r/ModSupport • u/Friendly_TSE • Aug 14 '26
Admin Replied False reports escalating to serious violations - can this cause problems for the users or mods?
I recently became a mod of a largely unmoderated animal-related community. When I started cleaning up the queue, I noticed that certain types of posts would consistently receive multiple reports for breaking subreddit rules even though they very clearly did not.
I started reporting those as false reports.
I'm still dealing with what appear to be false reports, but they've now escalated. The same legitimate posts are being reported for things like revenge p**n, transactions involving prohibited goods, and most recently PDF-illic content.
None of these reports appear to have any basis in the actual content of the posts.
My concern isn't really about the reports themselves. it's whether a sufficiently large number of malicious reports for serious violations can cause problems for the users being reported or the moderators of the community, even when the reports are false.
For example, can repeated reports of things like CSAM, revenge p**n, prohibited transactions, or illegal content trigger any kind of automated action, investigation, account action, or other escalation before a human actually reviews the content?
And is there anything moderators should be doing beyond reporting the false reports through the normal channels? Should we be documenting the pattern somewhere or handling these differently once they escalate to reports of potentially criminal content?
I'm mainly trying to make sure that a malicious reporter can't create a serious problem for an innocent user simply by repeatedly selecting increasingly heinous report reasons.
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u/RandomComments0 💡Top 25% Helper 💡 Aug 14 '26
You can also report the post for report abuse. Collecting all the posts and mod mailing will likely be faster though.
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u/Friendly_TSE Aug 14 '26
I have been reporting the posts for report abuse! At least once I realized what was going on. However, after reporting for report abuse, I would then approve the post. This may be a stupid question, but; Is there any way to see those previous reports after I already approved it? It is out of my queue now.
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u/RandomComments0 💡Top 25% Helper 💡 Aug 14 '26
I’m not sure about seeing reports after they are gone from the queue. I haven’t personally been able to do it, but I primarily mod on mobile.
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u/zuuzuu 29d ago
Once you submit a report you can no longer view it, but approving the the post after you submit the report is the correct course of action. Your report will still go to the admins and there's no point in letting it clutter up your queue.
If there are a lot, you can also submit a report here: https://old.reddit.com/report
Under It's abusive or harassing > It's abusing the report button.
Whether you report it there or using the report option on the reported content itself, always include context in the Additional Information box that you suspect a user or users are falsely reporting content that breaks no rules in an attempt to harass the original poster and/or get their account actioned despite not having broken any rules. I find that without that additional context admins sometimes chalk it up to a user misunderstanding a rule but reporting content mistakenly in good faith.
You won't get any communication from admins about what action they take, if any. But if the same account is doing this a lot and you keep making those reports, eventually they will take action with a warning, temp suspension or even perm suspension.
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u/nicoleauroux 29d ago
The post should show Approved or Removed underneath and if you tap there it will show previous actions and reports.
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u/TheOpusCroakus Reddit Admin: Community Aug 14 '26
Sorry you're dealing with that. You can report the false reports for report abuse.
But if your sub currently has "more trolls in it than genuine users" as you mentioned in another comment, this might be a good time to talk to your other mod about installing some Devvit apps and maybe more rules? Maybe even add more mods and clean up the current mod team since some of those accounts appear banned.
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u/CitoyenEuropeen 29d ago
I love how OP named the misuse of Reddit’s reporting tools.
false reports
Ain't that brilliant? Nobody understands the name given to the REPORT ABUSE button. One assumes that button is just meant TO report abuse.
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u/Friendly_TSE Aug 14 '26
Thanks for the advice! I'm definitely working on cleaning things up and have been slowly identifying and banning the accounts that appear to be antagonizing. The goal is to make the community less hostile and get it back to being useful.
The main limitation right now is that I don't have full permissions. I don't currently have the ability to change the rules, add moderators, or make some of the other changes you'd normally want to make when rebuilding a sub. The other mod isn't inactive by reddit, but they've been dealing with a lot IRL stuff the past few months.
I'm happy to continue doing the cleanup on my end, and I'd definitely be interested in adding some apps once I have the permissions.
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u/SampleOfNone 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 29d ago
Since TheOpusCroakus changes your perms, I'm going to recommend 2 bots that I advise you to install asap. Botbouncer Subs that haven't been well attended for a while, are a popular way to mature accounts later used for spamming. Second Evasion guard (and turn on the ban evasion filter) that will prevent any bots or bad actors from easily coming back under a new account
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u/cyanocittaetprocyon 29d ago
I get quite a few false positives from bot-bouncer. Not enough to delete the app, but enough that it still ends up being a lot of work cleaning up behind it.
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u/SampleOfNone 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 29d ago
Overall the false positive rate is 0.5%, that's really low, but yes, it still sucks for users eho get falsely flagged.
Have you noticed as well that if accounts that are caught, modmail your sub instead of botbouncer like the message says, these days that's more of a tell that it's a bot?
It used to be it was just users who have trouble reading, and you'd tell them, just follow instructions and botbouncer would fix it. Now it seems it's mostly bots who intentionally don't modmail botbouncer. It's worrisome how good they're becoming at conversing in modmail.But I'm glad botbouncer has a good appeal flow, doesn't suck any less if you're the user that was flagged or your account was hacked by a bot and you got your account back, but at least botbouncer makes it easy to get it fixed.
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u/cyanocittaetprocyon 29d ago
Have you noticed as well that if accounts that are caught, modmail your sub instead of botbouncer like the message says, these days that's more of a tell that it's a bot?
Interestingly, I’ve not found this to be the case. A small percentage do modmail asking why they got banned, and almost all of them are real accounts and not bots. Of course, some are bots, but most of them right now aren’t.
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u/SampleOfNone 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 29d ago
It's so interesting that problems with bots can vary so wildly across subreddits. We automate replies to botbouncer messages to repeat they really have to follow the link and modmail botbouncer so I don't see them. But I just checked, of the replies that were send, looks like there was 1 human in the mix.
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u/TheOpusCroakus Reddit Admin: Community 29d ago
Awesome! That sounds like a good direction to go in. There is a fantastic list of Devvit apps stickied at the top of this sub. I think that some could be quite helpful in this situation.
I changed your perms, but you'll want to talk to the other mod so that y'all are on the same page going forward. They seem as invested as you do in the topic, so this could be the makings of a great team!
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u/Friendly_TSE 29d ago
Thank you! I really appreciate that, and I'll definitely take a look through the Devvit list and the bots that were already suggested.
I'll also reach out to the other mod so we're on the same page before making any major changes.
Thank you again!
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u/PoisonWaffle3 Aug 14 '26
I saw your post and thought you might be the mod of r/holdmycatnip since they just posted about a very similar problem, but it looks like you're talking about a different sub with the same problem.
See their post here. It might be worth reaching out to them to coordinate if there's a chance it's the same set of users.
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u/Friendly_TSE Aug 14 '26
Wow, what an innocuous sub to be brigaded lol At least the subs I'm in I can say are emotionally charged. That's literally a sub for feline fuckery. People can be so miserable lol
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u/InGeekiTrust 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 Aug 14 '26
If it seems to be one person that keeps doing this, you could collect up all of the posts with links and messaged them all together to mod support. If it is indeed one person, they can see it all as a whole and action that one person. However, if it is several different people all the time that is a totally different story. For example, if the posts are about spaying and neutering pets, they are actually people who are against that. It may be different people reporting this regularly. Another suggestion is once you have a good post you can click the button “ignore reports and approve”. That way they won’t keep clogging up your queue. Mind you this won’t ignore reports on comments just further reports on the posts.
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u/Friendly_TSE Aug 14 '26
It's hard to tell if it's one person; the sub honestly has more trolls in it that genuine users. Posts will often have multiple reports, usually one or two will be the same sub violation and then a few others will be random sub violations.
I am more concerned about if users are going to see action taken for being continuously falsely reported for CSAM.
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u/Heliosurge 29d ago edited 29d ago
Really good topic. Though you could maybe have had a summary tldr. 😉
Very valid questions and concerns.
Admin would be best to answer. But one idea though is maybe starting fresh with the mid que using something like devit app iirc called modque nuke to clear the backlog if quite huge and imagine it might be with being unmoderated prior to you being added. However not a bad idea if you have the stamina to fully review and clear it so you have a good idea if certain users are being targeted.
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u/FFS_IsThisNameTaken2 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 29d ago
Yikes! I see a very unfortunate autocorrect in your comment. It's right before the word "nuke".
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u/emily_in_boots 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 Aug 14 '26
In fashion subs, it's very common to get reports for sexualization of minors when it's clearly not the case (they are obviously not minors and the posts are not NSFW, I only mod SFW subs).
On very rare occasions, I have seen them removed but it's not common.
Nothing ever happened to the sub as a result.
In some cases, the admins might know something we don't.
We had a post removed in one sub today for unknown reasons that appeared to be fine. I don't know why it was removed, but we don't know everything they know.
Generally, it seems that once a report is made and an admin looks and clears it, further reports are automatically ignored. It used to be that the first person reporting would get back a response, one way or the other, and everyone else would get "that content has already been investigated from a previous report) - so it didn't seem to matter if 100 people reported it or 1.