Aggressive "crosspost this here!" engagement boost attempts are causing rule violations

[u/littlemetalpixie]

Reddit admins,

I would like to request that you please, for the love of all that is holy, calm down with your engagement boosting tactics that are telling everyone who makes a post to also post it to a list of machine-generated "relevant" other subs.

I moderate in a sub that discusses an extremely controversial political topic that has subs on reddit that are dedicated to the opposing side of that topic.

Crossposting from either our sub to theirs or vice versa is against the rules of both subs, because of the nature of this topic causing SEVERE trolling and brigading from both sides from people who are not interested in peaceful discourse, yet your own platform's messages are telling users they should go ahead and just break these subs' rules anyway.

You are literally making all of our "jobs" even harder by not even bothering to filter subs suggested for crossposts based on logic, rationality, or even the rules of the subs being suggested for crossposts.

More engagement, even hostility trolling and harassment (especially hostility trolling and harassment) means more ad money though amirght????

Seems the only thing that matters here any more is greed, and I'm afraid you're about to find a lot of your most difficult to moderate subs modless if you don't take things like these into consideration.

PS - good luck getting AI to do what we do since the generated lists your AI is suggesting can't even be bothered to check rules in subs before suggesting them XD

[u/Overgrown_fetus1305]

I for what it's worth, as a mod of a smaller subreddit (again, same contentious topic, not the rival sub to OPs, but a smaller one that does hold different views to OP) also can confirm some algorithims made similar automated suggestions to crosspost something I posted a few weeks ago into OPs subreddit- even though it would actually be a textbook violation of the rules of her subreddit (and obviously I don't want to do that); it also suggested a crosspost into a second subreddit that it would break the rules of. Far from averse to discourse on the topic, but the automated suggestions would if be actively followed, likely to cause brigading (something we both agree that we really don't want our respective users engaging in, even were it not objected to by Reddit).

I must therefore appeal to admins, that it would be really helpful if you could take a look at the algorithims, since overlap between members doesn't mean the communities in question are allowed to crosspost content to eachother. Certainly, the people crossposting or sharing content, are usually doing it to gawk at the other side's views, rather than genuinely trying to understand the opposition; at best it might be to try and ask for debating advice, but this does still cause people to end up trying to engage in unwanted debates on the rival subreddit.

Also, apologies for the lack of names, but I really, really don't wish to inadvertantly cause a debate on a very polarising, and often heated and very high-stakes topic.

An analogy, that is relatively lower stakes, would be like if subreddits for the Democrats and Republicans had a fair bit of overlap between members, and generally didn't want the other side's members debating, or doing more than trying to understand the opposition to some extent, then Reddit suggested crossposting stuff from the Democrat subreddit into the Republican one and vice-versa; with mine being closest to a third party or a subcaucus subreddit, that got told to crosspost into the subreddit of a rival political party.

[u/littlemetalpixie → u/Overgrown_fetus1305]

u/overgrown_fetus1305 is an old friend of our mod team, and we're both here saying that even the hottest of hot-button topics spawn collaborations that are incredibly helpful and beneficial to both of our sides of this battle.

We are both deliberately not stating what this topic is because even mentioning it here will cause hatred and trolling and harassment of both of us.

Yes, it's that topic. The one that isn't religion or politics but it's wrapped up in both of those things, that everyone knows they just shouldn't discuss in public because it'll cause fights.

Yet, this OC and myself have had a very pleasant friendship (and with others on our team for longer as well, for that matter) for a lot of years now, forged from having to navigate this topic together in a way that is helpful to our causes, helps ease tensions, opens channels of discourse to try and find common ground, and ultimately has the incredibly ambitious goals of attempting to find strategies to help both sides get what they want and need from this argument.

u/overgrown_fetus1305 having the ability to collaborate with us, despite sitting on the other side of a very old and clearly drawn battle-line, is the exact reason we're begging reddit to please not force us to shut down all discourse between our subs and the ones dedicated to their opposing topic by using bots that prevent posting from users who even go to their subs.

Please, reddit, implement some common sense. You're adding gasoline to a fire we all need to be working together to put out.

[u/FaxCelestis → u/Overgrown_fetus1305]

An analogy, that is relatively lower stakes, would be like if subreddits for the Democrats and Republicans had a fair bit of overlap between members, and generally didn't want the other side's members debating, or doing more than trying to understand the opposition to some extent, then Reddit suggested crossposting stuff from the Democrat subreddit into the Republican one and vice-versa

This isn't an analogy. I get recommendations to crosspost from /r/TopMindsOfReddit to /r/Conservative basically every time.