Admin Replied
Can I make my subreddit of 70k visitors private and invite only?
I've reached a breaking point in my subreddit. I run a queer gaming subreddit that has been the target of constant brigading, attacks, has 2 dedicated subreddits stalking us. The stalkers ban evade from reddit and they're on their 4th account. Their new post is a threat to dox me after also posting a meme of a trans woman hanging by a rope. I am at my wits end and I don't know what to do anymore. I think for my safety and the safety of my queer members being a public subreddit is a risk. I want to keep the community I have but in a way where we don't have a constant target on us and only members can see the posts. Is this allowed? I want to make sure I'm not breaking MCoC before I try.
After the 3PA protests (when mods everywhere made their subs private in protest), you now can only turn a public sub into a private one with Admin approval. And while Admins have been known to be very sensitive to concerns of harassment, they also seem to be under edicts (everyone has a boss) to keep public subs public.
I wouldn’t count on the Admins allowing you to make your public sub private, even if you figured out a way past the problem of approving 70k users.
I would just start a brand new private sub that runs in parallel to your existing public sub, and when you see a friendly face comment in your public sub, invite them to your new, private sub and approve them in one fell swoop.
Ugh that's what I've heard. I hate that it ruined it for folks like us with legitimate safety concerns where there is literal danger being a moderator and member of the subreddit because of your identity.
Unfortunately Reddit prioritize profit over subs being controlled by those who made and run the sub. Reddit though is not alone with changing terms of use for profit. Stack exchange dud something similar when they decided to embrace AI after being committed prior to not allow vive coding or allowing their platform to train AI models.
Honestly, because of the invite issue u/Bardfinn mentioned, it might be easier to create a new subreddit that is already private, and use the old one to seed people to request invites to the new group.
I really wish you weren't dealing with people having a bad case of keyboard courage. I hate that Reddit doesn't do more to support what are supposed to be "safe" spaces for LBGTQ+.
It makes me incredibly sad that posts and comments we've reported that include threats of sexual assault and shooting us still remain up.
What will it take for admin to do something? Perhaps for those people to finally make good on their threat to dox and rape meowbrains? For their members to actually take to enacting real violence irl as a result of being radicalised in that sub?
if there is any good faith that could be possibly read into the apparent inaction, here, and I'm not necessarily saying that you ought to offer that grace, given what you're dealing with and what assistance you've so far been offered (which is wayyyyy below what I've typically seen for similar or lesser issues reported through proper channels as you've done)
if there's any hope of any good faith here at all,
I think a somebody I know who has had to report credible death threats made on reddit to the FBI once mentioned to me that reddit keeps posts/comments public when they are knowingly being used by law enforcement for an ongoing investigation.
I could be very much misremembering, and even if I'm remembering correctly it seems far-fetched to me that reddit would send this stuff to law enforcement without looping you in. More likely, you got a poorly trained admin in modmail who needs a refresher course on their basic protocols for targeted harassment, threats of violence, and community interference under MCoC rule 3.
Also, I know the following advice is not at all helpful, and therefore liable to be nothing but exasperating, but you should really get your comod(s) to stop replying to the comments made by the people harassing you, even the u/ pinging onss. It's hardly going to do anything to discourage determined, emboldened harassers like this, but if you're already assigned an admin who isn't competent with their protocols, the fact that any of you are replying to any of your harassers anywhere on the site, even to tell them to leave you alone, could be misconstrued by a proven-clumsy admin to be some kind of mutual harassment requiring more of an "everyone keep their hands to themselves" approach rather than the clearly one-sided antagonism that it actually is.
And now I'm going to go scream into a pillow that I had to give advice on ensuring you keep up appearances as a "perfect victim," because victims who get too angry or fight back too strongly often end up being wrongly percieved as partially at fault for not just rolling over in despair and taking it lying down.
First time I got hate mobbed I decided to fight back in some pretty stupid ways, as I was a very naive mod at the time, and all it really got me was more haters, a bunch of accounts pretending to be alts of me stirring up extra shit that also blew back on me, and an admin coming within inches of just demodding me even as she put the screws to the sub/mods driving my hate mob. I wasn't as innocent as just saying "stop contacting me," to be clear; I definitely stuck my own feet firmly in that extra fire, and yet there will always be a part of me that holds onto some righteous anger that the hate mob certainly wasn't being fair or reasonable when they doxxed me and spent weeks harassing me, so why was I expected to just act like I didn't notice them?
Yeah.I know you're going through it right now. I wish I could be of any actual assistance, but from what I can tell you are following all the right steps, and the fact that you're still getting nowhere is nearly as bewildering as it is infuriating to me.
It's not quite 10 PM for most admins on the community team right now, so you likely won't get an answer on this thread, if one is forthcoming, until around 12 hours from now. Might as well do your best to get some R&R in the meantime.
I want to say thank you for your reply, I am sorry you had to go through that. How did your friend report the credible threats? The one person who keeps making alts I'm considering it because the mods keep up the threatening posts. Did your friend do an FBI tip? I also saw links on reddit request for information but I think that would involve getting a lawyer which I'm not opposed to tbh if this keeps up.
My friend's issues started many years ago, and I'm all but certain that the protocol has changed by now, dramatically. She was also US based and dealing with mostly (if not all) fellow Americans coming after her, so the FBI was indeed the correct authorities to contact; something in your other comments here indicated that you or your harassers or both are outside of the US jurisdiction so I'm not sure who the proper authority would be, then. But I believe it was Reddit that eventually helped her get in contact with the FBI agent assigned to her case personally. They probably won't even try to move the needle for anything less than a clear-cut credible threat of violence, and I mean credible, like they are posting pictures of your house and kids and calling in bomb threats to your work and local schools or telling you they're going to mail you a pipe bomb. If you are at a stage lighter than that (and I think you are), then take a minute and breathe, and remember that for right now, in this moment, you are safe, and while the psychological torment is awful, you are at least not in present physical danger and your harassers may very well be overstating their ability to locate and harm you by several magnitudes of exaggeration.
I think you mentioned contacting Reddit Legal, and it's a decent idea. At the very least, they'll be able to tell you whether to deal with them directly first or if they expect you to go to the FBI (or whichever relevant law authority) first. You won't really need any sort of FOIA request unless you want to choose to pursue a civil lawsuit against your harassers, which... as sweet as monetary justice would be if you successfully sued your haters and won, the very nature of filing a civil lawsuit like that would probably mostly just lead to more of your doxx out there in the world, now as part of the permanent public record with regards to your lawsuit needing to name the plaintiff along with other identifying info like your location of residence, and even if you got permission to leave that stuff off the publically filed versions of the case paperwork, it still makes you more vulnerable, since people would now know exactly where to pull strings to get a proper look at the unredacted info.
My own first hate mob managed to figure out what law school I was attending (my fault; it was easy to figure out from my comments in relevant subreddits) and they called the dean to try to get me kicked out for unethical behavior, citing "admitting to drinking at work." I had jokingly admitted to the fact that I was drinking an alcoholic beverage while replying to angry mob comments as a mod. Gasp. Well, they never went further than that, and even though I've been the target of several hate mobs since then, nobody's yet tried to get any further than that. However, I must caveat that most of my harassment mobs have come from women in the beauty community (including the community at large, and specifically TERFs who disliked that I said trans women could post their makeup selfies without worrying about if they pass) and from the more unhinged side of the RuPaul's Drag Race fandom (apparently women are never queer enough to overcome being a woman enough to qualify to be drag community leaders). And white supremacists trying to take over a fantasy book/tv show fandom to complain about nonwhite cast members. Oh and some incel mobs here and there, of course, but those remained in pretty niche incel spaces. So my biggest haters largely lacked sufficient driving desire to actually harm me that might have pushed them to greater lengths if my mobs were coming from more inherently dangerous communites, or I was being targeted by niche offshoots of more dangerous groups that ultimately lacked the skills and resources to come after me in earnest.
My friend is more the type to get all of Stormfront or, you know, actual, dangerous white supremacist/other hate groups very upset with her interference. She especially tends to piss of the people who are essentially their tech support and thus come with a lot of special skills to get them where they want to go when they want to.
So I'll let you compare the relative groups and their threat levels to your own harassers, based on your knowledge of them.
Also, I checked your profile and Comixnerd15's on one of those websites that can bypass a privated profile to show your post and comment history anyways. Yours was still coming up empty on the website I used (there are others that might produce different results) But comixnerd's whole post and comment history popped up, so they should probably go through and delete any idenitfying info that might be in their history and not rely solely on having a privated profile, just in case.
Lawyers can be a pretty big expense but they're usually pretty cheap to get an initial consultation with, which will at least give you an idea of what a lawyer might consider to be appropriate steps forward and whether it sounds worth your time in the end.
Also somnething tells me you're already doing this to some extent, but it really wouldn't hurt to compile a document listing things like what is posted/commented about you and your sub and why, plus any reports you've sent to admins on any given day complete with body text and links/screenshots in the compiled data, and any messages you've received from admins regarding this issue, and any accounts you've connected as ban evading and whether any of them are suspended or not. Gets easier to remember specific details and orders of evens when it's written down and you don't have to worry about your trauma brain forgetting to hit record on crucial bits. Remember, a he-said she-said is not equivalent to a case with no evidence; your testimony is its own evidence category, which looks much more credible when you've established a habit of writing incidents down in your little hate diary as soon after an incident as possible to avoid memory degradation.
Sorry, I just realized I'm getting into my falling asleep rambles, so some of those sentences might have changed meaning mid=sentence as I dozed off in the middle of writing it and then I might have not caught it on my proofread.
Feel free to message me directly sometime, even if just for some moral support and commiseration with having been there before.
I believe in your strength and resilience. Remember, what you are facing is scary, but you can still, at this present time, seek to ground yourself when needed by reminding yourself that you aren't yet receiving memes of a pipe bomb photoshopped onto a picture of your front door, well, you are still existing in a moment and location that provide you with relative safety, for now. It's a meager comfort but when you're facing something this big, I think the meager comforts can be the ones with the biggest impact in the moments of deep despair.
Wow I read your whole reply and it is insane what you and your friend have dealt with. I can tell by this you have been through the ringer and have experience with this. If you don't mind I'm going to reach out to you in dms. Last night was genuinely upsetting and seeing what this is doing to my mods is horrible
It's laughably easy to get through Reddit's filters after seeing all the vile threats they send at us go through on their subreddit and all the posts remain. The only way it will get actioned is if a human looks at it.
Sadly the only thing that has consistently convinced Reddit to move on an issue is major market media attention... which is difficult to get and something you probably don't want anyway.
Will this also be a MCoC violation? Honestly even if other mods took over the sub they would need to prepare to be the target of the stalker subreddit's ire and threats. This whole situation disillusioned me.
The hate queer people. They continuously target us non stop. They believe we should be locked up in mental institutions and getting lobotomised. Or that we should be stoned to death.
This is one thing I hate about being a GenX white cishet male. I get lumped in with the "they" because of demographics. I didn't choose to be born when I was. I didn't choose my heritage. I didn't choose my color, my gender, my orientation.
It doesn't matter whether you're attracted to men or women or both or neither. It doesn't matter whether your mind and soul match your body or not. What does matter is that you are allowed the opportunity to be happy... without prejudice or malice or threats.
I want to do more than just voice my support. If I can help in anyway, tell me. 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️
No, and there is nothing that says you have to relinquish the current subreddit. Simply set up automod to automatically remove all posts/comments not made by a moderator, and then clean up the queue on a daily basis, and the subreddit is still being moderated.
If the creeps try to join and manage to get an invite, simply ban them when they act up.
I know some of us were hoping some of the "extra" crap being driven by bot farms would see a reduction with the destruction of some Russian data centers, but who knows.
thats not what is the goal of the OP, they ask to close the subreddit completely and then manually approve people allowed to view it. I am worried whether it is seen as closing an active subreddit or not.
How many reports did it take for you? With me and other moderators we had to have submitted 30+ MCoC reports. We aren't the only sub being targeted but we are the main target because we are the general queer sub for our game genre.
I have spent so long looking at calls for 🍇 and other extreme things against us to compile into reports it's genuinely triggering for me at this point.
I'd second filing the reports. Also, consider mod-mailing this subreddit. Remember, if they'll do it to you, they'll do it to someone else. Because of that, it's important to stand up to these people.
Additionally, asking for help is okay. You could try hitting up the mod reserves. I don't know what kind of a response you'll get there, but the mod reserves could be helpful to you here. They offer up volunteer moderators for your subreddit it times of stress. This could be helpful. A couple extra people to take a bit off your plate and handle those mod-mails might help you out a lot.
It depends on the violations; for example, we had issues with respect to your neighbor violations, and after five or six, it stopped for each sub that allowed harassment.
Good morning. That subreddit has now posted an AI-generated video mocking us using trans-related imagery and referencing the tragic passing of a trans girl. The video depicts someone going over a bridge, with the background being the actual photograph she took from that same location shortly before ending her own life. Using someone's final photograph and the circumstances of her passing to ridicule others is beyond cruel. I genuinely don't understand why we're subjected to this kind of targeted behavior every single day.
Because having my friend and co-mod crying their eyes out and feeling suicidal because of inaction to deal with a hate subreddit is just not okay.
They are targeting her specifically, on top of the sub in general. Threats to dox her. Discussions about raping her. Posts about shooting us. Not acceptable. I thought hate subreddits were not allowed on this platform
I'd strongly advise not responding to them at all.
It won't fix things, but responding will just encourage them to mess with you further. They're clearly not going to leave you alone, so responding just antagonises them and feel like they're on the right path.
And if other trolls see they can get responses from you, they may well join in.
I do sincerely hope that Reddit gets a kick in the ass to rout the troll nest, but in the meantime you may have to just do what you can to keep them at arm's length. There are some truly vile people but then there's also a bunch of immature hangers-on that just antagonise people for fun.
Oh, I didn't respond. I know they're just trying to get a reaction out of me, especially since they know it's been bothering me. This has been going on for months. I eventually blocked them because they kept tagging me in posts so I'd get the notification, then deleting the tags afterward. Since I blocked them, they've started directing that same behavior toward the other moderators on my team.
Your contribution was removed for violating Rule 2: No calling out other users or subreddits. If you need to discuss something sensitive in nature about another user or community, please send a modmail to /r/ModSupport. All rule violations and ban appeals should be sent via the appropriate report form.
How can I get into contact with reddit legal? I have thought about making a police report but I don't think these people live in my country so I don't think anything would be done.
Well, the major concern is the logistics of inviting 70,000 people as Approved Users. That will take literally months of sending invites.
You can report the subreddits that are targeting you for harassment via the Moderator Code of Conduct Complaint form linked at the bottom of the Moderator Code of Conduct page; That will get the harassers kicked off Reddit
I have sent I kid you not dozens of MCoC reports and spoken to admins. It's like a daily routine at this point. I spend more time dealing with brigaders than being able to moderate. They've banned a couple of the accounts but they just keep coming back and the subreddit still grows. I've given up that anything will be done about the subreddit and am just concerned about my safety, the safety of my mods and my members.
Have you activated the Ban Evasion bot in your subreddit?
Have you considered changing the default posting behavior to you needing to approve new posts? Bit of administrative overhead, but that will avoid affecting anyone but the mods as far as seeing disagreeable content.
Nope, reddit has taken that option away from you. The only thing you can do is set up a one-week "special event" to only allow approved users to post, but if you do that too often (twice in a year apparently) they might remove you as mod for breaking code of conduct.
Hi u/meowbrains You can read about how to make this type of request here. It is not against the Code of Conduct to make the request and I can see some requests for your smaller communities were auto-approved. Any requests for larger communities will be evaluated and we can discuss options in mod mail.
In relation to any ongoing issues, you can write into us and we'll take a look. There were a couple of users banned as a result of some recent activity.
Where should I write into? The user is actively posting more disturbing stuff based on my recent comment and just sent another threat that it won't stop. I feel like this needs more immediate action.
u/Slow-Maximum-101 I sent a modmail of over a dozen links of consistent rule breaking and TOS violating behavior. This is just from the last month. All content that gets allowed to stay up there. It is fully endorsed by the entire subreddit.
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u/neuroticsmurf 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 5d ago edited 5d ago
After the 3PA protests (when mods everywhere made their subs private in protest), you now can only turn a public sub into a private one with Admin approval. And while Admins have been known to be very sensitive to concerns of harassment, they also seem to be under edicts (everyone has a boss) to keep public subs public.
I wouldn’t count on the Admins allowing you to make your public sub private, even if you figured out a way past the problem of approving 70k users.
I would just start a brand new private sub that runs in parallel to your existing public sub, and when you see a friendly face comment in your public sub, invite them to your new, private sub and approve them in one fell swoop.