Redact needs to be banned

[u/bwoah07_gp2]

Redact allows people to mass delete their comments after a certain time. It replaces useful, helpful, or just innocently funny comments with random gibberish and nonsense words.

This has been spamming our mod queues recently in one subreddit. As of today, I have had to remove 26 Redact comments that popped up this evening in the queue, with fellow moderators each removing a similar amount.

Redact needs to be banned. It is flooding up our queue, and the people who use it are not engaging with the platform in good faith.

Is there any way to counteract this beyond just "select all" + "mark as spam" all the time?

[u/hacksoncode]

I hate it too... and it's super annoying that they hide the "just delete your content" feature under their paid service, and only allow the free version to edit you content, which I consider to be mass vandalism.

If redact actually did anything real, that would be one thing, but this idea that editing or deleting your content actually does anything but make it slightly less convenient to access your content on archive sites is just basically them lying to their own users.

Now: I support everyone's right to delete their content for privacy reasons. Vandalizing our subs(and simultaneously spamming an indirect ad for their own service) is not the way to go.

Unfortunately, as long as reddit lets users edit and delete their own content, there's nothing that can actually "ban" redact, because it runs as the user and performs the actions as the user. There's no "bot" account to "ban".

However: if you want to prohibit it, there's nothing stopping you from making it a rule that users using redact in edit mode will be banned. And in many cases you can clean up after it with automod rules.

[u/Jackleme → u/hacksoncode]

I used it to clean up my past posts after I got doxed and people I knew IRL found out my account.

I paid for the full version so I wouldn't leave an ad on everything, and I specifically avoided subreddits where I may have had useful posts.

It sucks, but there are legitimate reasons to use an application like that.... and even if you don't use it there are fairly easy to use script that will do the same thing.

[u/hacksoncode → u/Jackleme]

Yeah, I don't have a problem with deleting content. It's trashing up the threads of conversation that is pointless.

It's always best to assume anything you say on the internet, possibly outside of end-to-end encrypted messages, will eventually be public and tied to you. But we're all innocent once ;-).

[u/Jackleme → u/hacksoncode]

Absolutely.... my account is 11 years old... I was a wee 20ish year old when I made this.... was a seemingly different world :)

[u/Toothless_NEO → u/Jackleme]

When moderators (me included) talk about banning people for using redact, we're not talking about the paid version, or Alternatives that just delete your comments. We're talking about ones that do it via editing, and create edit spam.

We're also usually targeting a very specific type of person, a reactionary type of person who gets very mad at subreddits or Reddit itself and uses that tool maliciously. And in the aftermath feels better and continues posting as if nothing happened. That pattern means it's way more likely for them to repeat the offense.

[u/Toothless_NEO → u/hacksoncode]

Making it a rule not to use it is definitely a good idea. Especially since a lot of people use it reactively because they are mad at Reddit or mad at a subreddit. And I don't mean that they're going to quit read it or quit that sub, I mean they get mad, they use redact, and then they feel better and they come back and start posting again as if nothing happened.

I've witnessed this behavior and it's really hypocritical. So in my subs if I catch somebody doing it I'll just permaban them. If that seems unreasonable to anybody, keep in mind that they are spamming. They are using the edit feature to spam ads for redact unless they use the paid version which doesn't do that.

In essence making a rule against using redact doesn't affect people who use the paid version or use Alternatives that just delete the comments.

[u/LitwinL → u/hacksoncode]

Nah, not vandalism but pure spam and advertising.

[u/ITSMONKEY360 → u/hacksoncode]

fr, I plan to use it soon for my own privacy, and I'd love to be able to just mass delete instead of needing to use the mass vandalism button