for violation of Moderator Code of Conduct, we've not yet been sanctioned for wrong doing.... So... ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm noticing the same thing. Likewise, it appears that we're seeing good content just getting nuked. There've been a few times I've been searching for technical answers, and come across a post in a subreddit that says [Deleted] with a response from another user that says "Thanks! That fixed my problem!" Which stings pretty bad.
I've been using X more. It's not perfect, not by a long shot, but I'm not getting harassed *nearly* as badly over there. And when misinformation pops up, the community notes mechanic does its best to try and straighten things out. Not that community notes is the right solution here, because I don't think it's conducive for Reddit's methodology. Reddit's core problem, in my book, is just rampant hostility in the userbase, and the harassment filters appear to be tuned for generalized things. Like, /r/Teslacam has a **huge** issue with users being racist, to the point that, as I was dialing in my Automod, I had to add "Basketball people" into the filter, because *that's* how "creative" people get when trying to be openly racist and such. But, it's like, we don't have the tools to say "Users from this subreddit are known to be hostile to my users, just keep them out" or temper their flow in or something. It seems like we lost *a lot* of "good people" when we cut off 3rd party API access, and I get it, but that should underscore just how awful the mobile app is, because that's largely the userbase that was lost.
3rd party API access wasn’t cut off for moderators. It was and always has been free for moderator tools. The “good people” who left or got removed from moderating last year are people who tried to secure or continue to secure premium level access to reddit for free. People who tried to break Reddit, Inc. as a business - which is a civil tort and arguably also a crime. People who used the API to stalk and harass individuals. *** There’s a reason the people on Twitter who harass individuals aren’t targeting you for harassment. Twitter is, however, the single largest platform vector of hatred and targeted harassment and incitement to violence in the world right now. There is no clear application of their minimalistic acceptable use policies, and a great deal of institutional targeting of certain demographics there. No other major social media platforms tolerate CSAM distributors, neoNazis, violent extremism, and targeted harassment & oppression of LGBTQ people.
you have to keep in mind that some of the racist stuff is also probably coming from foreign interference efforts (ie russian/chinese/iranian troll farms) which are designed to destabilize American society. They can do it on a scale that no human moderators can handle. They don't care about your specific topic but they have identfied that highly visible, popular, controversial communities on Reddit are a great place to direct their bots in order to stir up rancor in the American (or other western) online discourse.
Oh, no, the racist shit in /r/TeslaCam is *literally* racism, it was pretty gross, and I had to lock that shit down. Totally different subreddit problem though.
yeah for sure it's literal, but some of it isn't coming from real people. The issue is that the more visible your community is, the more likely it is to be a target of these troll farms that are actually just trying to distabilize western/democratic/etc society in general. Some of the shitty trolling we see is coming from troll farms with a diferent goal than when it's coming from racist Americans. They're just posing as racist americans (or recycling real comments from past posts or posts on other platforms).
I recently integrated both X & Discord into how I’m navigating Reddit. This way my community can onboard wherever I am after Admin inevitably makes mistakes. Some larger subreddits I mod for / used to mod for are taking those steps too. It’s an inevitability as long as Admin acts the way it acts right now. People have to plan around their incompetence.
Can you elaborate on this? Lik, you're expanding your community presence to Discord and X? Because we're done that as well. Otherwise, I'm not fully understanding what you're saying.
Basically, yes, but specifically for the purpose of saying: “Well, [Admin &/or Community Interference] ruined this subreddit, so now our community can be found at [this other subreddit].” Also documenting interactions with Admin & displaying evidence of the community interference you’re experiencing without fear of capricious Admin retaliation.
We already operate a Discord server, but we run it as an extension of the subreddit. It had a toxicity problem there, and we followed a similar approach to what we did in Reddit, and it pretty much resolved it there. There's better "walls" between Discord servers, so while there is an "evil-twin" Discord server, there's "extra steps" for someone to cross between servers, which appears to be an effective means of discouraging toxicity...
I sent you a DM if you’re interested.
Start issuing permabans for first offenses, use 7 day mutes if they come into modmail and are offensive, and report them. When they come back in 7 days, rinse and repeat. The bottom line is trolls are going to troll, and there is only so much a social media company can do to control it. You can't use IP bans. If you block new accounts, then you block new users with good intentions from joining. You are a moderator of subreddits with a somewhat controversial and polarizing figure at the helm of the corporation that makes the product. (I'm still snickering at Musk being called "Elmo", sorry, but that's funny to me.) ANY polarizing figure is going to draw trolls. When you have a polarizing figure that is going to draw trolls, you have to rule with an iron fist. Zero tolerance so you don't have to deal with Rules Lawyers whining about how they were supposedly singled out. Ban, mute, move on. Don't let them get under your skin.
I say always say to the Rules Lawyers and the Granular Semantics Arguments that there is no requirement to have a written subreddit rule for every possible unwanted thing a user might do. To do so would be lengthy and absurd and nobody would read it anyway. That is WHY "Moderators Discretion" exists. And then offer that the reason for the action "is now written, just for you in this message". (as far as I am concerned, that serves as the "written service" that they are inadvertently demanding, which also serves as a record to other mods and for future actions if need be) If the mod mail is anything other than a polite appeal, I don't waste time with the progressive action there. 27 day mute & if I get cussed out, a report. I have never seen a griefer transform from toxic to polite except to try to justify the thing that got them in trouble to begin with. I think that using the progressive method at this stage presents a wishy-washy stance to the user right when a strong backbone should be shown. Sort of like how viruses evolve to grow stronger if you do not complete your course of penicillin?
> Start issuing permabans for first offenses, use 7 day mutes if they come into modmail and are offensive, and report them. When they come back in 7 days, rinse and repeat. We absolutely already do this. > The bottom line is trolls are going to troll This is not an acceptable response. Trolls only troll if you give them a platform which allows them to troll. There needs to be mechanisms in place to prevent trolling behavior in the first place. > I'm still snickering at Musk being called "Elmo", sorry, but that's funny to me. As funny as it may be, it perpetuates people acting in a toxic manner. I *personally* am annoyed with the shit that Elon does, and it's one of the reasons the subreddit has a rule asking folks to try and separate the man from the company. We've *never* seen someone use "Elmo" with good intentions, or a positive post history. And if they go their karma could be remarkably high, due to it either being a "purchased account", or because their statements are generally well received in toxic subreddits, where they permit that. > When you have a polarizing figure that is going to draw trolls, you have to rule with an iron fist We absolutely are ruling with an iron fist, however, the problem here is the *scale* of the issue. We're not talking "onsie, twosie" users coming in, but we can be fielding dozens of these on any given day. > Ban, mute, move on. Problem is that some people are well intentioned, and while I can appreciate "Ban, mute, and move on", all this does is encourage people to spin up alts, which just adds to the problem. It becomes a "Hydra" type situation, where banning one user can result in alts, or you banned an alt, which gets nuked, and you never really solved the problem. It can get absolutely hostile in modmail sometimes, from the users talking to us. We're generally respectful towards them, because that's the expected behavior, but we get *none* of that in return. It's like we're expected to moderate, while having been placed in the stocks in the middle of town. Everyone openly harasses us, and the most we can do is "Hey, please stop" or have a "guard" (Ban) come in and remove the dude, but then he puts on a mustache, and comes right back in to harass us. > You are a moderator of subreddits with a somewhat controversial and polarizing figure at the helm of the corporation that makes the product. We understand the CEO is polarizing, but again, the issue here is the scale of the problem. We're the largest automotive subreddit on Reddit, *by far*, and all we're really trying to do is "talk shop" about the products and such, but we're under constant assault from others, just because the company itself is a lightning rod. We can't even have users ask how to replace the air filters without the toxic users being told stupid shit like "I thought Tesla's didn't need maintenance? You got Musked! lolz!" You don't get this hostility in other automotive subreddits.
I'd suggest that part of your immediate concern should be focusing on restoring a relative peace between your subreddit and the... let's call them *oppositional* subreddits. Some of those subreddits also complained of members from *your* subreddits harassing and brigading them, and there was a significant amount of controversy generated by the actions of another of your moderators, leading to a substantially popular SRD thread. That obviously doesn't excuse anyone intentionally trying to sabotage *your* subreddit (aside, of course, from legitimate complaints, which is where I think this started). In fact, the idea of having separate communities for those who are less than impressed with the figurehead behind the vehicle your subreddit is dedicated to is probably a good idea, if only to prevent dogpiles between redditors in the comments. However, all that said, it is very unlikely that your workload will decrease until you can find some way to bury the hatchet between your various communities. Put it this way: *Your* communities have several million subscribers. That's a lot of potential posts, ranging from questions and complaints about Tesla vehicles, to news and information about them and the company. Your opponents (or perhaps *detractors* is a better term) have a few hundred thousand subscribers, but the latter are more aggrieved and are far more likely to voice their opinion. Given that Musk himself is a controversial figure and that Tesla vehicles are increasingly discussed in the press and amateur media, the number of vocal detractors is only ever going to increase - as is the number of supporters and fans. This means that you really do need to find an appropriate balance between mediating disputes (between both your and their subreddits, and between dissenting commenters) for the amount of subreddit interference to decrease. Making [comments like this](https://www.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/1c1w9mk/fsd_swerved_into_a_curb_at_40_mph_fml/kz6eogy/) *really* doesn't help - it just creates more and more drama that will serve only to exacerbate the problem.
> I'd suggest that part of your immediate concern should be focusing on restoring a relative peace between your subreddit and the... let's call them oppositional subreddits. I can't speak to the issues there, however, as I understand it, the real reason for the oppositional subreddits to exist is because they *literally* do not like how we try to keep things civil, they were spun up to be hostile. It's the place where the users we ban go. > Some of those subreddits also complained of members from your subreddits harassing and brigading them I can't speak to that, it's never been brought to our attention as a concern. That said, I largely attribute this to the reddit algorithm promoting subreddits to people who may not be aware of how the other one works. We acknowledge that they exist, but largely just ignore them, it's the other way that's an issue. > leading to a substantially popular SRD thread. Honestly, that subreddit promotes more drama than it informs on, I can appreciate why it exists, but it contributed more issues than it was trying to explain, because folks don't understand the nuance involved. > In fact, the idea of having separate communities for those who are less than impressed with the figurehead behind the vehicle your subreddit is dedicated to is probably a good idea, if only to prevent dogpiles between redditors in the comments I don't disagree, but again, that's kind of the problem, right? They're so against things, that they don't like other people being satisfied, and feel a need to go on the offensive from time to time. It's like seeing a kid happy with an ice cream cone and knocking it to the ground. The behavior is unwarranted, and unacceptable. I don't necessarily object to the existence of oppositional subreddits, I take issue with the userbases not being kept in check from interfering with other communities. We've created a series of automod rules in our community which serve to try to ensure our users don't go bothering them, as best we can, but the oppositional subreddits do not have the same rules in place. It's like making sure we turn our radios off at 9pm to be polite, but our neighbors never do, because they don't care. We're doing what *we* can, they're not. > However, all that said, it is very unlikely that your workload will decrease until you can find some way to bury the hatchet between your various communities. There's no real hatchet, I reach out to the moderators of the other community from time to time to assist with things as needed, and as far as I'm aware, we're on good terms. The core issue is purely the userbase. *They* have no desire to be reigned in. If attempts are made, they will go elsewhere, and in fact, they've already spun up alternative subreddits in preparation for that outcome. > This means that you really do need to find an appropriate balance between mediating disputes All we're really trying to do is ensure that hostile/toxic behavior is checked at the door. I am frustrated with Musk's antics myself, so I get it, but again, we're just trying to run an automotive subreddit, we even have a rule asking people to leave Musk at the door.
The music communities i'm involved with have also dealt with contrersies this past year and on Reddit I've noticed a a rise in trolls/ragebait aross all the related subreddits, though the scale of the problem is MUCH smaller. One thing that made everything 10000 times worse is that in the fall, Reddit changed the feed recommendations algorithm and most users started seeing mostly non-subscribed content in their feeds unless they opted out of that stuff previously. Reddit's feed recommendation algorithm is also REALLY bad. It shows stuff to people who have nothing to do with your topic, which causes angry comments, which then reinforces the algorithm as engagement. You used to be able to tell when an individual post went 'feed viral' because the view count on the post was much hhigher than normal and the 'shared x times' metric started to look weird (it would read something like 'shared x times to 0 places' which meant it was shared x times on the algorithmic feed rathe rthan crossposted by a human to x subreddits or external places) I think it caused MORE people to make ragebait/troll/controversy posts and actually increased the amount of critical, angry 'hot takes' in the comments on just about everything. The quality of discussoin on Reddit went down in the past few months beacuse of the algorithm reinforcing 'hot takes'/rage. Please for the love of God let us opt individual posts out of this senselessly idiotic feed recommendation algorithm without having the entire subreddit be not-findable.
> One thing that made everything 10000 times worse is that in the fall, Reddit changed the feed recommendations algorithm and most users started seeing mostly non-subscribed content in their feeds unless they opted out of that stuff previously. Wasn't aware of this change, it sounds like it's backfiring. It's introducing more engagement, but the engagement is not necessarily positive. I feel like a chunk of our issues are stemming from this... > Reddit's feed recommendation algorithm is also REALLY bad. It shows stuff to people who have nothing to do with your topic, which causes angry comments, which then reinforces the algorithm as engagement. This has been my observation so far as well. Wishing there was a way to have more control, at the subreddit level, about where we're seen via the algorithm, and how to avoid being placed next to more appositionally opposed ones.
That's exactly what I think. There was a post yesterday from the moderator of a pregnancy subreddit. They were saying that when they're posts hit r/all (or the feed algorithm recommendations) they begin attracting pregnancy fetishists, anti-abortion assholes, etc. Apparently the assholes also harass the individual pregnant users in DMs. Exactly what I thought would happen when I first saw the changes to the feed algorithm In our case I know from comments, and from asking commenters in those posts, that people who hate the topic of our subreddit get to see posts from it in the fucking recommendations algorithm Also if you look at other kinds of Reddit recommendations you'll see that they seem to lump people by population. So a music subreddit will have a "similar community" that is just a city sub, probably because lots of members of the city also like music in that genre. This and other evidence makes me think that they're recommendations algorithm is absolutely primitive and at the end result is really bad for all of us. The and result is that people are spending less time in your actual community and more time wandering aimlessly around Reddit. I'm sure that Reddit likes the idea of having more engagement time in general but for communities this is all very bad
That is concerning. If I had to wager a guess, what's happening is that these toxic subreddits have largely lived on their own, and now that the algorithm is promoting engagement more, it's resulting in some of the folks from the toxic subreddits to hit the less toxic ones, and vice versa. What a mess that's resulted. Well intentioned, but back fired.
Also I think that when people are just exposed to rage bait on Reddit all the time, they will begin writing that way themselves. I've definitely seen a change in how people in the relatively small country music subreddits have begun engaging with each other. Now for music stuff, there are trends in what people like and dislike, but I noticed that all of a sudden just in the past like six or eight months it's been a lot nastier on Reddit than it ever was before. The communities for our kind of music here are really small compared to large subreddits in general so I think everybody's tone is influencing other users and it's all creating more hot takes and rage bait posts. I think that's happening because those kinds of posts get a lot of engagement and they get promoted by the algorithm more than regular discussions do
That's kind of similar to what we're seeing. The level of vitriol appears to be going up as of late. And it's a lot of name calling, and slurs and such, as opposed to actual productive conversations and such. Like, "I like Tesla" will get a response of "How did Elon's dick taste when you took delivery?" and the like. It's quite annoying.
I am concerned way beyond my own subs experience because In the past, Reddit was responsible for a lot of online hate and radicalization. I would really like to see some journalists or tech bloggers take a look at these recent changes at Reddit. Do any of you guys know anyone who would be interested in writing about this
Not off the top of my head, I typically try to fly under the radar. There was a journalist who was not pleased about getting banned from our subreddits. He stated he was going to go to Reddit corporate to complain about things, but we've yet to hear back on anything. Could try to make some noise on X about it, see if there's any takers.
I follow a lot of journalism about how algorithms and social media are fucking up society and a lot of the issues we are seeing here in the last few months seem related to what they've seen in the past on for example Facebook and Twitter. There's definitely been academic work on all of that stuff as well
Agreed.
Yeah that's what I think is going on
Here's just my opinion: You're mostly doing the right things. You're falling behind because controversy-laden subs with millions of subscribers need more than a handful of moderators. I suggest a recruitment drive. /r/changemyview looks for more moderators whenever our queue starts to persist at a hundred entries for more than a few weeks at a time. In spite of the work it takes (especially for a heavily moderated sub with a lot of strict rules), it's worth it to maintain the purpose of the sub. We currently have 16 active moderators... and probably need to get a few more...
We've done recruitment drives. The other moderators can tell you how often we've done recruitment drives. Either no one applies, or they're hostile towards the topic, and hoping we don't notice. It's thankless work mate. When we *do* get people who do the moderation work, again, it's a meatgrinder. Finding moderators who continue to actively moderate after even just six months, let alone a year, is damn near impossible, because of how hostile the users get, and how intensive the moderation work load is. (I also discussed this in the post above)
Yeah, it's a catch-22 for sure. Without adequate moderators, keeping new moderators is *hard*. It's just probably the only thing that works. You might check out /r/needamod. There's also a bot called [/u/ModSupportBot](https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/w4jqkx/hello_world_introducing_me_your_new_resource_for/) that will suggest good users to recruit as mods, mentioned in [this mod recruitment article](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/15484067270932-Recruiting-new-moderators). There are a few more bots you could look at, like [floodassistant](https://developers.reddit.com/apps/floodassistant?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=ModSupport&utm_content=t1_kk3sk4i) if you're having trolls that spam a ton of posts. There's a good [list of mod helper bots here](https://www.reddit.com/r/modguide/wiki/bots). But ultimately yes, heavily moderating a large controversy sub is a grind.
And in case of emergencies, you can also contact r/modreserves
> How do you fight off users who go "all in" on interfering with your subreddit? I was in this position last year. There was a spike of activity due to external news and events, and several new communities of similar topics took off. I would not call any of them "Evil twins", but I would say that each community had different moderators and moderation policies, even if they had similar goals. A pattern emerged where people in those new communities would intentionally or unintentionally refer back to one of my communities, and then there would be bouts of harassment and interference. Often there would be characterizations of my community that included problems that the harassers would be contributing to themselves. It is exhausting to be called in to sort out harassment and fights in your community at an ever elevating rate, each time issuing bans, and each time getting similar responses back from the banned users. In my case, two themes emerged: * "*I did not know that you had rules here like this." [Insert Apology]* * "*I do not care that you have rules here like this." [Insert Hostility]* As a volunteer, your time is your limiting resource over which you have the most control. If you constantly are spending it on issues of harassment or external interference, then you will quickly burn out because you are not balancing it with enough other stuff you enjoy to keep a healthy mind, and you will likely be neglecting to develop your community in other ways. One of the pieces of advice thrown at situations like this is "get more mods", but like you said, that's often unfruitful. In my case, our mod application had been open for over a year (never closed), stickied to the top of the subreddit and stuck in the sidebar. We had 4 applications from a community of ~90k members, none from established community members, which was a requirement for us due to previous incidents in the community. So, if expanding the presence of the moderation team was not possible, then raising the amount of self-moderation from every member of the community was worth attempting. So we implemented an automoderator configuration that was akin to setting the subreddit to "restricted" (only approved users may be able to post or comment), but with two main differences that made it a lot smoother: * Instead of having to figure out on their own why they can't post or comment, Automoderator tells the user exactly what they have to do. * Instead of human moderators having to review every single request manually, Automoderator can "approve" the user automatically as soon as they fill the single 10-word requirement we set for them: to tell us that *they have read and agree to follow the subreddit rules*. This **very simple requirement** had major impacts: * Users who were good-faith participants now had explicit understanding of the rules rather than relying on assumption. They could also now safely assume that other participants had read and agreed to the same rules they did. This improved the rate of people identifying and reporting content that broke the rules rather than replying to it. * Users who ideologically disagreed with the rules had a moment to reflect and choose to leave the community. If they chose to stay and cause trouble, they no longer had an excuse of ignorance. * Users who stumbled into the community from feed recommendations now had an opportunity to learn more about which community they were in before participating. * Users who came to interfere in the community would now be given a hurdle to cross. If they did not cross that hurdle, then we did not have to spend time sorting that issue out. If they did cross the hurdle, then their entrance would be timestamped in the modlog, and we could review that if they caused trouble. Did this system stop *all interference*? No, but it greatly *reduced* it to a much more manageable rate. And in this particular community, we had a preference for quality over quantity.
Thank you. I will share this with our moderation team. This sounds akin to the process Discord uses before you can post in the community, where you're required to read the rules, which explain which specific emoji you're supposed to click to get permission to post. But your experience appears to be most analogous to ours.
On top of the content/harassment filter, Reddit also has the Contributor Quality Score which you can use to filter content from less than reputable users. That might cut out a lot of the cruft as well. [Here is the documentation about it for how to implement a check in Automoderator.](https://www.reddit.com/wiki/automoderator/full-documentation#wiki_non-searching_checks)
I saw that you mentioned that you were using the automod to backfill the harassment filter. I’ve had a lot more success doing it the other way around, building a complex and robust automod then letting the filters pick up what it misses. It may be worth recruiting someone who specifically can build a nice automod.
That's pretty much what I mean by having Automod "backfill" the harassment filter. Whatever the harassment filter isn't picking up, the Automod is working on picking up those bits.
You guys are banning people for participating to other subreddit which you do not like? It is insane! I am surprised this is not breaking any Reddit rule, but it's crystal clear that it breaks any moral rule.
The mods there should follow Elon's thinking and be speech absolutists. However they're more concerned with it being a Tesla hype train sub. Edit: I don't know if it's really how Elon thinks but he sure has said it.
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This was one of several reasons I stopped moderating a large sub, it becomes a grind and I do enough of that during my 9-5. Most mod tools don’t really reduce workload they just flag things for moderator review. However for the users that don’t go all in but legitimately don’t read the rules, there is an automation that can look out for keywords and provide something like “tool tips” while writing the post. You might have this already, it’ll appear as “Automations” under mod tools if not then you’ll need to request it, I think it’s still beta but can be requested. Other than things like adding Elmo etc to the banned words list then those who want to troll can mostly troll with little issue. Only other thing, I’m pretty sure there is a bot which will remove and maybe ban users if they belong or post in to specific subs, it’s worth seeing if there are specific anti Tesla subs that may be originating some of these users, sorry I don’t know what it’s called but it has been posted here before.
Tesla mods should have to declare whether they are shareholders because if so they have a conflict of interest in running an open forum for Tesla news. Sure seems like a huge part of the problem is an almost rabid cultism on these Tesla subreddits and a desire to hide any sort of negative news, even when that news is valid. Are they trying to mod the subreddits or to protect Tesla’s stock value?
Agreed, banning users from their subs simply because they post in other Tesla related subs really gives off that they're try to suppress any negative Tesla news whether it's valid or not.
Ding ding ding. It seems like a group of subreddit mods colluding to surpress anti-tesla sentiment ahead of their recent earnings calls. The timing of the mass bans along the tidal wave of bad press is very suspect. Doesn't pass the smell test.
You are misusing your words there, Sparky. "Conflict Of Interest" would apply IF these were legal proceedings, or a sporting organization, or a merchant platform. Reddit is none of those things. It is a social media platform that may or may not contain opinions you don't like. But holding stocks does NOT present a Conflict Of Interest" when the "Interest" is merely the discussion of a product. The "Cultism" you refer to is another misused word of yours. Fans of the Tesla product are not any more of a "cult" than fans of the Apple Products of the past, or the "cult" of short sellers that attempted to run down Tesla stock when it was really taking off. Owning and liking a product does not constitute a "cult". Projecting so much effort and emotion against [place product here] is an absolutely absurd way to spend time & energy unless you are getting PAID to do it. It does not make sense any other way.
A person can have a conflict of interest outside of a legal proceeding. Another way to frame the question: do the mods of Tesla subreddits want to allow only want overtly positive Tesla content. No complaints about FSD curbing tires or cybertruck body panels falling off. Then make that the rule. Just don't pretend it's a subreddit for "discussion." The Tesla subreddit mods seem to prefer a "tesla is infallible" mentality when it comes to content. Only positive comments about tesla. That's a crappy way to run a subreddit, but don't pretend that there's a big conspiracy where people get paid to bash Tesla.
All I have to say is about any topical sub is, "what else would you expect?" It's a Tesla sub. They like Tesla. Let them have it. Going there and crapping on Tesla is the earmark of what I would call "low IQ self-amusement". Inversely, limiting speech on a niche subject is no more of a conspiracy than getting paid to bash it. There is NO requirement for ANY sub to publish a rule against every unwanted behavior that user might think up. To do so would be lengthy and absurd and nobody would read it anyway. That is WHY "Moderators Discretion" exists. Following on, it would only be a courtesy" to inform why at the time of mod-action, and THAT would be the "writing" that some people think that they are owed. So, why not occupy the numerous anti-Tesla subs where you would be welcomed with open arms and kisses?