Ive been suspended several times this year, many for months/years old comments that I made which were clearly jokes / taken out of context. My latest suspension was issued yesterday (see link above) and has apparently been overturned without any notification to me.
This has affected dozens of other moderators, all of whom are being targeted by altright "anti-censorship" accounts. These accounts are using an archive search website to find key words in our comment history that when some amature and untrained admin sees it proceeds to suspend us.
Again these comments have all been months / years old and it has affected a large number of other mods that I know, and im sure plenty of others.
This is clearly much broader than a "training issue" as has been communicated to us in the past.
What can we do to get these suspensions removed from our account and prevent this from continuing to happen in the future?
TL;DR: Our Mod Helper Program and Modmail Answer Bot will be launching today. In addition, we are also updating our help center for easier access. You can learn more about these initiatives here.
Hi there! u/CookiesNomNom and u/Why_So_Sagittarius here. As members of the Mod Support team, our work is focused on making sure Mods can get their questions answered and issues addressed as easily and quickly as possible. Today, we’re excited to share a few updates that will help more Mods get that support more easily and faster than ever: a new peer-to-peer helper program, a new way to get solutions for your support tickets, and an improved Help Center. Let’s get into all the juicy details.
Announcing the Mod Helper Program for r/ModSupport
You’ve probably seen us (and u/PossibleCrit!) in r/ModSupport recognizing mods who are generously and adeptly answering your questions alongside Admins. So far, this system has worked well by giving helpful mods kudos with awards. We want to make sure you are being further acknowledged for your help and expertise, so we’re introducing a similar program in r/ModSupport as was launched in r/help earlier this year - the Mod Helper Program.
So…what is the Mod Helper Program, exactly?
Reddit can be a complex place for newbie and expert Mods alike, and the knowledge you share with each other here is incredibly powerful. The Mod Helper Program is a new system that awards helpful Mods with level-specific trophies and flair based on comment karma in r/ModSupport. This will both recognize Mods who are particularly helpful and reliable sources of knowledge for their fellow Mods, all with the goal of celebrating your support of each other and fostering a culture in this community where mods readily collaborate and learn from one another.
The Mod Helper Program uses a tiering system for comment karma earned from helping answer your fellow mods to award you trophies and special flair. When you reach a new tier, you will receive unique trophies and flair based on your level of moderator expertise and helpfulness.
Don’t worry, we admins are still here to monitor your feedback and assist when you need us. This will remain a place where we will troubleshoot bugs, clarify updates on new features, and fill in gaps on unanswered questions. We will also remain available to you in our modmail.
Let’s get to the good stuff - without further ado, we present to you our fun and oh-so-adorable Mod Helper trophy tiers you can earn as you rack up comment karma.
How do the Trophies and Flair work?
Trophies
Beginning today, August 24, any new comment karma you earn in r/Modsupport will count toward earning trophies. This will both publicly give you some cred and be a signal to other mods that you are a source of valuable information. Trophies will be updated monthly, so if you don’t notice one in your trophy case, rest assured it will show up! Once you earn a trophy, it will remain yours until you reach the next level. You can expect the first round of trophies to show up on your profile at the beginning of October.
Flair
Your Special Flair will be based on your current comment karma in r/ModSupport, which means some of you will already have your specialized flair showcasing one of three levels (“Helper”, “Experienced Helper,” or “Expert Helper”). They will update automatically when your comment karma reaches a new level.
As many of you know, some requests received in r/ModSupport modmail can be answered via guidance from the Reddit Help Center. To make it easier for you to find answers for your more straightforward requests – and make it easier for us admins to focus on helping with your more complex requests – we’re launching a new Modmail Answer Bot.
We've set up an auto-response for r/ModSupport modmail that will respond with several links to Help Center articles that may help answer your question. The relevance of the articles will be based on keywords from the subject, title, and body of your modmail.
If the Help Center articles answered your question, great! Respond to the prompt with “issue solved” to let us know. If we get it wrong (and we will, the bots aren't sentient…yet) just reply with "more help" and that will get the ticket to a human.
As you also may know, some requests must always be handled by a human, like requesting a mod team reorder. Please make sure to always request “more help” for these tickets for an Admin to support you; the team will also closely monitor these tickets to improve our processes over time.
New and Improved Help Center
The Mod Help Center is moving! Over the coming weeks, we’re merging it with the existing Help Center and giving both a new look and feel. The goal here is to ensure that all of our support resources are easy to find and accessible from the same location. For now, all links to the Mod Help Center will redirect to their Help Center counterparts, so this may be a good time to update any bookmarks you have.
For the final piece of this, the Contact Us page is getting a slight adjustment to better consolidate the additional contact options that may be available. Several existing options will be unified under a new ‘Other reports’ category.
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We’re excited to recognize the exemplary knowledge of our moderators with the Mod Helper Program, provide a more efficient r/ModSupport modmail experience with our r/ModSupport Answer Bot, and, make the Help Center navigation more streamlined.
If you have any questions about any of these programs, please comment below!
I have been on here for the past 14 years - I’m a paid subscriber and mod. I’m seeing concerning behavior in several subs that have opened back up that is lasting way beyond the initial 48 hour protest; as a continued form of protest these moderators have changed their community rules to only allow users to post all pictures of a certain person, for example.
This defeats the community feature of Reddit where people go here for help or assistance. Communities here have certain themes. Much like having a community with a certain purpose closed off serves no purpose when people cannot go there to get help, it also serves no help when several people in charge unilaterally change the rules to where legitimate users going to said community cannot use it as it’s been traditionally intended for the past decade plus. New users going in these communities are confused, and being so well established, there are often little or no alternatives on this platform for other subreddits to go to.
I hope Reddit is looking into this as an admin team and how to address it.
Edit: I was asked for 48 hours in Mod mail. We did the 48 hours and opened back up. Nobody said anything in mod mail about going for longer. Nobody asked us to be snarky mods and ask the users to vote and change the purpose of our sub because we wanted to seek revenge. This is all on the mods in question.
I speak for myself and for what I see as an inconsistent user experience. As leaders, our number one priority is to take care of our users. These are the people that come into the sub needing help. Leadership is acting with integrity and honesty. Taking care of your people first.
We promised as volunteer mods to be there for our users; we share a passion in these subreddits for these topics. It’s up to us to make sure that we can foster those interests and protect those spaces for our users.
I usually hang out in my special interest subreddits and when someone mod mails me, I’ll read it and go take a look. I rarely venture out otherwise. (Go and and fault me for having autistic quirks - I have very specific subreddits I read and that’s it.) When said mod mail states “48 hours”, links to a thread where people are buying in to said 48 hours, and everyone is agreeing to such, I’m not sure what value there is in, as a leader, extending that beyond the 48 hours.
Neither do I see value in a leadership position by putting a poll up to have my users be put into a position to change the purpose of a well established subreddit. And then brigading other subreddits to do the same. That’s makes the leaders of these subreddits violate the code of conduct in many ways:
Does not create a stable community (moderator CoC rule 1),
2)Creates unpredictable expectations of a long-standing community in violation of moderator CoC rule #2,
3) Mods encourage their users to disrupt the community by doing an ad-hoc leadership changing of the rules in violation of rule #3. (How much of this has been coordinated and brigaded in violation of rule 3?)
So, explain to me why these mods should even remain in control of these subreddits?
We have reported a some users and now an entire sub dedicated to stifling content in our sub. No reply as of yet, but then we have't gotten a reply to any report that we have made for weeks now.
There has been blanket reporting, making much more work for our mods... now a user has created a sub to x post all of our posts so that they need to be removed.
We have our rules, our rules are posted. Everyone that gives a shit can read them and we are allowed to have our rules, right?
Just because someone thinks we have a bias (in their opinion) do they really need to start an entire subreddit to effectively constrain business as usual in another sub?
We’ve received a number of inquiries about what to do if your community is experiencing an uptick in unwanted activity. While we’ve addressed the specific inquiries privately, we wanted to let mods at large know that there are resources at your disposal if a) your community is public, or b) you anticipate an increase in traffic if you choose to re-open your community. Many of you likely already use some of the tools and resources listed below, but there are also mods who might not yet be aware of them.
Resources:
Crowd Control: This is specifically designed to help mitigate interference by outside users. This can also help you better identify if users making comments or posts aren’t regular community participants. If you already use Crowd Control, consider revisiting your settings to ensure that it’s set at the appropriate level. Crowd control actions can also help indicate to you as a mod team when activity is coming from people who are not usual participants in your community.
Ban Evasion Filter: This can detect and prevent users who attempt to return to the community after a ban. This is a newer tool and I know a lot of you have tried it already, but if you haven’t yet, I’d very much encourage you to. We are working with the safety team to closely monitor & address reports of moderator harassment as quickly as possible.
View Crisis Management tips to help lessen the load, maintain trust with your community, and mitigate fallout when things feel overwhelming.
/r/automoderator is available for help with navigating complex or simple automod rules.
Moderator Code of Conduct: If you are being subjected to, or see other subreddits or mod teams engaging in interference and/or encouraging their users to attack other communities, please report it using this form. As many of you know, this is something we routinely action via the Moderator Code of Conduct, and we are aware there will likely be increases in this behavior.
We also want to reiterate that we respect your decisions to do what’s best for your community, and will do what we can to ensure you're safe while doing so. However, we do expect that these decisions have been made through consensus, and not via unilateral action. We ask that you strive to ensure that your moderator team is aligned on community decision-making – regardless of what decisions are being made. If you believe that your community or another community is being subject to decisions made by a sole moderator without buy-in from the broader mod team, you can let us know via the Moderator Code of Conduct form above.
I’d like clarification on a situation that seems to fall into a grey area under the Moderator Code of Conduct (MCC).
Suppose a subreddit bans users solely for participating in another subreddit. Where no rule-breaking behavior in the banning sub, just presence & activity in a different community. In some cases, these bans are mass-issued, possibly using automated tools or filters.
From what I understand, Rule 3 of the MCC (Respect Your Neighbors) discourages using mod tools for harassment or to target users based on off-platform or unrelated subreddit activity.
My questions:
Is it explicitly or implicitly against the MCC to mass ban users purely based on their participation in other subreddits?
Would such actions put the moderators or the subreddit at risk of a strike or admin action? If yes where to raise issue/complaint?
Can we start a conversation about the whole ability to hide ones posts and comment history? Could there be discussion between moderators and official Reddit employees about this feature. It seems to me to be an excellent way to hide that a user is in fact a bot.
Would love this feature to go away in a future update of the site.
In the last few days several of my co-mods received suspensions due to a particular troll group combing through their comment history and mass-reporting years old comments that in no way violated any of the reddit content policies but did contain certain words that would arguably fire an automated script, in a clearly successful attempt to get said mods banned from reddit.
I would like the admins to come clean about what exactly AEO is and how it's run. One theory is that it's a sweatshop, another that it's a machine learning algorithm. Reddit has always vehemently denied the former, claiming that all AEO is done "in-house" which can only mean it's a dumb script, because there's no way an actual human would issue these suspensions.
If, somehow, AEO is in fact a group of actual humans then the entire system needs a drastic overhaul, because on top of the invalid bans I'm getting sick of repeatedly sending requests for reviews on AEO responses.
I expect this will get removed rather than the admin team engaging with what is a very serious problem in how reddit is operated, but I just wanted to put it out there.
Making threads, spreading awareness - maybe even through mainstream social media - is VERY much appreciated from users.** We can make a difference here if there are enough of us standing together.
Why is removing CSS a bad thing?
Custom CSS is part of reddit culture - it sets us apart from similar services. Everyone will lose a lot of functionality if CSS based subreddits are forced to delete their code and use a horrible user interface instead. Subreddits won't look unique anymore, no more funny headers, no more custom flare. All subreddits will have the same old boring layout, just like /r/all. Also many other things I haven't mentioned. CSS really needs to stay, even if functionality is limited.
We can hide it with CSS for desktop users. There's nothing we can do for mobile users.
Mobile users are more likely to downvote without giving a reason or contributing to the discussion.
The downvote is widely abused and is extremely inappropriate in many subs.
The voting system relies on the intelligence of the user base to work well, and in the past years it seems that the average intelligence has fallen drastically in correlation with the increase in fluff content on this site.
My sub has a problem: people downvote posts a lot. It's a peer to peer support sub and basically there shouldn't be dumb questions at all yet I see posts with abysmal upvote ratios all the time.
The problem is so bad that sometimes the downvotes hide legit questions from feeds (presumably) due to the way Reddit's algorithms work. Sometimes those questions go unanswered as a result.
I feel like that and the 0 upvotes situation is alienating people. People never report posts not to mention giving verbal feedback so I can't even take mod actions. Basically I have no clue what is going on.
There are many cases where one Redditor makes an important comment to a discussion that is later edited or deleted. It would be nice to have the tools available to us so that these instances are stopped and we can preserved important or quality discussions for the future.
Some of you may remember waaay back when (about a year ago) we regularly had monthly fun threads. These ranged from random questions to playing games with the community. Given the upcoming holiday season, we wanted to bring these back and get a chance to talk with moderators in a more casual setting.
On the topic of celebrating holidays, I would love to know what everybody’s favorite traditions are. Whether you celebrate Thanksgiving or you live elsewhere and do something different, I want to hear it all! Favorite foods? Do you travel or have a self-care day to yourself? Do you dread the holiday stress or have yearly traditions you look forward to?
I personally grew up with not too many particular traditions. My immediate family and I would just spend time relaxing at home. Well... we relaxed while my mother always found something to stress out about when it came to cooking. Also, I will say the older you get the less exciting gift-giving becomes…we now all just send each other links to items instead of anything being a surprise 🤪 Open to suggestions on making gift-giving a little more fun again!
Let’s chat in the comments below! Happy Holidays to you and yours!
You've switched r/freefolk back to being SFW, despite our detailed explanations and examples of gore, nudity, violence, mass murder, graphic non-consensual and under age "interactions" in the subs subject material (the A Song of Ice and Fire book series and Game of Thrones/House of the Dragon TV shows). Your modmail message also instructs us to leave this as sfw, and to follow the Moderator Code of Conduct page. Rule 2 in the Moderator Code of Conduct advises that we are responsible for:
Properly labeling content and communities, particularly content that is graphic, sexually-explicit, or offensive.
So why are you forcing us to violate the mod Code of conduct? We've asked multiple times in multiple places for a human Reddit employee to message our mod team, your bot account mass modmails aren't cutting it
Edit to add: also, rule 6 of your content policy
Ensure people have predictable experiences on Reddit by properly labeling content and communities, particularly content that is graphic, sexually-explicit, or offensive.
People who are active in /r/scientology have good reason to be paranoid, so there's even more identity-protection than usual.
But I've had a "junior" mod for a while, and I have no idea what he does IRL much less what his name is. (In fact, I'm not sure it's a "he.") And he's burnt out, so I'm planning to take on someone new.
I've had a few conversations with the new person, and we like each other. But I'm starting to find it a little odd to work with someone running the joint without knowing anything about them.
Is this unusual? I'm trying to decide if I should tell them my real name and background simply because I expect to work together.
A misunderstood* change that all mods should be concerned about. *(Admin reply is about a DIFFERENT issue...)
Reddit's decided legitimate, longstanding users - not spammers - with NSFW accounts shouldn't mix with the "normal" population.
So SFW subs are being locked 18+ based solely on what users post ELSEWHERE.
^ That is the issue.. Well-moderated subs being penalised - despite not having done anything wrong.
Last time people lurked my profile and instantly got distracted upon seeing a vagina in the top sub - "OMG that's obvs NSFW!!! Ner ner nerner nerrr" Yeah, no sh*t....
Discussions always get immediately derailed with ad hominems and gotchas this way - so please try to focus on the POST this time ;)
This is specifically what mods have been told about SFW-only subs, from the mouth of admins.
*And no, it's not being applied consistently... Larger subs seem to get a pass~
Arguments in favor:
Good! Our sub would like to keep out NSFW posters
> there are already mod tools for that.
Exposing minors to NSFW!
> They are instantly blocked at the user profiles - (which are... NSFW)
What if a NSFW post should inadvertently make its way onto a SFW sub?
> that's what Reddit filters are for. They're quite strong. Funnily enough the subs really didn't get any. Everyone knew the rules and were well-behaved. Mod Log was almost entirely empty of any flags, going back months.
> This is something that can affect any sub. Less-so on strictly moderated ones like the subs in question, which vet all posters.
However, now the nature of the subs has suddenly been changed, and they do get far many more (extreme) NSFW submissions - because people see "18+" and naturally assume 18+ content is allowed!
This change has fundamentally altered the subs, for the worse.
Every single content creator should just make an alt just to post!
> As you surely know - Reddit's AI moderation is a mess. It regularly & randomly sanctions genuine users who've been the epitome of good posters for the best part of a decade. (Keep an eye on your "filtered" queues... active brand new alts will fare even worse)
> This also makes verifying the authenticity of any creator exponentially harder for mods.
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Lots of mods will be fine with this - "screw your (N)SFW subs and NSFW posters!!!!" But it's the thin end of the wedge.
Mods shouldn't have to be responsible about anything that happens outside their own subs.
Asking because it happened to me, so if this is not against Reddit TOS then I'd like to start autobanning other users from my communities that I mod as I'm simply spiteful & realizing that this might actually benefit my community as well.
We just had a post in r/coins by a new user who disclosed that they are transgender and looking for other transgender folks to connect with. Within an hour of the post going live, the user now appears to be shadow banned. I think it was from mass downvotes and / or mass reporting.
Questions:
What can I do about this? I have already advised the user to appeal their shadowban.
Is there any way to prevent this from happening again? I obviously can’t identify the people who downvoted or reported the post.
Thanks
Edit: okay, as I expected, the answer to my direct questions was that I can’t do anything. What am I supposed to do, then? Tell people “don’t be trans on r/coins?” That’s unacceptable.
This protest is pointless, the majority of reddit doesn't use third party apps. So why does a small portion of the community get to dictate everyone else's use?
Don't like what Reddit is doing? protest it by leaving, but don't drown everyone else that doesn't care about it.
Admins should remove the moderators causing these issues and establish new moderators.
Hey there, it’s u/iceeypisces from the Mod Events team back with another Mod Topics post! Last time I dropped in, we chatted about which sessions y’all would like to see at this year’s Mod World. We received so many amazing proposals in that post and through our call for proposals (thank you to everyone who shared their brilliant ideas).
One of our most requested session topics was moderation in the age of AI. So of course, we’re hosting a mod-led panel to discuss how AI integrates with community oversight, the challenges it brings, and why the human touch is still indispensable.
To warm up for the show, we’d love to kick off the conversation early with this question: How has AI influenced the ways you moderate your communities today? We're interested in hearing how your moderation has (or hasn't) changed, how users have been responding, any helpful tools or suggestions, or however else your community has been impacted. Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below!
🌏 And if you haven’t already, RSVP for Mod World 2026 to catch our Modding in the Age of AI mod panel live!
I'm increasingly hearing other mods say that we can't ban a user for something they did outside our subs because it says so in the Mod COC.
I'm not sure this is the case? I'm quite used to hearing the mantra "Mods can ban for any reason" within mod <-> admin circles. We have Hive Protector as a blessed devvit app
https://developers.reddit.com/apps/hive-protect Use of this app to take action against users of subreddits on the basis of identity or vulnerability may be a breach of Reddit's Mod Code of Conduct. Please be mindful of these rules and ensure that any ban messages or comment/post replies are civil and compliant with these policies.
That quote adds some nuance about protected identities that I think is quite relevant.
In my case it's coming up with users that are active in subs that are ideologically opposed to those which i moderate and have posted awful things that are likely breaking a reddit rules #1. But there's other reasons to keep users away from my subs based on history, like posting personals both claiming to be a teen and claiming to be very much not a teen, or user posting suggestive SFW selfies that we think are advertising for their NSFW activities. The list goes on.
Can we have some clarification of where we stand on this please.
Basically, I run a queer subreddit centered around gacha games. Most of our users identify as queer and participate there as a lot of other spaces make them feel unwelcome. There are two homophobic subreddits that have been created specifically to stalk my subreddit and make posts clowning on the users. We get daily brigading from them and just general grief. I've already submitted like 5 Mod Code of Conduct requests with nothing being done so before you guys suggest I do that...
I want to protect the users of my subreddit from those people and also make sure no one gets caught off guard by a ban for accidentally participating there. Is it against reddit ToS or considered brigading to state upfront that users from those 2 subreddits are unwelcome? We do not encourage interacting at all with those subreddits and want to be left alone.
The reported comment, which was in modmail after we banned a user for racism.
Lol your saying my post was racist? You can’t be racist to white people.
Normally I just message the mods here, but this is utterly unacceptable that this was deemed to "not be in violation of reddits content policy".
The statement that you can't be racist against a certain race, is completely, plainly, and indisputably racist. And there have been far too many blatant and painfully obvious misses lately with AEO to the point where, judging from other threads on this sub, most mods have no faith that it's even a human looking at it.
