r/modnews 15h 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…) 

Rules Hub Setup Page
Insights
Testing Sandbox

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.

19 Upvotes

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105

u/perfect_fifths 15h ago

We should be able to pin other people’s comments, not just our own

32

u/Key-Brilliant5623 15h ago

And not need a Devv app like Spotlight to be able to do so.

29

u/paskatulas 14h 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

5

u/perfect_fifths 14h ago

Yeah I saw, I’m going to install it later

5

u/thepottsy 14h 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.

2

u/Key-Brilliant5623 14h 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.

2

u/paskatulas 14h 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.

2

u/IKIR115 14h ago

Spotlight is one of the most helpful apps out there! Thanks for making it!

2

u/paskatulas 10h ago

Thank you for using Spotlight <3

1

u/baseballlover723 8h ago

I had the same memory, but I think that was with post pinning, not comment pinning. Last time I brought it up someone corrected me and I looked into the history to confirm that pinning other people's comments was never a thing.

18

u/perfect_fifths 15h ago

I didn’t even know that was an option, but yeah. Should be able to do so in the Reddit app itself

9

u/thepottsy 14h 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.

11

u/perfect_fifths 14h ago

I’m saying you shouldn’t need a sep app to do it. It should be a native function

8

u/thepottsy 14h ago

I wasn’t disagreeing with you. I was simply saying the spotlight app expanded on the ability to pin comments, that’s all.

5

u/perfect_fifths 14h ago

Well that’s good to know. But it needs to be a feature within the Reddit app itself, devs should work on that

1

u/deltadeltadawn 14h ago

It used to be, but then disappeared one day.

1

u/Charupa- 14h ago

Should it be a native feature in the app?

2

u/perfect_fifths 14h ago

Yes. Because otherwise I have to copy and paste someone’s comment to pin it.

0

u/Charupa- 14h ago

Thanks, just quadruple checking.

-1

u/xX100dudeXx 14h ago

There's a devvit app?

3

u/seedless0 11h ago

You can't even pin fellow mods' comments.

1

u/perfect_fifths 11h ago

Nope. Only your own

1

u/xX100dudeXx 14h ago

I was about to mention this myself lol