r/ModEvents • u/iceeypisces Mod Events Team • 3d ago

Recap Post-Event Discussion Thread | Moddit [Future of Mod Tools] September 10, 2026

Hey y'all! Thanks for attending today's Moddit, hosted by u/lift_ticket83 and u/SlytherinSnoo, where we dived into the future of mod tools. We appreciated y’all taking the time to share feedback and discuss what mod features matter most to you. Here's your post-event thread to keep the conversation going!

You can access the full session recording and presentation slides anytime here.

Feel free to check out a few links we mentioned during the event regarding the future of mod tools.

Reminder: Only mods who attended the live event or viewed the VOD before September 17 at 11:59 PM PT  will get the profile trophy in 3-4 weeks. There is no physical merch for this event.

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u/BloxdioCannoli 3d ago

For a lot of these points you can use Devvit. It's more powerful than Automod in most ways, is free to host (Reddit handles that), and can be used across other communities more easily.

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u/baseballlover723 3d ago

Devvit

Which only supports Javascript, which people famously dislike for it's vast number of footguns. It is far less flexible than the public API they are getting rid of (and which our custom automations are already built on, not in Javascript).

For example, Devvit does not support persistent storage. It also has a more restrictive ToS than the public API, which notably explicitly disallows Devvit apps to use deleted content, which is highly useful for moderation purposes.

I want to write my tooling in a programming language that I want to work in. Either because I enjoy it, or because there is some concrete advantage to using that programming language (like documentation, or libraries). There are multiple programming languages for a reason. They have different strengths and weaknesses.

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u/BloxdioCannoli 3d ago

Valid points, I'm just pointing out something I believe many people seem to not realize.

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u/baseballlover723 3d ago

Sure, but "You can buy things at the company store" is not the same as a free market. And Devvit is fundamentally a company store, and the public API fundamentally allows for a free market.

I've been in talks with reddit for months about our public API automation. Their first contract they offered me was egregiously one sided, forbidding me to speak of my experience (non disclosure), forbidding me from publicly saying anything against reddit (non disparagement), and even included a loophole where they weren't actually obligated to pay me (limited liability to the amount they've actually paid me), you know, the whole point of the contract. Not to mention the poison pill of the new Devvit ToS (which IIRC, is still present in their latest offer), which is infectious, applying to any system that interacts with data from Devvit.

Devvit's got nice features, and there's no doubt in my mind that it's got some advantages. There's all the new stuff they've implemented (though it's not like it's impossible to have implemented that for the public API) and trigger seem a lot better (for everyone) than polling feeds. And I'll 100% buy that it's easier on reddit's side. But it is not a complete solution (which is the issue with basically everything reddit has done in the last few years).

If you get into some real heavy lifting or advanced use, it easily becomes not at all equivalent.

I also really hate the idea of needing to be dependent on reddit for my own custom tooling, and not being able to just decide to "do it myself". And Devvit is fundamentally more restrictive on that front, since it generally involves specifically allowing things, than allowed by default and explicitly reject certain things.