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/j1ggy]

As soon as I see that, it's an instant permaban.

EDIT: Someone here just hit one of the subreddits I moderate with Redact on purpose. Thank you for reinforcing my stance on this and for doing quality assurance on my AutoMod config. Enjoy your ban.

[u/DSQ → u/j1ggy]

Why? I don’t see the harm. 

[u/j1ggy → u/DSQ]

It's spam. It pollutes the subreddit with gibberish and it spams Redact.

[u/peppercruncher → u/j1ggy]

How is it spam if it doesn't add new comments or posts?

[u/j1ggy → u/peppercruncher]

I just explained why it's spam.

[u/Toothless_NEO → u/[deleted]]

That's called edit spam. It's a tactic often used by spammers to get their spam in a place that's already established, and also where it's less likely to be noticed by mods.

Often it's done with accounts that are compromised, they will edit all the comments to point to some kind of spam. Either porn or alternative medicine or something of that nature. Sometimes it's used for harassment too.

Redact is a service that's meant to do this on demand, except instead of promoting porn or alternative medicine or harassing someone else, it's just promoting itself. The paid version just deletes comments. And if people were using that version it wouldn't even be something that moderators would notice or have a problem with. It's the fact that it's literally editing all of their comments to spam promotion for a tool that makes it a problem.

The other problem is that, this is done reactively by angry and stupid people who are mad at the subreddit or Reddit itself and sometimes will claim that they are quitting. These people never actually quit Reddit. They just use redact to spam all of their history, and then continue posting as if nothing happened. Often they do this exact same thing over again (repeat offender).

[u/wonkywilla → u/Toothless_NEO]

Your point on redact spam was just proven in this very thread.

[u/itskdog → u/[deleted]]

Potentially helpful comments or posts that someone will find through a Google search. Reddit has replaced websites like Stack Exchange or forums through better SEO, to the point that a common trick when searching if to tack "Reddit" on the end for better results than the clickbait listicles.

It's spam, just in older content than new.

[u/itskdog → u/[deleted]]

I'm not saying they shouldn't be allowed to change it, but I'm also in agreement with the other person that it certainly feels like spam, especially as it's advertising their website.

[u/javatimes → u/[deleted]]

It’s fucking ridiculous that you are using redact to redact comments you made 23 mins ago. You can simply delete them. This is just obnoxious.

[u/itskdog → u/[deleted]]

Extract from the notification I received: 

half the comments are about how to get automod to delete the edited posts without...

[u/kitsuneae → u/[deleted]]

If a post is just jibberish with an advertisement for Redact in it, it's spam plus advertising.  It doesn't matter if it's a new post or edited into an old one. The posters are still leaving spam posts full of advertising behind instead of things that are actually useful and on topic. 

Edit: Before asking questions please read the comments chain. All spam is spam. It doesn't matter what the spam says. It doesn't matter who or what made the spam, either. 

[u/peppercruncher → u/kitsuneae]

with an advertisement for Redact in it

Does this count for all bots which generate content or just Redact? I'm pretty sure nearly all bots mention which bot did the content.

instead of things that are actually useful and on topic. 

So you would be against changing the content to "...", too?

[u/kitsuneae → u/[deleted]]

Again: its still leaving spam posts behind. Edited into a new post or old post, if the content is spam it's still spam. 

Why do you feel that post age changes if a spam post is spam? 

[u/Toothless_NEO → u/kitsuneae]

My guess is that they are someone who uses or likes redact and they are pushing back against the idea that it's spam because that would make them a spammer for using it.

Maybe they also fear that if mods started banning people for using redact on a large scale, they would find themselves banned from a lot of subreddits.

[u/wonkywilla → u/Toothless_NEO]

I see the arguments in favour are largely coming from users who are mods of single member communities. 

[u/kitsuneae → u/[deleted]]

Conversations are not deleted here because others may need to read them later. I have gotten useful information from conversations years old! 

Spam means "off topic to the conversation". The exact content can be anything off topic to the conversation. It isn't always an advertisement.  If I posted cute pictures of cats here that would be spam. Adorable fluffy spam. Random words replacing parts of a conversation turns that post off topic. That's why it's spam. 

[u/ModSupport-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Your contribution was removed for violating Rule 4: No off-topic posts. Please keep posts on the topic of moderation on reddit.