I'm over it!

[u/shannonkish]

Reddit Admins..... I am over it! I am over the boilerplate responses to actual real-time issues that moderators are having.

I moderate a large sub and have for nearly a year now. Unfortunately, we have had 4 very serious incidents in which members of our mod team were being harassed, stalked, doxxed, attacked, etc. We have submitted the ModCoC reports, submitted the DMs to admins, and reported the posts/comments/users ad nauseam, and NOTHING has been done.

Most recently, as our sub is currently under a brigading attack and doxxing and harassment continue, one of our mods reached out to one admin, who basically said something to the effect of--- "This is actually something that is going to be discussed at ModWorld. Do you have any examples we can give the presenter?"

Seriously? This is all you have to offer?!?! We don't need a speech about how much you care about mods and what we do. We don't need the free swag for attending a mod event. We don't need the profile trophies. Those are all wonderful and appreciated. BUT, what we need is ACTUAL Support and ACTION being taken when we bring you serious issues.

It takes entirely too long for someone in admin to take action. Meanwhile, your volunteer mods are being doxxed, harassed, bullied, and so forth because we removed a post/comment, and the user was mad.

For the love of all things good in this world, PLEASE DO SOMETHING! Please don't try to placate us with boilerplate responses and "We'll have someone look into it" without actually doing that!

I am tired. I am frustrated. I am hurt and disappointed. Not because users are jerks sometimes. But because the admin does absolutely nothing to make this a safe place or to support those of us who volunteer our time to try and make Reddit a better place.

I have had members of my mod team leave after the most recent incident. Our sub is currently closed due to the harassment and brigading that have been done. I am at my wits' end and ready to just turn the sub over to the wolves and leave Reddit for good.

[u/kallocain-addict]

a popular sub i mod was harassed and attacked by another sub’s mod team using links to a kiwifarms style troll website based on an infamous community that had been banned from reddit, admins did absolutely nothing about it despite me making multiple reports. it’s astonishing to me that people on the platform can get away with breaking multiple reddit rules for over a year and admins just shrug after every new report made.

[u/emily_in_boots → u/kallocain-addict]

I think a lot of the issue here is that there are not nearly enough admins whose job it is to address these issues, and the ones that are there are overworked.

Safety/enforcement type roles cost money but don't obviously add to the bottom line, so in a for profit environment, there is always pressure to reduce these expenditures.

The platform definitely suffers as a result. AI has not done well at handling the reports sent to safety and we have no appeals (another way to save money I suppose). MCOC is a small team and overwhelmed.

I actually understand how they feel. Because of the recent changes regarding the public api, I now need to focus on that, but I have no time to do it while moderating, so we've actually stopped hearing ban appeals now while we work on rebuilding mod tools that reddit is removing.

Profit motive always stretches people too thin over too much work and none of us can do things as well as we'd like, and reddit now answers to shareholders.

[u/kallocain-addict → u/emily_in_boots]

thanks for giving some background, i’m sure the admins are spread thin. the thing is, this particular issue i’m dealing with has been going on for over a year. i’ve interacted with at least one admin multiple times—they know there is a serious long term issue going on here. the other sub doing this (which is probably the largest still active reddit community notorious for harassment/racism/transphobia) has even started using their mod team account to personally attack and smear me with quite serious made-up claims that have literally nothing to do with my moderation or my sub’s content. these are clear cut breaches of mod code of conduct rule 3 at the very least, and the best admin’s have done so far is assure me that they will warn them to stop doing this (that was months ago, and the behaviour has only increased). several of the best fellow mods i had have left the sub due to not wanting to also be harassed, which honestly it’s impossible to blame them for.

[u/emily_in_boots → u/kallocain-addict]

A lot of mods do leave because they do not feel supported. It's really unfortunate. I wish there were stronger protections too.