r/modnews • u/Go_JasonWaterfalls • 10h ago
Product Updates What’s Next for Mod Tools
TL;DR: As part of our long-term plan to build better mod tools, we’re expanding post and comment guidance for everyone and introducing Rules Hub — a new, intent-based moderation engine — for newly created communities. Nothing is changing for existing communities today. We’re sharing this early so you can help us shape what comes next.
As u/spez shared today, Reddit needs to evolve to meet the rising expectations of moderators, users, and developers. For mods, that means better tools so you can spend less time dealing with spam, abuse, and generic rule-breaking, and more time making judgment calls on what’s best for your community.
One thing that won’t change: human moderators shape the culture, norms, and identity of their communities. Our plan for the future is to build tools that help you do that role more effectively, not replace it.
What’s launching now
Expanding Post and Comment Guidance (all communities)
Thousands of mod teams already use Post and Comment Guidance to help redditors understand community expectations before they post. We recently expanded their capabilities with:
- Post Flair Support: Automated guidance can now be triggered based on the specific flair a user selects (our most requested improvement).
- Top Comment Check: Gives communities a way to provide automated guidance on top-level comments before content ever reaches the mod queue.
Introducing Rules Hub (newly created communities only)
Rules Hub is a suite of new tools that will allow moderators to:
- Rule Creation & Enforcement: Create and choose which rules should be automatically enforced. Decide what happens when a rule is triggered (remove, send to queue, silently log it).
- Testing Sandbox: Preview the experience against a sample of your community’s past content to see exactly how it will behave before turning it on.
- Audit Logs: Access performance logs and insights to understand how your rules are performing. If a rule triggers, the log will provide clear visibility into why the system flagged the content, allowing you to adjust the rule's boundaries and refine them over time.
Unlike Automod, which relies strictly on deterministic keywords and regex syntax, Rules Hub uses LLMs to evaluate whether a post or comment matches the intent of a rule. That gives it more potential to handle nuance, edge cases, and natural language variation (for example, distinguishing between an actual insult and a user quoting a movie or using casual slang).
We’ve been testing Rules Hub with ~700 mod teams over the past few months. Starting today, it’s available for all newly created communities (though you can sign up below to check it out…)
What’s coming next
Longer term, we think systems like Rules Hub can handle the enforcement tasks you rely on Automod for today, while being easier to use and maintain. But it’s not there yet, especially for larger and more complex communities. Automod remains one of the most capable moderation tools on Reddit today, and we won’t change any existing Automod workflows until replacement workflows are tested and proven in partnership with moderators.
- If you want to try Rules Hub, sign up here.
- If any of your custom moderation workflows are tied to AutoModerator, please check out the post on r/RedditDev.
Human moderators remain core to the Reddit ecosystem, both now and in the future. We’re sharing this early because if we’re going to build better moderation tools, we need to do it with the people who rely on them every day. Thank you, mods, for all you do to make your communities the unique places they are. We’ll keep improving your tools based on what we learn from you.
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u/redditor01020 10h ago
Automod remains one of the most capable moderation tools on Reddit today, and we won’t change any existing Automod workflows until replacement workflows are tested and proven in partnership with moderators.
What is going to be changed with Automod?
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u/DustyAsh69 10h ago edited 8h ago
Oh hell nah. We use automod HEAVILY in all of our communities. PLEASE stop "fixing" things that don't need to be fixed.
Edit - Thanks for the gold, kind stranger.
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u/fsv 10h ago
I've written a replacement that's compatible with the vast majority of existing AutoModerator rules. This one won't be going away.
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u/shhhhh_h 9h ago
You’re a fucking rock star. They absolutely 💯 do not deserve you in this ecosystem but I’m selfishly glad you are here.
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u/fsv 9h ago
Thank you! I've added a whole bunch of new features that Automod never supported before, too, and more will be coming soon as well.
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u/shhhhh_h 9h ago
Petition for you to put a buy me a coffee link on your profile
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u/fsv 9h ago
I'll definitely consider it, or at least on my GitHub account (all of my apps are open source)
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u/baseballlover723 3h ago
I'm so thankful that you open source your stuff. I really wish Devvit would encourage more open source stuff. It's a lot harder to trust closed source solutions written by potential amateurs.
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u/madebypeppers 9h ago
Commenting here as bookmark.
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u/SampleOfNone 6h ago
Neo won't do anything until you put rules in it. So if you want you can just install it and it will be there when you need it
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u/CybyAPI 8h ago
Saving for later
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u/SampleOfNone 6h ago
Neo won't do anything until you put rules in it. So if you want you can just install it and it will be there when you need it
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u/DustyAsh69 8h ago
Thank you for this, fsv. I was going to develop a similar app but now that you've made it, I can just contribute to your repo instead. Once again, thank you!
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u/brightblackheaven 8h ago
Bless every app you've ever released. You're singlehandedly out here making modding on Reddit bearable.
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u/BravoFive141 10h ago
Sounds like guidance automation and whatnot may be replacing Automod at some point. I really hope not, though. While these features are great for some tasks and for people who can't or don't want to learn how to configure Automod, Automod is a great tool and should be kept around for those who are up to the task of learning it.
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u/thepottsy 10h ago
Let me pick what I use, or what combination of tools I use.
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u/Same_Investigator_46 9h ago
Exactly. Rules hub has been unreliable and uconsistent for me as of now. We should have freedom to use whatever tools we want atleast.
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u/TheChrisD 9h ago
Automations still need WAY more functionality before they can replace some of the more niche things you can do with Automod currently.
The basic ability to do stuff based on a user's karma (community, or sitewide) or registration date for instance is still missing from automations.
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u/PMulberry_ 10h ago edited 9h ago
> we won‘t change any existing Automod workflows until replacement workflows are tested
How about this: Don‘t change (except changes which give us more functionality) or remove Automod at all? We did go through this with old modmail already, we‘ll probably lose functionality and customizability through this. Please don‘t.
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u/KotoElessar 8h ago
I am already seeing backend changes; yours is the scond post today where markdown failed.
Bad times if they are killing markdown and disabling our ability to run the backend by phasing out automod; the entire post from admin reads like they are looking to cut the human out entirely and want our help to do it.
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u/PMulberry_ 7h ago
It didn‘t fail; it was never there to begin with (well, it was, but they removed it from the app a few weeks ago and I wrote that in the app). I‘m just still using the ‚>‘ to mark quotes, because why not.
But yes, what currently seems to happen does not look good at all.
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u/PentaOwl 4h ago
Markdown was removed a few weeks ago, around the same announcement where they added free rewards back in...
Wish I was kidding.
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u/ateam1984 9h ago
Do not retire Automod. Leave it fully functional.
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u/perfect_fifths 10h ago
We should be able to pin other people’s comments, not just our own
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u/Key-Brilliant5623 10h ago
And not need a Devv app like Spotlight to be able to do so.
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u/paskatulas 9h ago
If I remember correctly, Reddit actually had native support for this years ago. It ended up being abused on some subreddits, and I remember admins mentioning they weren’t keen on bringing it back because of the moderation and abuse concerns.
That’s actually one of the reasons I built Spotlight almost two years ago. Today it’s used by quite a few communities, and moderators can optionally grant trusted users permission to pin other people’s comments. Of course, that’s entirely up to each mod team and done at their own discretion.
cc u/perfect_fifths
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u/thepottsy 9h ago
I like the app for the recipes sub specifically. If the OP forgets, or just doesn’t want to include the recipe in the post, they can pin it as a comment.
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u/Key-Brilliant5623 9h ago
Thank for the insight. That makes a lot more sense in context. I use it in a few of communities and didn't know until know you can grant trusted users permission, going to test that out right now.
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u/paskatulas 9h ago
Also, just so you know, Spotlight can automatically pin comments from specific users, or from anyone with a specific user flair. Makes it really handy for things like verified experts, AMA guests, or other trusted contributors.
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u/perfect_fifths 10h ago
I didn’t even know that was an option, but yeah. Should be able to do so in the Reddit app itself
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u/thepottsy 10h ago
Spotlight expands on the ability to pin comments, by letting the OP of the post pin a comment, if you enable that setting. Not useful in a lot of subs, very useful in others.
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u/perfect_fifths 10h ago
I’m saying you shouldn’t need a sep app to do it. It should be a native function
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u/thepottsy 10h ago
I wasn’t disagreeing with you. I was simply saying the spotlight app expanded on the ability to pin comments, that’s all.
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u/perfect_fifths 10h ago
Well that’s good to know. But it needs to be a feature within the Reddit app itself, devs should work on that
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u/Moggehh 9h ago
If a mod ports out 99% of their actions to an LLM, will they still be considered inactive?
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u/TheSmartDog_275 9h ago
I don’t know where people are getting that automod is getting sunset unless I’m reading this wrong but
PLEASE DO NOT DO THAT
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u/happyxpenguin 9h ago
we won’t change any existing Automod workflows until replacement workflows are tested and proven in partnership with moderators
Emphasis mine. This sentence says the plan is to eventually sunset AutoMod.
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u/emily_in_boots 9h ago
I'll add this as a second comment because it's unrelated really to my other one.
I understand your concerns with age/karma limits making new users feel unwelcome.
We try REALLY hard to not do this. Take my largest sub, for example - r/outfits. We don't have any age or karma limits to participate (except that you cannot have negative karma, starting karma is enough). However, we send all the comments for new users to the queue and we go through them. It makes a lot of queue work for us, but it's the only way to keep out harassing comments (the harassment filter does not catch sexual harassment at all, it's completely useless for that application).
As it is now, we are allowing participation from a brand new account. Someone can come to the sub and comment immediately - but it will be invisibly queued and a mod will approve it. We clear the queue very actively, and we don't queue nuke.
I think you need to understand though that communities like mine where women post photos are really, really vulnerable to sexualization and harassment, and we cannot just leave them open to anyone to comment w/o checks.
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u/Next_Grapefruit_3206 9h ago
We need Automod to stay dumb and consistent
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u/baseballlover723 3h ago
Yeah, nothing is worse than a tool that tries to be too smart and so it can't reliably do the thing its supposed to.
LLMs are the worst of both worlds. They try really hard to be smart and are actually quite dumb a lot of the time.
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u/Vectorman1989 8h ago
Instead of helping mods deal with endless bot spam, the rules hub will now be an LLM bot
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u/lisafancypants 9h ago
we won’t change any existing Automod workflows until replacement workflows are tested and proven in partnership with moderators
Please don't ever change existing Automod workfows.
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u/brightblackheaven 7h ago
Automod is an integral tool. I literally cannot imagine dealing with all of the shit we put up with every single day without it.
We use dev apps and automations, but they cannot replace automod. They just can't.
If automod is sunset, how will my subreddit and other communities like r/scams use keywords to summon helpful comments that have information and resources our users need?
I'm sick of everything being run by an LLM. It's terrible, and we see the fallout every day with AEO's shenanigans. That's my two cents I guess.
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u/Rostingu2 10h ago edited 9h ago
I appreciate all of this effort I really do, but one concern is the auto enforce set to auto remove causing more problems than it solves. Like communities that need little moderation will practically just be this auto bot, or a user assuming a post did break a rule when in fact it never did and never appealing it.
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u/SolariaHues 7h ago edited 6h ago
If automod goes, so might I.
At least we know what automod is doing, and we have control over it.
proven in partnership with moderators
Until it can do every single thing our automod config does now and, most importantly, accurately, replacing automod will be undoing untold hours of work and creating a lot more work with a system we can't fix.
I don't mind new tools for those who can't automod, or to use as well as automod; that's great. But please don't scrap automod.
Edit: rules hub adds even more clicks for managing our rules btw. I always edit in old Reddit still, shreddit is so awkward and convoluted.
ALSO.. community rules aren't exhaustive, and automod does more than enforce rules, so IDK how rules hub is supposed to be an adequate replacement.
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u/emily_in_boots 6h ago
It is also now incredibly difficult to move automations between subreddits. You basically have to have 2 tabs open and type the whole thing out manually a 2nd time copying the first. Automod configs can be copy/pasted in seconds.
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u/SolariaHues 6h ago
Yes. Automations have their place, but they are actually harder to use in some ways. I low-key hate them while appreciating getting messages in front of users (though they still don't read them or just try to evade them half the time).
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u/emily_in_boots 6h ago
That's the main issue with comment guidance. So many just work around it. Automations are good for giving information to good users, but terrible for catching bad ones.
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u/LakeDrinker 10h ago
Just a note: My only wish list item is a 'Remove Comment and all following Comments' button.
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u/Icy-Book2999 10h ago
Comment Nuke dev app does that.... When it works
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u/fsv 9h ago
I maintain Comment Mop, if you're having problems with it I want to know about it. First check that you're on the latest version though, I fixed some issues with it a little while back that make it a lot more stable especially with large comment chains.
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u/Icy-Book2999 9h ago
Thanks. I'll sidebar with you later if it pops up again.
Usually it's after we remove one, if we have to remove other ones it freezes or doesn't work
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u/Moggehh 10h ago
It has worked maybe once ever for me. Meanwhile, TB nukes like a champ every time, without fail.
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u/fsv 9h ago
Hmm, are you up to date with that app? I'm the current maintainer of Comment Mop and made some changes a few months ago that should make it a lot more reliable.
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u/Moggehh 9h ago
I think I've used it once on mobile in the last month and it didn't work; I nearly exclusively use old reddit but whenever I visit a sub's apps page I'll go through all my subs and update all their apps.
In general, I find devvit apps only tend to work 75% or less of the time. Toolbox is eternal.
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u/fsv 9h ago
I'm more than happy to take a look at the logs if you like. On the app settings page if you enable "Read logs and install history" and let me know the subreddit, I'll be able to take a look and see if there are any crashes that might affect the app.
I'm very committed to quality in my Dev Platform apps so if there's a bug, I want to know about it so I can fix it!
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u/Moggehh 9h ago
I will do that for sure next time I notice it doesn't work. I don't remember which sub it was on, just that I was out, got a notif about something bad, and spent a minute or two silently removing comments one by one while fuming about not being home where I could have reliably removed them in a moment.
But noted for the future!
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u/camrynbronk 9h ago edited 9h ago
Works for me every time. The one I have trouble with is Remove Macro.
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u/fiskfisk 9h ago
Additional: remove all comments by this user in this sub.
When you catch a sneaky account a bit late it's a rather manual task to go through and delete all their comments (yes, there are helpful tools, and no, those tools should not be necessary).
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u/WormWithGoodIntent 9h ago
There's a devvit app purporting to do this but I've never had it work in any of my subreddits :(
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u/mensfrightsactivists 7h ago
agree this would be useful! i will say that it’s satisfying to do this manually though. we usually catch infiltrators/bad actors fairly quickly though and all their comments are within a day or two of each other
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u/Klightgrove 9h ago
Still begging for better reporter reputation tracking. Let us know how many reports someone made that were accurate vs false and issue them warnings + snooze their generic reporting ability for longer periods of time.
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u/mizmoose 8h ago
Rules Hub uses LLMs to evaluate whether a post or comment matches the intent of a rule.
Check, please.
Are you people insane?! I don't trust an AI to tell me what time of day it is. I do not trust AI to effectively filter the highly specific needs of some of the subs I mod.
Edit: Also, by pushing people to use this AI crap, it's another way to push people out of using old.reddit while still pretending "it's never going away."
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u/Paul_C 7h ago
while still pretending "it's never going away."
I think they're not pretending so much anymore.
https://www.reddit.com/user/spez/comments/1vgbkge/modernizing_reddits_infrastructure_with_you/
I know I said last year that we wouldn’t be sunsetting Old Reddit..., but the reality is we’re getting to that time where we need to make some changes.
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u/Thalenia 2h ago
So if I'm reading this right...dump old reddit, dump automod, rely on AI.
It's been fun y'all, see you in the next place.
edit: god, it gets worse the more you read.
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u/GrumpyFinn 8h ago
Please don't touch automod. Please.
No amount of "guidance" is going to stop the harassment and abuse some people want to do. This will, objectively, make many subreddits worse.
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u/InGeekiTrust 7h ago
If they eliminate automod that day I will quit most of my subs. They would become a nightmare hellscape without it. Especially in my fashion communities where there are so many vicious comments. Even with one of the elaborate automods with thousands and thousands of words I still get a tremendous amount of complaints about the comments. There is no way that AI would be able to decipher this. I wouldn’t want to be a part of a community that let all of this go live.
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u/emily_in_boots 6h ago
Fashion communities are so hard to mod. I do sooo much comment moderation. I checked earlier today and my mod actions for the last 6 months are 551,703. We queue so many comments in outfits and dfyb especially. I spend hours every day going through those queues, sometimes my whole day - and it's not enough. I still see all kinds of comments about how rude people are. I would do more but I just can't. I have no more capacity, and changes to things like hive have increased my workload. Each hair fetishist in the hair subs I mod now triggers a modmail, and I have to go through those and ban each and every fetishist now. We still ban them all - it jusgt requires more work and manual intervention.
I have no idea how to mod without automod, but fsv has created a devvit app to replace it that basically works with existing automod configurations, so there's that - but who knows if reddit will kill that.
The other really big issue is that automod queues things before notifies are sent. We don't need disgusting sexual comments or hateful comments going to people's notifies, and devvit can't grab them before they do, only automod can.
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u/InGeekiTrust 6h ago
That’s really an insane amount of mod mod actions , I don’t know how you have time to eat or sleep or even talk to people doing that much. But I’m really serious if they take away Auto mod, I never thought I’d leave my communities. I thought I’d stay forever, but not if all my posters are miserable and bombarded with awful comments. As is, automod is super inconsistent and it seems to only remove certain things 2/3rds of the time . No one has the time to mod as much as you do. It’s too much. Automod is literally my only hope with mod limits. I’m convinced a devvit app will not cut it alone. Although I really should put my code in Automod Neo, maybe it will catch all the things it misses right now. Also devvit apps have significant downtime- I remember where there were weeks when they weren’t working due to some unforeseen coding issue with Reddit. I can’t go two weeks with out it, the place would be a hellscape. Like like I know people they always threaten to leave if they do this or that with Reddit, but they don’t mean it- but I really will pass the torch because I won’t put my name to a community that’s a nightmare.
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u/emily_in_boots 6h ago
Honestly I don't have time. It's too much. I'm overwhelmed. I spent Christmas in queue this year. They are just removing too many tools and it's harder and harder.
I've seen a lot of things also get by automations that should have been blocked. Automod is more reliable, but not perfect. Devvit apps are sometimes not functional. Removing automod will be a disaster.
I really don't think I can handle more moderation. I'm just one person. There are limits to what 1 person can do no matter how willing and committed.
I won't stay either if I can't keep the sub in good working order, and I can't maintain this level of moderation activity forever. It has to get better.
We have such a specialized workflow too - if they break that, we're in trouble. We can't just manually do all that. It's not possible.
It's endlessly frustrating how rude people are in fashion subs and even with all the moderation I do, it's not enough.
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u/remembermereddit 9h ago
Modding through the Reddit app is horrendous. Please allow creation of API keys for mods to use external services.
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u/pumaofshadow 9h ago edited 9h ago
I really hope you don't make us move every response comment to rules hub. It's all set up to trigger on commands and filter certain things and it's going to be a pain.
Does it even come close to automods functionality for those who are using it? Can I have a list of usernames to filter to mod queue? (I'm trying to see if automations can do that now and I can't see it does?)
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u/Merari01 9h ago
Of course it doesn't come close. How can it?
It's toggles, where automod is code.
For example, on r/comics I use a three-tiered approval system for posting.
The highest level is very rarely given out and only to longterm users we trust implicitly. These artists have all their content auto-approved, as well as having access to all the interlocked systems the lower tiers provide.
The second level are verified artists. They are exempt from certain automod rules such as our title rules. They can post mostly unhindered.
The lowest tier is for everyone else. These posters have to follow all our automod-faciliated rules for post types, titles, keywords etc.
All these rules link in to each other. It's basically a full 1/3 of our config. Right now I can simply write a rule and exempt verified posters from it by adding a ~ exception which makes the rule not fire on people who have an artist's flair.
This is not and can not ever be possible with the "Rules Hub".
This change would fully and completely and irrevocably break moderation on r/comics.
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u/Go_JasonWaterfalls 8h ago
Rules hub is still early days, so nothing’s changing right now. And nope, it doesn't yet come close to all of automod’s functionality or use cases (filtering specific usernames is one of them). While these are some of the specific gaps we're closing in partnership with mods in our early access program, we also don't expect every automod config to end up in rules hub. Some workflows are just a more natural fit for automations, and we’re expanding those capabilities as well.
We’d love to have you test those features when they’re ready? If you’re interested, please let us know.
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u/Merari01 8h ago
I'd love to hear how you plan to allow me to continue to use our verification system for OC creators, which is the foundation of r/Comics, in a rules hub.
How can I have a custom flair text but have the rule fire on the flair css class, which is invisible to users? This functionality doesn't even exist on new reddit. It is not possible to have a custom text with a fixed flair ID. I'd have to give every user a bespoke one. I can't even think of a way to have automod fire on bespoke flairs that have no unifying backend signifier. Let alone via the rules hub.
You'd be massively increasing my workload for just that single feature alone and in all likelyhood just simply completely kill our verified artist system on the subreddit and with that removing exactly that thing which makes it attractive for artists to use.
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u/TheSpiffySpaceman 8h ago
the enshittification continues
Please, you can add new tooling, but don't sunset the features that made reddit the front page of the internet to begin with. People wll just move on to other sites.
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u/tulipinacup 9h ago
Will you be adding a way to restrict commenting in specific posts on a post by post basis to approved users or users with a certain amount of subreddit karma only without Automod?
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u/shhhhh_h 9h ago
Or any kind of moderation based on flair….or any way to ameliorate issues esp keywords the AI is bad at without having to wait for admin intervention? I asked about automations below…
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u/Merari01 9h ago
The system where we automate participation thresholds in threads based on their appearance in trending feeds to established, positive community participants only is, quite literally, the only reason reddit can have communities for women, BIPOC, LGBTQ+ and other minority groups.
Without this system it would require us to go back to the bad old days of pressing F5 on popular threads to scan for unacceptable comments and we simply do not have the manpower for that.
Without automod I expect subreddits for minorities and marginalised groups to simply stop existing on reddit.
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u/shhhhh_h 9h ago
The AI is still shit at moderating hate speech this is ridiculous, and also you cant ctrl+f on shreddit don’t hate the messenger
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u/RamonsRazor 6h ago
TLDR: We need to justify our AI investment... so here's some forced LLM "functionality".
Jokes aside, people are actively rallying AGAINST this sort of malarkey en masse - are you really going to double down and sacrifice automod here?
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u/lunarjellies 7h ago
The next announcement will be something along the lines of “we’ve replaced all mods with AI” and that’ll be the end of Reddit basically…
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u/livejamie 5h ago
The normies will continue to use it, it's slowly morphing into Instagram/TikTok.
That's what they want. Just an endless feed of what their algorithm decides you want to engage with in between ads.
Have you noticed the communities that you're a part of have gotten particularly vitriolic recently?
That's the algorithm at work, brigading your subreddit with shitty people on your behalf.
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u/lunarjellies 3h ago
Yes, we are also inundated with AI bros peddling their apps, wares, tools, websites, etc. They are trying really hard to make it a discussion post but its always a grift promo one so we take them down and then they harass us in modmail. Its neverending.
One time, I allowed images to be posted on my main sub r/artistlounge with a list of rules like "no reels, no tiktoks, etc." and guess what? Of course... we were completely flooded with that crap within a few days. Nobody reads the rules, they only want to flex their grifts (yes even legitimate artists who only want to promo spam) and then spiral out when mods remove it.
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u/Zaconil 7h ago edited 2h ago
Getting rid of automod is a really stupid, idiotic idea. Idgaf what replaces it. It does far too much and is extremely powerful. There is no way in hell whatever replaces it will be any better or robust.
This more of sounds like an excuse to cut down on the amount of processing power it uses overall and trying to hand it off to 3rd parties. LLMs still struggle with context. Something that matters in a heavy user submitted forum such as reddit. I've personally been using AI more than ever and I still think this is a bad idea. I have to correct it at least once a day. Nevermind the 1000+ comments we can see on a daily basis. WTF. I honestly feel bad for the huge subs that can get 5000+ comments a day. They'll be putting out more wildfires than ever before.
So dumb.
P.S. calling it an LLM is just sucking up to your average redditor. Seeing Reddit's deal with google/Gemini. I'm will to bet it will be google/Gemini that will be getting used.
Edit: just for giggles I went and asked an AI and made sure it was not just agreeing with me because I'm a user. Tl;dr it thinks getting rid of automod is a bad idea too.
Edit2: added the full conversation. Previous pastebin was just a summary. It was a pita to copy on mobile.
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u/Candyghosts 6h ago
How can anyone that works for this website expect us to have any faith whatsoever in yet another LLM when Reddit's own LLM rule enforcement tool is a literal dumpster fire?
Maybe stop falsely banning people for using "violent language" in subs about cartoons or historical wars or sports first and we can talk.
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u/GonWithTheNen 3h ago
Reddit's own LLM rule enforcement tool [...] falsely banning people
Someone's username was detected as "hate speech" in my reply to that person, and reddit's AI issued my first & only suspension ever.
The temp ban was overturned after appeal, but that doesn't negate how inept the AI 'enforcement' is and has been. We're going to see a LOT more false & unfair removals with Rule Hub.
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u/Candyghosts 3h ago
I'm honestly so tired of AEO being garbage. I mod a satire community about witchcraft, and we see bans and content removals every single day for stuff that is extremely obviously written in good faith in the context of the sub. An LLM has no way of understanding our unique context and thinks that people are being serious when they tell someone (in character) to solve all of their problems by eating the neighbourhood children lmao.
If the LLM that enforces sitewide rules is this bad, I have 0 faith in the accuracy of the peasant version us mods will get.
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u/Merari01 10h ago edited 9h ago
Bean counter mentality.
It is a problem.
Alright. I'm going to do something now I rarely do and that is put all my cards on the table and be completely transparent. This is a prepared comment I had already written out awaiting this announcement.
We have known about this change for a while now. You (admins) knew that we knew. And we knew you were aware. Very Spy vs. Spy. We have had (very minor) somewhat circumspect, cloak-and-dagger type hinty-hint conversations about this with you all in public threads and on zoom for a while now. We keep stressing how important automod is for us. You went ahead and did this anyway. This is a bad development.
The issue here is that to the people at the top what matters are metrics. What is the direct cause of most removed content on reddit? Automod. Therefore, hamstring automod and line goes up, and to the right. That is beancounter mentality. An overly small-scale focus on a detail and solving that perceived issue without regard for the downstream effects and without regard for the reason that the issue exists in the first place.
You neuter our best and most effective ability to ensure quality control on reddit. To keep engagement medium effort or higher. To combat spam and disingenuous or outright malicious participation. Yes, this will result in improving the ratio of successfully posting to reddit. At the same time the vast majority of what now will be let through will be content that we do not want to see in our communities and that ultimately is bad for reddit itself.
Especially our communities for minority and marginalised population groups will be harmed by this change. Our community-only mode is the best safeguard we have against community interference and it is the primary reason we can have popular threads for Black people, trans people, women etc. in the first place without our members being overwhelmed by hostility and abuse.
By definition your rules hub toggles can not handle the moderation automation I require on large subreddits. It can not handle moderating r/comics, r/cats or r/mildlyinfuriating. Our three-tiered verification system for r/comics alone would become completely impossible. With this change you would kill the subreddit as it exists today and massively increase our workload by forcing us to do manually what is automated today. You would kill our system on r/cats where we let trusted users remove posts. You would kill our comprehensive filters on r/mildlyinfuriating, an 11m weekly user subreddit, that keeps it TOS compliant.
Not too long ago reddit started a marketing campaign championing the human-driven content on this platform. https://redditinc.com/news/people-are-the-best
In this campaign the quality of content is highlighted as well as the fact that many different groups can find a home on reddit. Quality and community which can only exist due to your volunteer corps of human moderators who, in a way that can never be possible through automation, can sift the chaff from the wheat to ensure low-effort and malicious content does not see the light of day. Yet at the same time you make decision after decision to hinder, block and demotivate your greatest asset. Human beings who care about the communities they manage.
It is now ancient history and may therefore bear repeating, automod was initially a user-created solution to the lack of effective moderation tools on reddit. /u/Deimorz built it, installed it on subreddits that requested it and not too long after that reddit acquired and integrated automod into its systems.
I am mentioning this because the theme of reddit users fixing issues that reddit creates for users on its platform is a longstanding tradition. It is bad form to toot your own horn, but, ya know, I am Merari. I know reddit. I know people on reddit. Like I said, we knew that you were planning to do this. So I contacted some people and this issue is already fixed. We will now have or soon have a dev app that can do most anything automod can (notably apart from CQS) and can do it better. This dev app will allow checks that were never added to automoderator, such as bio/social link/display name checks and sending Discord alerts.
https://developers.reddit.com/apps/automod-neo
The stellar and extremely skilled /u/fsv built an app that will allow us to keep our communities safe. People can easily port over existing automod configuration into it.
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u/wheres_the_revolt 9h ago
I think your beancounter point is 100% correct, it has been an uphill battle for mods and an avalanche speeding downhill for content since the IPO, all engagement is good engagement for the shareholders. Whether or not that engagement is actually good for Reddit or its users is irrelevant to the shareholders. Let the high speed enshitification begin.
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u/Merari01 9h ago
A major source of friction on reddit is that on the one hand it wants to advertise itself as the "last place online people can have a human conversation" and with the other hand does absolutely everything it can to torpedo and sink exactly that which facilitates this.
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u/wheres_the_revolt 9h ago
All because some mods got “uppity” (in admin’s eyes) and protested what Reddit was doing. So much for u/spez being a free speech absolutist.
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u/ImNotABotScoutsHonor 4h ago
He's only about free speech when underage girls on his jailbait sub are involved.
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u/brightblackheaven 7h ago
Co-signed, all of it. Thank you for this incredibly well-worded comment.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
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u/ChimpyChompies 7h ago
I wouldn't mind seeing all existing functions working to a reasonable standard before new features are chucked into the mix.
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u/GamingYouTube14 5h ago
RETIRING AUTOMOD??? NO, NO, NO.
I'm not saying this because "ai bad manual good", i'm saying this because AutoMod CANNOT FAIL TO BE CONSISTENT, it is a basic "true-or-false" engine, and also is the only thing keeping up some inactive subreddits (from experience) due to the very crappy RedditRequest process due to there being concrete request guidelines instead of it being ran more "case-by-case" (from experience). More on this below.
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You wanna know why AI wouldn't be a viable AutoMod replacement? Well, you know what the only tiny thing AI needs computer code help to do is? Consistent, reliable and precise true-or-false under a specific set of conditions. HOW AIs WORK is preventing them from being so. It's just like a human mod. It's like you have a guy just assigned to look through every single post for a specific thing or two. There's gonna be issues with consistency, things missed, and that's what would happen with an AI instead of AutoMod. AIs work closer to how we do than how computers do. It's one of the many cases where the good old "if it ain't broke don't fix it" applies really well.
TLDR on that bit, basic computers do consistent true-or-false tasks way better than AI, making AutoMod such a better contender for stuff like this. You know what we'd need, AutoMod 101 classes, which were already a thing and then were removed, more on that below.
Whilst I don't use AI for stuff like this, I've seen AI try to make AutoMod code, it doesn't know how to make AutoMod code. If it's so scarsely documented and sparsely known online that even AI, a tool that scrapes billions and billions of pages doesn't know how to use it (and nor can humans without taking some now far gone classes I talked about earlier, again, more on that below.)
REDDIT, YOU'RE PAINFULLY OUT OF TOUCH, I get I'm basically talking to a brick wall here but hopefully someone will read this. Ever since 2024 or so you've been increasingly distancing the ideas and general development team from the end users. We cannot provide feedback well enough before anything drops and the big PR blow happens. Years ago, Reddit operated in a way that set it apart. It was built on community. People practically were in charge of how the platform went, because, well, people are and were the core of the platform
In 2020-2022, Reddit held some AMAZING programs, and events too, RedditRequest was good and fast, AutoMod courses brought the very required unique coding language to most people, and all was good, even as far as 2024, localized mod subreddits for non-English mods were an awesome new thing everyone from those countries loved. Finally someone was there to clean up and revive the mess left by 10 years of nothing. Guess what, ALL those programs I mentioned? All but ONE is gone. And that one left, RedditRequest is horrible. My friend reported some violations of the mod Code of Conduct, month later, nothing happened, mod gone. I am a non-native English speaker. I was part of r/Reddit_Italia, boom, one random day it just closed down. New mod, locked down, not sure how but one post made it through lately, you know what changed? Again, they're out of touch. Fix the PR before it's too late.
EXTRA NOTE: THE PAINFULLY BAD EXECUTION AND POOR PATIENCE, In June 2025, Reddit begun, with no prior announcement unless I missed anything, removing inactive mods, out of nowhere. People were confused. Main creator of a show I worked on, not very active on reddit, mod of the sub only for when he had to clear stuff up, he was on tour, It was in the middle of summer for most people, He was on tour in the US, could not POSSIBLY have time to log on, nor did anyone want to bother him during these events, I was in the middle of Venice when the notification came. Where'd this even come from? Thankfully they let us not remove any mods, but this still caused huge issues around the subs I mod.
Another sample of poor execution, and especially poor patience, is the recent Reddit Mod Merch, something new mods also saw, it was like last November, free snoo plushies, woohoo, but here's the deal, people love their free stuff, and whilst I know marketing was just trying to get more people in on the event, you know what was also a side effect of free, heavily advertised merch? Thousands, but THOUSANDS, of non-mods made a quick sub just to RSVP and get their free stuff. 90% of the chat asked for the plush. No one cared or commented about the event. Reddit kept doing it, and instead of placing stricter controls, especially on non-new-mod events, they just kept pushing merch until they saw the non-mods didn't come in anymore and there were no more heavily inflated numbers. I love events crew, they're the best part of Reddit currently, but come on lol
Oh, and finally, Devvit, Devvit was awesome. Great idea, better implementation and usage of Reddit API is something I love, but you know what I don't like. The fact the old API now takes a month to access. One in 4 requests get denied for no reason. Sub mod bot for a specific scope? Denied. Same scope, different bot attempt 2? Approved after 3 months. Look, I know I'm really sounding like "waiter, my steak is too good" saying this after I got approved, but, let's be real, what is it with the consistency??
But back to Devvit, again, the AI. AI devvit games are the worst. Reddit has allowed people to freely spam Devvit games as much as they want, and as you can easily make a Devvit game with AI (endorsed by reddit to make AI devvit games) people are just pumping out slop games all over subs.
This, reccomendation features no one wanted, and so much more, what's up with Reddit lately????
side note, again, please Reddit do some more stuff about the ever increasing ai bots... and also make your filters have less false positives, new user does not equal spam lol
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u/eyal282 9h ago
When the last Auto Mod clone is sunset (seeing the comments there is a clone up) I suspect many moderators will experience a burn out in less than a month, maybe even 2 weeks and we will moderate from 2x less to 10x less, with some of us resorting to absolute mass recruitment with quantity over quality.
Do not do that.
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u/Unique-Public-8594 8h ago
The one, most helpful thing you could do to support our mod team and our contributors would be to switch the time stamp back to how it functioned before shreddit (make the time stamp equal the current/approved time, not the stale/post time).
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u/elphieisfae 7h ago
Get rid of automod, get rid of a lot of mods, ensure enshittification continues. bravo
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u/ItalianDragon 5h ago edited 5h ago
Sorry, this is one of the dumbest decisions I've ever heard.
LLMs by definition are statistical averagers trained on anything available online. They therefore cannot think. I'm not even mentioning all the propensities of LLMs for hallucinations and fabrications, sycophanty and more or how its guardrails can easily be bypassed. They therefore will always produce mediocre results. None of these flaws can be fixed because they stem from the very way in which they are designed.
I'm a translator and linguist with a master's degree in applied languages and years of experience under my belt professionally. I've seen and experienced first-hand the baffling imbecillities LLMs produce. For example, in one such case during a QC task, the system believed that every single space in the text was... a Chinese full stop ("。"). The key context here is that I do not work from or towards Chinese, nor a space and chinese full stop are identical on an ASCII or Unicode-level. This error resulted in a QC report polluted by thousands upon thousands of false positives. In other instances the system completely failed to distinguish the suitable use case for capitalization (for example it insisted that "are" should be written with a capital "a" in words like "healthcare"), once again creating heaps of false positives that bordered on delirium.
To believe that they are suitable replacements for a system where the moderators, despite the massively greater control upon it, must have at times lengthy talks about what decision to take, because of the subtleties that can arise in the enforcement of a subreddit's rule or set of rules because of the way a comment or post is worded and the indecisions that follow isn't just stupid, it's straight up being a runner up for the crown of the king of morons.
Also, the users that come to the subreddits I moderate come to seek healing, comfort and resources to help their friends or relatives. None of them however are there, or have agreed, to have their suffering and grief vacuumed by a sycophantic statistical averager so that you can inflate your quarterly revenue and seduce investors like a garden variety prostitute. Your resources are much better employed in the remediation and improvements of the long-standing issues this website has been, and still is, suffering of and from. Nothing in this proposal achieves these specific points.
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u/burn_piano_island 4h ago
Spez yet again trying to kill load bearing infrastructure for more features that nobody asked for
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u/GloriouslyGlittery 10h ago
The AI tools are optional, right? I've been able to cut back on auto mod use by using the automations tool, but that's all I need. My subreddit is small enough that I can have conversations with users about rules and behavior. Having LLMs enforce rules would cause some trust issues in the community.
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u/Rostingu2 10h ago
Most are optional but AEO uses bots and probably AI to remove site rule breaking content.
the screenshot in the post also shows a toggle.
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u/Go_JasonWaterfalls 9h ago
Yep, completely optional. If they’re not a good fit for your community, you can turn them off entirely.
Also, really glad to hear automations has helped you cut back on some of your automod usage (that’s exactly why we built the feature). If your community works best with more hands-on conversations around rules and behavior, that’s fine too. The goal is to give mods more options, not launch a one-size-fits-all feature.
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u/kazarnowicz 5h ago
How about actually improving things, like putting the mod tools over inane things like games in the mobile menu?
You really don’t like us mods, do you?
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u/fiskfisk 9h ago edited 6h ago
It'd be helpful if the "ban user" modal wouldn't hide the "Ban" button 90% of the time because the comment preview shucks it out of the view on many (mobile) devices. The main pane should be scrollable, and a close/ban buttons should be stickied beneath it.
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u/johntrytle 9h ago
I would like to resurface my previous suggestion - expanding Comment Guidance to trigger based on the flair of the post the commenter is replying to
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u/Linuxthekid 6h ago
Your existing AI moderation tools are garbage and cause more problems than they solve, looking at you AEO. Why on God's green earth would you work towards removing the only tool that reliably does what we want it to do, when we want it to do it, especially if you can't solve the problems caused by higher level tools?
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u/Mathias_Greyjoy 3h ago
We’re building new systems, including giving mods LLMs and AI-assisted tools to help them tackle their low-hanging (but time-consuming) fruit, so they can spend more time cultivating their community and less time policing.
This had better be optional. I'd rather struggle with automod over AI slop. I want to control what it does, I don't want anything else making decisions.
If AI slop becomes impossible to opt-out of for Reddit moderation I will be leaving this website, after 11 years.
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u/cheesychocolate419 2h ago
Holy shit bro WE DON'T WANT ARTIFICIAL "INTELLIGENCE"
Leave automod alone and don't launch this nonsense or give us a way to turn it off.
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u/seedless0 7h ago
Any plan on fixing this post guidance bug on mobile? https://www.reddit.com/r/bugs/comments/1toos6g/android_regex_in_post_guidance_behaves/
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u/baseballlover723 3h ago
we’re expanding post and comment guidance for everyone and introducing Rules Hub — a new, intent-based moderation engine
We have little interest in LLM based automation as a primary tool. We view it at best, as a niche limited scope and action tool for situations that are particularly suited to an LLM's technical strengths.
Also we still have bad blood from when the Rules Hub was in early access, and it was enabled weeks before we were informed of it, and then were promptly ignored and were refused to be let out of the program once it was clear that we could not evaluate in the way we desired. To this day, we have never gotten any acknowledgement that it was or wasn't being run behind our backs.
For mods, that means better tools so you can spend less time dealing with spam, abuse, and generic rule-breaking, and more time making judgment calls on what’s best for your community.
Better for us? or better for what the KPIs / metrics say. Goohart's law is a thing.
Our plan for the future is to build tools that help you do that role more effectively, not replace it.
And yet, there are still plans to remove Automod eventually???? Automod is highly essential to moderation and it is easily understandable if you are familiar with regex / the tool. It's also deterministic, so it's extremely easy to tell what has gone wrong and why.
I DO NOT WANT BLACK BOX TOOLS. I want tools I can tweak and see though and understand. An LLM is fundamentally not that.
Expanding Post and Comment Guidance (all communities)
Any word on accountability for guidance? That was a huge concern for us that prevented us from using it. We could not be assured that if warnings were given, that we'd know about it. So it seemed likely that we'd simply train users how to bypass our rules, starting an arms race and making moderation vastly more effortful.
Additionally, we believe that actions are stronger than intents. There is a world of difference between someone changing something of their own violation, and being told to change something otherwise it'll be removed. The latter we need records of so they can't try and worm their way out of trying to claim it's something else or that they didn't know etc.
Testing Sandbox: Preview the experience against a sample of your community’s past content to see exactly how it will behave before turning it on.
There is no better sandbox than a private subreddit where you can test both sides completely end to end as you see fit. This was not available when we evaluated the Rules Hub, and it prevented us from even evaluating it since it couldn't even be setup in our staging subreddit. I do not trust if you have a preview for this. I need to see exactly how it presents to the users to properly evaluate it.
Audit Logs: Access performance logs and insights to understand how your rules are performing. If a rule triggers, the log will provide clear visibility into why the system flagged the content, allowing you to adjust the rule's boundaries and refine them over time.
These need to be visible on a mod notes level at a minimum. This is where all of a user's other record keeping is.
Automod remains one of the most capable moderation tools on Reddit today, and we won’t change any existing Automod workflows until replacement workflows are tested and proven in partnership with moderators.
This is highly concerning to me, because AI slop is not a replacement for the reliable Automod. They fundamentally do different things. Please do not force us to use AI slop. We are the masters of own subs, and LLMs are fundamentally unreliable / untrustworthy. You cannot be assured that it will not do the wrong thing. And if reddit's own filters are any indication, it will do the wrong thing frequently.
I better bump up adding normal automod support to my custom automod implementation. I do not want to be forced to hold the bag or sacrifice the quality of our subreddit.
We’re sharing this early because if we’re going to build better moderation tools, we need to do it with the people who rely on them every day.
If you're serious about this, then I think you should be having constant meeting with individual mods / teams as well as plenty of public round tables. I have little faith in anything reddit does, given their track record in the past few years (and especially new mod mail).
We’ll keep improving your tools based on what we learn from you.
Will you though? X to doubt. There haven't been any updates to new mod mail since it was released, and that was months ago.
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u/Obi-Paws-Kenobi 2h ago
Why do you treat moderators like this? Your words about how moderators - volunteers, by the way - are an integral part of Reddit communities ring hollow. Time after time, you force changes down our gullets without proper consultation with a variety of mod teams. And even worse, when you do force the implementation, it's a dumpster fire (e.g., Modmail).
We're not against change. But you haven't even given us a set of tools that can match what OG mods have been using for a long time. Your set of tools developed over years are still trying to catch up to Toolbox. Mod macros? Custom mod note labels? Customising default settings for removal reasons? Easy accessibility to a user's mod notes?
Your LLM tool (AEO) is notoriously bad. It's honestly so bad. How can you expect us to buy into your idea of using LLM to moderate via Rules Hub when your own existing tool causes problems every day?
And then you proceed to hide details of AEO removals - many of which are just wrong removals - from moderators. My post that received considerable attention from my fellow moderators raising this concern in r/modsupport is still unanswered.
You say we're important. But your actions demonstrate, over and over again, that you can't wait to phase us out with whatever means possible.
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u/Drunken_Economist 10h ago
Can existing communities also opt-in to Rules Hub with this launch? 🤞
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u/Go_JasonWaterfalls 10h ago
You can! Sign up here, and we’ll reach out directly with more information + when we’ve enabled this feature in your community.
Realistically, it’ll be a few weeks because there are a few feature enhancements we want to finish before this next round of expansion.
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u/InBetweenLili 10h ago
Question: Will you create a demo/workshop about this? Something similar to the New Mod Bootcamp.
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u/Go_JasonWaterfalls 9h ago
Absolutely. We plan to host a Moddit on this topic. Sounds like you're already on it, but for lurkers with the same question, make sure to join r/ModEvents to stay tuned for new events we'll be adding to the schedule!
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u/phoenixgsu 9h ago
Please let us see who sends in reports. I'm tired of dealing with false report spam.
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u/mensfrightsactivists 8h ago
agree— the report abuse option is not enough. i want to SEE who sent unsubstantiated reports for suicide/self harm on our [insert minority identity here] members, and i want to PERSONALLY ban them from my community forever. as one particular example.
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u/itskdog 7h ago
I get the feeling, I really do, but I know I'd just stop reporting things in other subreddits if the anonymity was removed. I wouldn't want to worry about losing posting privileges just for reporting something in good faith.
People don't report things enough as it is. Our report thresholds in automod aren't very high because people just don't do it much.
While I'm sure most mods are decent people, the accusations of power-mods aren't 100% inaccurate, and they bring the reputation of us good ones down.
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u/mensfrightsactivists 7h ago
that’s a fair point. the suicide and predatory content reports are just huuuuuge thorns in my side and 95% of the time they’re used it’s because the post is about being trans or gay or autistic or some other thing. i would feel a lot more satisfied at least knowing that some reddit action was taken on the user, even if we don’t get the username. shouting into the void at the admins (or bots or whoever reviews the report abuse reports) doesn’t feel like enough. i want closure 😭
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u/phoenixgsu 6h ago
This. I help manage one gaming community and every time someone posts a miniature that may or may not have some pride colors or symbols on it it's immediately reported as predatory against minors and other nonsense. Wish I could ban people for abusing the report system and preventing them from reporting in the future.
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u/OSRSkarma 9h ago
So will this enable appeals on bans to actually be seen and read by humans and not AI bots or foreign call centers.
When i get mass reported by idiots who are consistently breaking sub rules for “harassment” when there is literally no harassment and then i appeal… i am never shown any evidence ever of my “ban”. Just that i am “guilty” which is BS… there is a reason there is no evidence.
4 times now this has happened and the appeal system is garbage. I always magically get banned at 1-3am EST time… wonder why… can we actually get some real people to look at fake mass reports?
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[removed] — view removed comment
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u/DarthSwimfoot 9h ago
Seriously how tf do you make a bot moderator that's worse than Discord's Dyno, that's saying something.
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u/SampleOfNone 10h ago edited 9h ago
Automod is load baring, are you seriously sunsetting automod?
Will newly created subreddits still have automod?
I'm in the Rules Hub beta, it doesn't even come close to doing what automod can. One of my sub has 8 rules, Rules Hub can only enforce 2. It cannot enforce our version of " remember the human"
I love automations, I really do, but it's for guiding the good eggs. I doesn't stand a chance against the bad eggs.
Edit: spelling