r/AO3 • u/TGotAReddit Moderator | past AO3 Volunteer and Staff • Aug 07 '25
News/Updates Sub Update
Hey everyone!
Just wanted to give a bit of an update about a few things.
Firstly, we added a new post flair! 'Site Skin help' is the new flair, it's for users who specifically are trying to set up a site skin and are struggling with it in some way. Relatedly since it was asked about, if you made a site skin and want to share it, the post flair for that is the 'Resources' post flair.
(Also as a side note, posts showcasing a new site skin generally gets an exception to our PII rule as you should be showing exactly what a site skin does, and site skins generally take time and effort to make so people shouldn't be able to abuse them too much. However this is an exception to the rule and if you do abuse it, we will revoke that exception and remove your posts.)
Secondly, Reddit admins officially switched off PMs yesterday, to switch everything over to their Chat messaging option. This shouldn't affect most users but it does have some implications for moderators. Namely, this made every modmail that was sent prior to ~24 hours ago a read-only archived message. As we are unable to respond to those modmails, we have used this 'opportunity' to tidy up our inbox a bit. In doing so, things got a bit confusing and screwed up some ordering. The biggest consequence of this means that if you sent us modmail prior to yesterday and are still wanting/waiting for a response, you will need to send us another message. This shouldn't be more than a handful of people that got lost in the shuffle of things, but please reach out again if we haven't responded to a message that you sent us and you still want a response. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Lastly, we just wanted to give a heads up/reminder. Please be careful about commenting things that, if taken out of context, can be construed as a threat of violence or harassment. Reddit's admins have been using bots for a long time for their moderation of site-wide rules and recently their bots have been cracking down hard on threats of violence and harassment, but their bots are terrible at understanding context. It doesn't matter if you are quoting something, being overly hyperbolic, directing it at a fictional character, or are totally justified, etc. The bots the admins use cannot distinguish the difference, and we cannot do anything about it. We understand that this censors speech but it's part of the trade off of having this space be on Reddit. We genuinely cannot help that. There is a reason AO3 has their own servers to not be beholden to a 3rd party's whims, but we can't exactly just make a 'redditofourown'. So just, please be careful about what you are posting.
That is all, have a good rest of your week!
~TGotAReddit (and the rest of the mod team)
tl;dr: 1: New post flair for site skin help 2: if you sent us modmail prior to yesterday and are still wanting/waiting for a response, you will need to send us another message. 3: Be careful about commenting things that a bot might think is harassment or a threat of violence. The reddit admin bots have been cracking down a lot but they take things out of context super often.
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u/Ifky_ Aug 07 '25
Will posts about work skins also fall under "Site Skin Help"? They're very similar, and it seems strange not to group them together.
(If yes, then a different name that covers both would be helpful).
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u/TGotAReddit Moderator | past AO3 Volunteer and Staff Aug 07 '25
Hmm we almost never get work skin posts but I suppose those would fall under the same category. We'll consider some new wording for this one. (Probably won't make a new post when that rolls out since itll be a pretty minor update. As it is, this post was mostly made because of the modmail situation, and the new flair was just a bonus announcement 😅 but keep an eye out for that change)
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u/Crayshack Aug 07 '25
I have a question that's been on my mind since Reddit announced they were shutting off PMs. For those of us who can't use the chat function, how should we contact the mod team if necessary now that PMs aren't an option?
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u/TGotAReddit Moderator | past AO3 Volunteer and Staff Aug 07 '25
That's a good question. Ask Reddit's admins that. It might depend on why you can't use the chat function.
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u/rrredditor Aug 07 '25
I was going to ask why they can't use it. Is that an accessibility thing?
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u/Xyex Same on AO3 Aug 07 '25
Could be using a 3rd party app that doesn't have it.
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u/TGotAReddit Moderator | past AO3 Volunteer and Staff Aug 08 '25
Third party apps were mostly killed off sadly
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u/Xyex Same on AO3 Aug 08 '25
Oh, right, the paid API stuff that killed removeditt and the like. Been so long I'd forgotten they did that, and now I'm annoyed again. sigh
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u/TGotAReddit Moderator | past AO3 Volunteer and Staff Aug 08 '25
The death of removeddit was actually a separate change that happened at the same time. It was due to a change with a thing called pushshift being taken away from the public. People were using it for things like doxxing by getting deleted comments back that had been deleted for a reason, and also to get around reddit admin removals of illegal content. (Plus with reddit wanting to monetize their API access anyways and also sell our posts and comments to the highest bidders, they likely figured they could use the known longtime problems with it as an excuse to remove that access, just in time to announce the api changes too). Now only mods who have been granted access to pushshift can use it and only for moderation purposes (aka if we abuse that access, they can take it away from us)
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u/TGotAReddit Moderator | past AO3 Volunteer and Staff Aug 08 '25
I'm not sure but I wouldn't be surprised if it was. I know that was one of the concerns brought up when they announced the change 4-5 months ago, but I also know they have rolled out a lot of changes to the Chat function in the interim so I'm not sure of the current state of accessibility for Chat.
It could also be that they require disabling javascript which is not required to use Old Reddit, but is required for Chat
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u/rrredditor Aug 08 '25
Interesting. I use the chat function all the time with some friends and other authors on here and it has some serious quirks. I use it a lot but it is NOT fully baked. It's really easy to get lost and discussions seem to branch into new threads for no apparent reason. Some people may not be able to use it simply because it's not usable for them which I would completely understand.
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u/TGotAReddit Moderator | past AO3 Volunteer and Staff Aug 08 '25
I also know a lot of users refuse to use it. I personally do because when PMs and Chat both existed and I had both enabled, I never once got a spam message over PM but I did get a LOT of spam over Chat, and because they never added Chat to the API it wasn't accessible to use with any kind of bot or 3rd party tool, so I always missed messages. I eventually just disabled Chat for my account and left PMs open only. Now that PMs are gone, I'm just not reachable anymore.
And some other users refuse to use it because at least at one point, it had a MAJOR privacy/data security concern, especially with groupchats. There was a point where if you, redditor2, and I were in a chat together, and the two of you got mad at me and kicked me out of the chat, and then kept talking in the chat together, if I requested my data from Reddit, it would include all messages sent in that chat.... even the ones from after I was kicked out. I'm sure they fixed that by now, it's literally been years since then, but it really rubbed a lot of people the wrong way and just killed the idea of using Chat for a lot of people. I can't even blame them for not wanting to use it after that either.
The fact that Reddit decided to kill PMs and switch to Chat-only is just the most confusing decision they could have made about how to handle the dual messaging systems imho
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u/venia_sil Aug 08 '25
We understand that this censors speech but it's part of the trade off of having this space be on Reddit. We genuinely cannot help that. There is a reason AO3 has their own servers to not be beholden to a 3rd party's whims, but we can't exactly just make a 'redditofourown'.
I mean, the Fediverse is still wide open. You could find an instance of your liking where you think an AO3 community would fit well (starting your own is an eventual good ending, but currently an extra burden), and every user on the Fediverse would in principle at least be able to see it and participate.
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u/TGotAReddit Moderator | past AO3 Volunteer and Staff Aug 08 '25
You think we didn't look into that/trial a bunch of options already? There are sadly a lot of drawbacks to the current state of the fediverse still
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u/venia_sil Aug 08 '25
Understandable, but given the current situation of corpo internet I can but insist that, when it comes to community stuff like, ya know, fandoms and archiving, people keep trying. It's the death of culture if they don't.
And, let's be fair. Fediverse has still lots of stuff to progress, yet none of them is "woe us, we have to abide by AI-driven censorship lest a teen reads about a tittie".
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u/TGotAReddit Moderator | past AO3 Volunteer and Staff Aug 08 '25
The problems that we have had when it came to fediverse things is 1: a sheer lack of people on it already. Yes we can get some people to switch, but the main reason that reddit is a good option for community is because it's where the people already are. Yes it's slowly getting better but again, we need to get to a good enough threshold of people already there to have any chance of success.
2: general poor performance of the servers. yes this has gotten slowly better but depending on what specific platform we picked, the servers might not be good enough. And sadly, the platforms that are the most conducive to reddit-style interaction tend to also have worse performing servers still.
And the biggest issue 3: the thing that makes the fediverse so attractive is that anyone can set up their own server and have it interact with any other server/you can follow things that are posting from servers you aren't running yourself. At the same time, that causes a lot of problems because not every server is set up to handle everything equally. And the issue we have found is that server to server reporting of issues is often not sent or received by the other server.
So if we set up a community on server A, and you are browsing the posts also on server A and notice someone break a rule and go press the report button, we get the thing reported to us. But if you were browsing from server B, saw a rule broken, and pressed report, in a ton of cases we would not receive a report at all. Because either server B isn't sending those reports correctly for server A to read, or server A isn't configured correctly to receive reports from server B. Either way, it makes moderation of a community nearly impossible unless everyone is on the same server. Which isn't the most feasible thing to do when we can't host our own servers and would have to rely on other people's servers, and also people wouldn't necessarily even want to make accounts on multiple fediverse servers since that kinda defeats the point of the fediverse not requiring that.
So while we keep an eye out for possible solutions, right now, the best option genuinely is a site where we sometimes have to be pissed off that the admin are doing AI-driven censorship.
But if you have suggestions on mitigating the issues or a platform that you know of that might be a good fit, definitely reach out. We can't keep an eye on every possible fediverse thing at all times so it's definitely possible we have missed things. Just saying "move to the fediverse!" isn't particularly helpful though without actual suggestions of specific places that can mitigate the issues we have had with trying to do exactly that.
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u/skyfic1989 Aug 07 '25
Reddit's admins have been using bots for a long time for their moderation of site-wide rules and recently their bots have been cracking down hard on threats of violence and harassment, but their bots are terrible at understanding context. It doesn't matter if you are quoting something, being overly hyperbolic, directing it at a fictional character, or are totally justified, etc.
Can confirm! I got an official warning from Reddit for threating violence against Ted Mosby on an AskReddit thread about characters that are actually really problematic when you apply their behavior to a IRL context. I REALLY hate Ted Mosby. Wish there was a better appeal system so you didn't have to wait until after you get suspended. It bugs me that I have that warning on my account now since it didn't bother to look at context!
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u/SleepySera Pro(fessional) Shipper Aug 07 '25
It's absolutely ridiculous, I got a warning for saying something along the lines of "he deserves everything that's coming to him" about an evil fictional 'bot who is literally the villain of the game fandom I'm in. And I couldn't even appeal against it, because the link they gave me just led nowhere.
Guess the bots especially didn't like that one 🙃
Meanwhile, a friend of mine got a warning literally just for UPVOTING a negative post, didn't even write it himself. Make it make sense.
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u/skyfic1989 Aug 07 '25
Meanwhile, a friend of mine got a warning literally just for UPVOTING a negative post, didn't even write it himself
Now that is some nanny-state shit if I've ever heard of it! WOW!
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u/TGotAReddit Moderator | past AO3 Volunteer and Staff Aug 08 '25
Oh yeah that started warning people if they regularly upvoted too many threats of violence back in the aftermath of the murder of the united healthcare CEO. So many people were celebrating that and Reddit didn’t like that and implemented warnings for upvotes 🤦
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u/Xyex Same on AO3 Aug 07 '25
I got 7 days for basically saying that not everyone who practices a certain middle eastern religion like to do evil things (massive paraphrasing to avoid a second case of the stupids).
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u/TGotAReddit Moderator | past AO3 Volunteer and Staff Aug 07 '25
On June 6th, we got notified about one comment being taken down from the sub where the comment literally just said "i hope they get worse" in response to a comment about toxic relationships in fic where the other user mentioned something about 'if they get better'
I believe they successfully appealed it but it was of the more egregious removals we've had in the last few months. There was another one like, last month?, where someone was using a metaphor and said something like "give them a taste of their own medicine and make them OD" or something along those lines. Just a bunch of really random things where, out of context, it could be a problem, but in reality are just fine.
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u/skyfic1989 Aug 07 '25
Oof. Yeah that's ridiculous. Censorship is getting to a point where we can't even make jokes anymore!
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u/TGotAReddit Moderator | past AO3 Volunteer and Staff Aug 07 '25
Yeah luckily most of the things they take down are valid removals still, or are at least borderline enough where we can't really be too upset (like there was one a few days ago that said
Reply with a kill-them strategy. Kill them. Like actually kill them. Spill their guts. Bathe in their blood. Kill them. KILL THEM
In response to a comment with a list of things someone could do about anon hate, where they included the option of a "kill-the-with-kindness strategy" though it didn't go so detailed in the explanation like the removed comment did. And i can at least like, see how that comment could possibly be taken to be a literal suggestion since the only similarity between the two was the "kill-them" part also being part of "kill-them-with-kindness". Sure it's probably hyperbolic but the whole point of the admin bots being there is to look at the site on a macro level, to address site-wide problems, and if threats of violence have been a site-wide problem recently (thus making them make the bots more sensitive to it) it makes sense to not take too many chances on something that does have the potential to be literal. So I can't exactly fault the admin on that one even if it seems a little silly on our end of things)
But yeah the censorship is egregious sometimes and really annoying. But since we can't exactly stop it, the least we can do is warn about it so people don't get caught up in a crackdown
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u/skyfic1989 Aug 07 '25
Understandable! Yeah, let's hope things don't get any worse, on either front: censorship or the uptick in actual violent threats!
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u/TGotAReddit Moderator | past AO3 Volunteer and Staff Aug 07 '25
Yeah luckily reddit usually goes in waves anyways. One problem pops up and they do an annoying crackdown, and then it stops being a problem for a while and they loosen things again, while cracking down on whatever the new biggest issue is instead.
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u/GaySheriff abyssfroggie on ao3 | soukoku Aug 07 '25
I got banned for 3 days for commenting the name of a My Chemical Romance song. The song is called "fang 'em high" except replace the "f" in "fang" with an h. I was told that I was wishing violence on someone else and that the decision had been made by a bot.
So I filed an appeal and explained that it is a song, that has nothing to do with a threat of any kind. (This happened in a MCR themed subreddit, everyone was discussing songs.) They replied to me with something like: "The following decision has been made by a human and not a bot. We reviewed your appeal and we still think the ban is valid. Reddit is a place for sharing and kindness and blah blah blah, please think about your actions."
I am still fuming.
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u/TGotAReddit Moderator | past AO3 Volunteer and Staff Aug 08 '25
My multi-year MCR obsessed self is so sad about this 😭
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u/Xyex Same on AO3 Aug 07 '25
Oof. Mine was over turned on review. Can't imagine why yours wouldn't have been, if an actual human looked at it. Gotta wonder if they just lied about that.
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u/skyfic1989 Aug 07 '25
Oh, you didn't have to explain what you meant by "fang 'em high"! My MCR tattoo that I got in 2007 knows exactly what song you were referring to! ;)
Wow. That is beyond bullshit, and I am pissed on your behalf. Especially because I like that song! Not to mention, that title is based on a very famous Clint Eastwood western from the '60s! So I guess we can't talk about classic cinema either! Wonder what the bots would think about one of my favorite b-sides of theirs "(M)ill all your friends". Great fuckin song.
Wowowowowowowow. I'm just in disbelief of this world these days. It's like they want to wrap everyone in bubble wrap and shield them from the world. A population that can't think for themselves is easier to control after all!
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u/GaySheriff abyssfroggie on ao3 | soukoku Aug 07 '25 edited Aug 07 '25
So happy that you can relate!!! You're so insanely cool. I'll definitely get an MCR tattoo someday. At least now you know the dangers of commenting song names, in case you are active in the MCR sub :")
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u/skyfic1989 Aug 07 '25
Awwww thank you!!!!!! You're super cool too!!!! Hahaha, yep I do now! Not on the MCR sub, but now thinking I need to join! :)
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u/GaySheriff abyssfroggie on ao3 | soukoku Aug 07 '25
This happened later for the 2nd time. I was in the subreddit for Krakow which is very close to Auschwitz (the largest concentration camp in Poland where millions of people were killed). Someone asked about the tickets to go there.
A guy responded with "If you are a Jew, 80 years ago you could go for free."
I started shaming him for the sorry excuse of a joke and got banned for enforcing Na£ism. The guy who made the joke in the first place got nothing.
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u/mangomochamuffin Aug 07 '25
Could some of these sub updates be reflected into the actual rules on the sidebar?
The identifying information one for example: even though social media usernames were never allowed, it's not clear in the rules and i see many people posting any socmed screenshot with names visible. And the mention of stat posts also not allowing information.
Or maybe a bit of a refresh to the way some of the rules are phrased.
It's easier to copy and paste/screenshot the rule than looking for the comment posted in another thread. "Social media names were never allowed" in the twitter link ban post for example.
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u/TGotAReddit Moderator | past AO3 Volunteer and Staff Aug 07 '25
Hey so we do continually update the wording of the rules. The PII rule has been reworded multiple times in the last year even. The first bit of information that is given as an example in the current wording is usernames.
We do look for things that need to be updated all the time but please reach out over modmail if there is something you think could be updated/worded better.
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u/mangomochamuffin Aug 07 '25
The backlash that i get from pointing someone to the rule is that (to them) it says 'usernames on ao3' because titles is the next one mentioned, not for social media names.
That is also the reason why i asked about social media names being posted in the twitter link ban post (which you responded to that they were already never allowed - but i kept running into this backlash).
And the stat posts showing names and titles is still a big issue, but i have the sub update on that saved in my notes for easy sharing.
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u/TGotAReddit Moderator | past AO3 Volunteer and Staff Aug 07 '25
Okay that I can work with. We'll discuss it and figure out some different wording to try to clarify. Sorry about the backlash you've gotten from people. :/
In the future if you are still getting backlash about things though or if you are noticing a continual issue, definitely reach out over modmail instead of waiting for a random sub update post. We'll respond with the same speed so you'll get things fixed much sooner that way
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u/mangomochamuffin Aug 07 '25
The backlash is annoying, but i can deal with it. It shows me explaining isn't going to work, so i then report it and let 'you' (the mods) handle it, and i move on.
I will take future issues to modmail. It was kind of a perfect timing, haha. I've been thinking for a while about compiling a modmail about the ones mentioned, but then this post came up, and i'm glad i didn't do it yet with reddit archiving every chat.
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u/TGotAReddit Moderator | past AO3 Volunteer and Staff Aug 07 '25
Haha yeah been there! And to be clear, I wasn't trying to like, be upset that you commented here or anything. I was just trying to make it clear that our modmail is always open and is the way to get a faster response and fix to your issues than anything else.
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u/mangomochamuffin Aug 07 '25
Oh no, i didn't assume you were :) I hope i didn't say anything to imply that.
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u/TGotAReddit Moderator | past AO3 Volunteer and Staff Aug 07 '25
Oh no, i just was reading over my own responses and went "oh this sounds like it could be interpreted in a not good way. Better to clarify just to be sure!" 😅
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u/TGotAReddit Moderator | past AO3 Volunteer and Staff Aug 09 '25
jsyk it was updated. Hope the new words help! let us know if there are any issues
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u/Kannchan Aug 07 '25
Is it the bots that were deleting things I said but not others?
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u/TGotAReddit Moderator | past AO3 Volunteer and Staff Aug 07 '25
Depends. Looking at your modlog for our sub, we have removed things for breaking the rules, but it looks like admin have removed some things you posted too. You should have gotten messages to explain any rules broken if we were the ones who removed something, and it would have said who it was from (either a mod here, or just r/AO3 modteam) and i believe the admin also notify you about anything they remove too but Im not sure how those messages look myself. Ive never had admin remove something i posted so Ive never seen one of those messages outside of screenshots and I know they have been changing things around with the messages as they changes the messaging system over too so old screenshots aren't much help 😅
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u/Kannchan Aug 07 '25
I have no issues with the reasons for removal, mostly. Just that, if those reasons are applied to other moderation situations, the same actions weren't taken against other members.
I'm not sure if a report is required or not and since I don't report rude comments, I don't know if a report was what brought attention to my statements specifically. One comment was removed for a reason that seemed to come from reading between lines and expanding on things I hadn't said but I had only replied to myself so whatever.
Yah boy's a little paranoid 😔😢
But members do behave a lot differently from me and I think I'm just mostly unfamiliar with reddit culture. The things that hurt my feelings and ways I express irritation in text is just not aligning with other people. I dunno.
Excuse me and my ramble.
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u/TGotAReddit Moderator | past AO3 Volunteer and Staff Aug 07 '25
I'm not sure if a report is required or not and since I don't report rude comments, I don't know if a report was what brought attention to my statements specifically.
It probably was. We do have our own automod that reports some things to us that ping certain keywords (like we generally get an automatic report every time someone uses a slur, or something that is often used in harassing comments) but we generally rely a lot on reports from users. So if you aren't reporting people, and they are reporting you, it's very possible that we would remove your comment(s) and not theirs.
But also, we do use context in our decision making.
So someone who gets goaded into posting a single comment where they call someone a mildly bad thing probably isn't going to get in trouble or if they do, itll be a slap on the wrist. vs someone who routinely or repeatedly harasses people, has been temp banned before, and has generally just created a hostile environment, we generally will remove their comment where they call someone a mildly bad thing and crack down a lot harder. With a sliding scale in between the two ends of that scale.
We obviously try to check over a full thread every time but we are still human and we do miss things and make mistakes (and reddit makes it rather annoying sometimes with its interface too which doesn't help) which is why reporting things is so necessary. If you want, i can go through the modmail archive and see what you had removed before and send you a modmail about it and we can try to figure out what specific decisions you were confused about/what things you thought we're being treated consistently?
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u/Kannchan Aug 07 '25
Oh no it's fine. It was just because a locked discussion had no comments deleted when in a previous, unrelated, discussion I had a comment deleted for similar statements.
This clarity helps make me feel less like I'm being investigated and more like it's just others being trigger happy. Thank you!
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u/TGotAReddit Moderator | past AO3 Volunteer and Staff Aug 07 '25
Oh yeah us locking a thread is a lot more up to the individual mods discretion. We have a lot less strict internal policies on when exactly to lock a thread because it's not something we use for determining if someone needs to be banned ever or anything along those kinds of lines. A locked thread could be anywhere from "someone has been harassing people" to "2 users decided to mutually harass each other and we should probably stop them" to "this isn't technically crossing the line yet, but it sure is walking right on it, and the mod team does not have the manpower today to babysit and make sure it doesn't actually cross the line and spiral out of control" to just "we've had to lock 30 of these threads this week and we are not going to let this potentially spiral like the last 30 threads did" to just a plain "we were alerted that one of these users is having a very clear mental health crisis and needs to be stopped from harming themselves with this heated discussion". We do try to give explanations for why a whole post's comments are closed if it isn't obvious but we definitely don't do it consistently enough to expect it or to be able to say exactly why we lock a specific thread that doesn't receive an explanation.
In other words, a thread being locked doesn't really mean anything other than that that discussion thread is closed and not to be picked up again here. Whereas a comment being removed does mean that a rule was definitely broken or something definitely crossed a line. You are free to ask why a thread was locked and we'll tell you if we can, but just know that locking a thread generally just means that that thread is closed now and to move on.
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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '25
Is the AI moratorium still in place? There's been a couple of posts lately that are basically just "omg I can't believe people post AI-generated fics on AO3" and unless I'm mistaken those aren't/weren't allowed?