Moderation is a maddening and thankless job but there’s always someone else who wants the privilege.

Are these moderation tools any better on other platforms?

> It doesn't affect them directly, but the moderation tools a lot of subreddits need are built into third-party apps because Reddit refuses to build mod tools itself, and when those stop working then the job of moderating large and active subreddits will become vastly more cumbersome and frustrating, and far less efficient.

I checked yesterday and some widely used mod bots are already down. https://www.reddit.com/user/Blank-Cheque took all their bots down 10 days ago until the third-party apps change is reverted.

• AssistantBOT, AssistantBOT1 - This was broken by the Pushshift API cutoff. It's widely used for tracking sub usage statistics. The author is working on fixing it, but the last update was three weeks ago.

• Flair_Helper (Blank-Cheque) - This makes removing posts easier, especially on mobile. I haven't used it in anger.

• FloodgatesBot (Blank-Cheque) - This applies posting limits for users. There are a couple competitors, but I'm not sure how many are still running.

• Quality_Vote (Blank-Cheque) - This is used to allow users to remove unpopular posts. It can save a lot of moderation work in the right kind of sub.

• SafestBot (Blank-Cheque) - This is widely used by subs to ban spam and troll accounts. SaferBot, it's only alternative, was closed to additional subs some time ago.

What tools do they actually need? It seems to me like Reddit mods mostly automatically ban people for participating in subs they don't like. Last time they went on strike en-masse they were upset that Reddit didn't give mods more ability to track and spy on users in an Orwellian fashion

I made one comment on an anti-parent hate subreddit to try and explain why I thought they were wrong to automatically hate people for having kids, and then the subreddit for new parents automatically banned me. I tried to ask the mods on the subreddit for parents to unban me, and they muted me, and then Reddit gave me a temporary ban from the entire site for "harassment" of the mods

So far as I'm concerned, I'm happy to see the end of the little pocket dictator mods and the admins/Spez. It'll be a lot nicer if I can keep completely separate throwaway identities for talking about diapers and talking about philosphy

It's sad to see comments like these. It just reminds me that people will so readily take the work of others for granted.

The thing about the work mods do is that it's mostly invisible. If mods are doing their job, spam is getting deleted, reports are being serviced, and no one notices a thing. The subreddit seems to be working fine without them! It'd be easy to trick yourself into thinking they provide no utility. Even worse, since you don't notice the good work being done, all you do notice is the bad work (i.e. power tripping). Which, don't get me wrong, can be bad.

But tbh the complaints I've heard about "Orwellian" mods are completely overblown. I've used reddit for over 10 years and subscribed to hundreds of subs. I've had my posts removed by power tripping mods maybe a handful of times. The number of times I've seen a subreddit go to shit due to lax or nonexistent moderation is much much higher.

I want to be charitable here, but honestly, I looked over the list of mod tools someone posted in a sibling comment.. and most of them are just tools to attempt to blacklist people for wrongthink

I'm sure there are some small subs where the mods aren't huge jerks and benefit from usable tools to fight spam and deescalate flame wars, but I think we'll all be a hell of a lot better off with a bunch of unaffiliated or loosely-affiliated topical forums than we are with this current panopticon. The mods will be better off too: A guy moderating his own website will have better tools to combat spam and punish whatever he defines as trolls within his own kingdom.

> I've had my posts removed by power tripping mods maybe a handful of times.

I thought this too until I went to Reveddit one day and WOW there was a lot of stuff silently removed without disappearing from my user history.

This made me curious, and I'd never heard of this tool, so thanks for making me aware!

To further my point, I just looked myself up (same as my HN handle), and I only found 7 comments removed by mods. Most of which were honestly fair to remove, in my opinion.

Absolutely agree with you. My experience with Reddit moderators is that they are largely abusive, arrogant egomaniacs and I have absolutely zero sympathy for their hardship caused by lack of API access.

This is pretty much like people who say that we could just get rid of the police because all they do is harass everyone all day anyway.

Users in a well behaved system never notice the fantastic amount of work that goes into keeping the system well behaved. If you do your job right as few people as possible know you exist. It's the dilemma of the maintainer: extremely vital component of the system who everyone thinks does nothing in the best case and enraged at when something breaks in the worst case.

You must have misunderstood me but just to reiterate, I have no sympathy for the moderators of reddit whatsoever.

> It's the dilemma of the maintainer

Why not publish some stats every week/month about what kind of content/users were banned/suspended etc.

This comment contains one of the most-repeated pieces of misinformation from the whole blackout: moderation tools. Reddit has stated repeatedly that moderation tools will be exempted from the API changes.

"We will ensure existing utilities, especially moderation tools, have free access to our API."[1]

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/141oqn8/api_update...

Unfortunately it seems that most of the reddit users/subs participating in this "strike" aren't interested in the facts. I see /r/science says it is private due to accessibility changes and it links to a Verge article, but the Verge article actually says that accessibility apps are exempted.

the whole point is Reddit says that accessibility apps are exempt except in those cases where the app that offers accessibility does, you know, other things that people want their apps to do.

Ok thanks for the explanation. From what I can see the issue is also whether the app is commercial or not, so it makes sense for reddit to restrict commercial apps that make money off their content. As people are saying, the best solution is for reddit to just make their own app/website more accessible.

Only after the outcry. And only non-commercial accessibility apps. Why are people not allowed to pay for accessibility tools?

And those devs are getting no guarantees from Reddit that they won’t cut off API access at some point in the future.

Many of the facts aren't reported in the Verge article.

Last month Reddit cut off the Pushshift API (https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/134tjpe/reddit_dat...). It was widely used by moderation bots such as AssistantBOT. Pushshift will supposedly be restored (https://www.reddit.com/r/pushshift/comments/13w6j20/advancin...), but access must be approved by Reddit and is only open to mods with a Pushshift account; there are also additional usage restrictions. IMO it's an open question whether Pushshift or most of the services using it will ever be restored. Pushshift is now owned and managed by NCRI (Network Contagion Research Institute), which is based around selling the data to intelligence agencies (https://networkcontagion.us/technology/). Access for moderation tools isn't really part of their business model.

Accessibility apps are exempted only if they're free and noncommercial; they also can't access NSFW content. Many popular third-party apps that blind users rely on (https://www.reddit.com/r/Blind/comments/1447ibp/what_apps_me...) are commercial and will either be shutting down or have an uncertain future. It's unclear how many apps will make the transition; they weren't given anywhere near enough notice.

Reddit's CEO has publicly lied about discussions with Apollo's developer (https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_w...). Their credibility with developers is almost nonexistent. The Verge reporter may be taking their word for it, but few moderators and developers are.

The changes they've already made have led to many popular bots being shut down. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36343447) lists a few of them. u/SafestBot, one of the affected bots, is widely used to ban spam and troll accounts. It's a moderator at 342+ subreddits. If brigading is a serious problem in your sub, then your life has gotten a lot harder.

The official Reddit mobile app is hot garbage and uniquely poorly suited to moderation. Third-party apps save much of the work and are much easier to use. Some subs such as r/traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns (393k users) have announced that they'll shut down because of this (https://www.reddit.com/r/traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns/comments/144tn...).

I had a look at saferbot, but it doesn't seem like a good solution. In all the examples given the problematic subreddit was eventually banned by reddit. It just never makes sense to ban people for posting on a subreddit, because they could be disagreeing with it. The only time things like that are useful is if you ban all the people who like a post, but reddit doesn't give that capability.

It sounds like that trans sub just needs to farm out some of the moderator tasks rather than one person doing it all. If they have that many subscribers then they presumably have a lot of people who can help moderate.

> I had a look at saferbot, but it doesn't seem like a good solution. In all the examples given the problematic subreddit was eventually banned by reddit. It just never makes sense to ban people for posting on a subreddit, because they could be disagreeing with it. The only time things like that are useful is if you ban all the people who like a post, but reddit doesn't give that capability.

If your subreddit is being brigaded, then eventual bans don't help. It took years for r/The_Donald to be banned and over a year for r/NoNewNormal to be banned; meanwhile their users were trolling and brigading all over Reddit.

> It sounds like that trans sub just needs to farm out some of the moderator tasks rather than one person doing it all. If they have that many subscribers then they presumably have a lot of people who can help moderate.

They have 393k users, but how many are both interested and suitable for moderating? It's not necessarily easy to find good people, especially on a sub like that where mods are regularly harassed. Here's a concrete example (https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/14a5lz5/mod_cod...).

But the app developers are not developing the apps as moderation tools, they are operating them as income projects by providing features users want. The mod users of their apps are a tiny subset, and they are underwritten by all the regular users.

There is a balance struck by any business when setting prices, and I would wager that every one of these app developers put a lot of thought into it based on Reddit's broken commitments. The mod userbase is not enough to support a single app, so this is just forked tongue doublespeak in the final analysis.

Many moderation tools relied on the Pushshift API; Reddit cut their access off earlier this year. Pushshift will supposedly be restored (https://www.reddit.com/r/pushshift/comments/13w6j20/advancin...), but access must be approved by Reddit and is only open to mods with a Pushshift account; there are also additional usage restrictions. IMO it's an open question whether Pushshift or most of the services using it will ever be restored. Pushshift is now owned and managed by NCRI (Network Contagion Research Institute), which is based around selling the data to intelligence agencies (https://networkcontagion.us/technology/). Access for moderation tools isn't really part of their business model.

An additional factor is that the third-party app cutoff cost Reddit a lot of goodwill. Some bot developers such as u/Blank-Cheque have already taken their bots down. My other comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36343447) lists some of the affected bots.

“…but the moderation tools a lot of subreddits need are built into third-party apps because Reddit refuses to build mod tools itself”

Why should the users care? Less moderation and more open speech would drastically improve most subreddits. This seems like it’s more and more just tantrum throwing from mods who almost feel embarrassed they’ve devoted thousands of hours of free work to a corporation that literally doesn’t care about them at all.

Moderators also ensure quality, by removing posts that don't follow rules.

For example, /r/ExperiencedDevs is one of my favorite subreddits. They have rules around the types of questions you can ask. These rules are put into place to prevent the subreddit from becoming like /r/CSCareerQuestions, or to prevent an influx of memes.

Without these tools or these moderators, I have a feeling some subreddits will become more generalist and possibly drop in quality.

I go to /r/ExperiencedDevs (and other subreddits moderated in a similar fashion) for a very specific set of posts and expectations for questions. I don't really want to see memes, jokes, etc. in the subreddit, as I have other ones to go for that.

> Less moderation and more open speech would drastically improve most subreddits.

This just isn't true. Subreddits without moderators get buried in spam (both thinly veiled self-promotion and outright unrelated spam link dumping).

(I've both moderated a small subreddit and tried to participate in subreddits with absent moderators.)

Every time I've participated in a small sub where the mod went AWOL it's been just fine. Often much better than your average Reddit sub.

You can even see this with smaller active subs that only have one moderator. The sub doesn't fill up with spam when the moderator is sleeping.

Less moderation doesn't mean we turn into some Ayn Rand-ian bastion of free speech and justice and the american way. It means you see more onlyfans spam and ads for VPNs.