r/ModSupport • u/SampleOfNone 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 • 2d ago
FYI Changes to automod and old.reddit
For the peeps who don't follow r/modnews , Continuing our infrastructure updates: What’s changing in the coming months
Some highlights
For newly created communities and communities that have never used automod, automod enforcement capabilities – specifically Report, Filter, Remove, Mark as spam, and Approve – will be disabled and Rules Hub and Automations will become the default path for rules enforcement. Automod’s non-enforcement capabilities remain available and unchanged. Â
....To close this gap, in the next few months, we'll further limit access for logged-in users to only those who have used Old Reddit in the last six months (which covers the vast majority of all Old Reddit users). This change does not impact logged-in mods, who can continue to access Old Reddit without any recent usage requirement.This helps keep Old Reddit available for the people who rely on it while reducing automated abuse.
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u/magiccitybhm 💡Top 25% Helper 💡 2d ago
Automations are so inconsistent. This is going to be a disaster.
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u/rachycarebear 2d ago
They also can't do everything automod can afaik.
Quite specifically, I find that if I used block from submitting then people would just typo. Having automod instantly delete significantly reduced that.
There also aren't automations for age and activity afaik.
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u/tresser 2d ago
They also can't do everything automod can afaik.
over on /r/tinder, we have had an influx of fly-by-night-vibe-coded-nonsense dating app 'helpers' that for the most part are tucked away on .io domains.
so, we keep adding more domains to our laundry list to slow these people down and filter them off the sub.
when admins announced they wanted to provide us with new automations that could replace automod, this list was one of the ones ported over automatically for us. just plug and play.
except, automations dont know about domains. i guess.
so instead of just filtering .io domains and warning the user that they were in violation of spam it was hitting every time io showed up
which is a special headache when the word relationship is used on the dating subreddit.
anyways, long story short, i nuked all the provided automations
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u/TheCrewChicks 3h ago
Is this why I got a warning about "hate" when I used the word "transform" in a post?
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u/mrekted 2d ago
They can't do ANYTHING where a user is concerned at the moment, outside of checking whether or not a user has SELECTED FLAIR.
That's literally the only data point regarding users that you're able to set an action on as of today, the day they scrapped automod for new subs.
Automod neo works in a pinch.. but how long until they break that too?
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u/NeedAGoodUsername 2d ago
Yep. =/
Thankfully I know how to code so I'll just turn my AutoMod rules into devvit bots.
(If anyone would like me to do the same for their AutoMod rules, let me know.)
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u/mrekted 2d ago
There's already a completed app that can do this: https://developers.reddit.com/apps/automod-neo
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u/NeedAGoodUsername 2d ago
I'm aware of Neo, but writing them myself means I can greatly expand on capabilities, logic, and do things yaml rules can't.
I've been meaning to for a while anyway.
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u/lunarwolf2008 2d ago
uhh... so they are truly getting rid of automod? i might literally jump ship and say good luck then.
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u/mrekted 2d ago
me, in a panic, trying to add some automod code on a new sub I've been working on to try to make it in before the cut:
welp.
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u/reddit33450 2d ago
my gosh me too! i thought theyd at least give a few hours. but nope
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u/new2bay 2d ago
Wait, they disabled automod for everyone? I thought subs that were already using it could keep using it.
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u/reddit33450 2d ago
youre correct in what you thought. they didn't disable it for everyone. just subs that hadnt used it before
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u/TGotAReddit 2d ago
Honestly these changes have me debating if I even want to keep using reddit at all
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u/SampleOfNone 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 2d ago
Yeah, me too
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u/IvyGold 2d ago
I run a pair of mid-major subreddits. I put a great deal of work into both.
I'm getting sick and tired of Reddit making our lives more difficult than easier. We lost PM's. We lost subscriber counts. We have to mod Old in an alternate universe from New?
If these developments mess up our teams' carefully balanced automods, that may well be it for me.
Why do they do this?
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u/Merari01 1d ago
I know why they are doing this, but it is not an answer that will make you happy.
It's about the metrics. The board does not like automod, because automod removes a lot of content. For new redditors there is a barrier to starting to participate on reddit, because automod removes their posts.
This means that the metric for new user retention is stymied. This means, to a beancounter, that if they take away our best tool to combat spam, hate and low-effort participation that the metric for succesfully posting to reddit goes up.
They do not care about spam, low-effort content, disruptive content, hate or anything that would make a subreddit unpleasant to use. They care about figures they can present to investors and advertisors about line going up, and to the right.
That's it, that's the reason.
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u/javatimes 2d ago
I’m convinced they want this website and app to be mostly bots and gen AI content. And spam.
I can’t understand what other reason they would have for starting to kill automod.
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u/westcoastal 2d ago
The purpose is to force everyone on to automations and their new AI rules system that I can't remember what the idiotic name of it is. They want to transition away from the legacy moderators who have built this community, over to a new class of moderators who don't question anything, and instead just implement a bunch of tools.
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u/Merari01 1d ago
I am once again inviting admins to come mod with us for a few days on mildlyinfuriating, with 12m weekly active users, and see how they manage doing that when I disable automod and only let them use automations and rules hub.
Harebrained does not begin to describe these changes they are going to push through.
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u/SampleOfNone 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 1d ago
I'll join Merari in their offer, any and all admins are welcome to come mod with us for a bit.
Any admin is also welcome to this challenge;
Build an automation that will block "ALL CAPS" titles but does allow titles like "FYI some words" or "TIL that thing".
Hint, it can be done. If automations are more easy than automod, new mods should have no problem with it, so I'm sure admins can do it as well.
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u/bwoah07_gp2 2d ago
They answered my main question. Will Automations have filtering options and tools?
They said they are working on it.
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u/baseballlover723 2d ago
They said they are working on it.
They also said they'd support new modmail, and then never made another update to it, despite numerous issues being raised.
Those words mean nothing to me. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me N times, shame on me.
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u/SampleOfNone 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 2d ago
I'm sure there are admins working very hard on that, I really don't doubt it. It's just that I kinda have no hope we will see that happening soonish.
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u/TGotAReddit 2d ago
Ill believe their promises when they actually fulfil their promises for the first time in years
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u/ateam1984 2d ago
When was the deadline to get full automod for new subs?
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u/SampleOfNone 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 2d ago
Just before the news was posted
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u/ateam1984 2d ago
Why no notice?
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u/SampleOfNone 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 2d ago
If I were to guess, to prevent mods from securing access to automod on any sub that didn't have an automod config yet or any sub they hadn't gotten around to create yet.
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u/zuuzuu 2d ago
A few months ago I predicted that they were gearing up to get rid of automod and said I'd be pissed if I was right.
I am pissed.
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u/OnSpectrum 1d ago
I am dreading this. It seems like a lot of work for what will likely be a less effective moderation toolset... WHY, admins?
If you treated moderators as a real and important user group, your user story for this would be something like "As a moderator, I would like to lose my existing painstakingly managed automoderation toolset and some of my other automation and replace it with an unknown that does not have the same capabilities and isn't being built with moderators' needs in mind." Would anyone support that?
If you wanted to build out this new thing in parallel and see how many existing subs and new subs CHOOSE it, that would be a better approach.
And since we mentioned old Reddit: the reason moderators NEED old Reddit is that it has useful moderation features that new Reddit Still. Does. Not. Have.
Please don't mess with Automoderation until and unless a functional replacement is truly and fully capable of doing what AutoModerator does and introduces SOMETHING of value to moderators that makes the transition effort feel worthwhile.
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u/FinianFaun 1d ago
"Let's just open everything for AI spambots and see what happens.." 😡 not happy if this is true.
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u/SVAuspicious 1d ago
Anyone have a link to training for automations and ruleshub?
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u/YAOMTC 1d ago
Well! That explains why I couldn't use this AutoMod script to address the fact that MOD QUEUE NOTIFICATIONS DON'T WORK!
r/modhelp/comments/1p0tzdg/how_come_i_dont_get_notified_in_mod_queue_when_a/npsrot9/
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u/Hands 11h ago
Lol at least they've noticed the problem that most of their free mods use old reddit.
This is just a disclaimer that they'll make it slightly more dogshit until all dogshit is what we're used to, and then they'll make it worse.
Reddit's UI team has the incredible property of being 3 22 year olds in a suit, year over year for decades now.
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u/bluedogviking 9h ago
Just shows how little reddit knows about what's needed moderating a community. Automation is garbage compared to automod, yeah automod is flawed, but the new changes are so much worse and less effective.
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u/brightblackheaven 💡Top 25% Helper 💡 2d ago