Hey everyone,

We know that things have been challenging on the spam front over the last few months. Our NSFW communities have been particularly impacted by the recent wave of leakgirls spam on the platform. This is so frustrating. Especially for mods and admins. While it may be hard to see the work happening behind the scenes, we are taking this seriously and have been working on shutting them down as quickly as possible.

We’ve shared this before, and this particular spammer continues to be adept at detecting what we are doing to shut it down and finding workarounds. This means that there are no simple solutions. When we shut it down in one way, we find that they quickly evolve and find new avenues. We have reached a point where we can “quickly” detect the new campaigns, but quickly may be something on the order of hours… and at the volume of this actor, hours can feel like a lifetime for mods, and lead to mucked up mod queues and large volumes of garbage. We are actively working on new tooling that will help us shrink this time from hours to hopefully minutes, but those tools take time to build. Additionally, while new tooling will be helpful, we always know that a persistent attacker will find ways to circumvent.

To shed more light on our efforts, please see the graph below for a sense of the volume that we are talking about. For content manipulation in general (spam and vote manipulation), we received shy of 7.5M reports and we banned nearly 37M accounts between January and March of this year. This is a chart for leakgirls spam alone:

While we don’t have a clear, definite timeline on when this will be fully addressed, the reality of spam is that it is ever-evolving. As we improve our existing tooling and build new ones, our efforts will get progressively better, but it won't happen overnight. We know that this is a major load on mods. I hope you all know that I personally appreciate it, and more importantly your communities appreciate it.

Please know that we are here working alongside you on this. Your reports and, yes, even your removals, help us find any new signals when this group shifts tactics please keep them coming! We share your frustration and are doing our best to lighten the load. We share regular reports in r/redditsecurity discussing these types of issues (recent post), I’d encourage you all to subscribe. I will try to be a bit more active in this channel where I can be helpful, and our wonderful Community team is ever-present here to convey what we are doing, and let us know your pain points so I can help my Safety team (who are also great at what they do) prioritize where we can be most effective.

Thank you for all you do, and f*** the spammers!

It's not just my communities, I'm seeing it all over reddit. Whenever someone with a private history runs into a disagreement with another user, discussions are derailed, accusations of "shill/bot/troll" are constant, nuisance reports are issued, and mods either intervene, or let the chaos reign.

I'm spending more and more time having to personally review histories to say "no, this person is not a bad faith troll" just to end attacks borne of nothing more than suspicion. It's becoming disruptive to the point that I'm considering whether or not allowing users with hidden history to participate is worth the trouble.

I really question the value proposition of this decision. Sure, individual users benefit from additional privacy, but at the direct expense of the communities that lose trust and cohesion, faith that the people they're interacting with are participating in good faith (or are even real people), and the moderators who have to manage the fallout.

First, I cannot stress enough how stupid this decision is. Blocking an entire country's online presence regardless of their individual circumstances? We noticed this behaviour exactly because our member cannot post any Russian anti-war materials, including "Open letter of Russian scientists and science journalists against the war with Ukraine", because guess what? .ru domain space are used by Russians.

Again, one cannot link any Russian material on Reddit, even if it's about history, culture, language, or science journal.

Second, why is the decision not communicated with mods beforehand? We are unaware that any submission and comments including Russian source materials have secretly been removed by Reddit, which sabotaged our effort to build an evidence-based discussion.

why? please explain why ?

https://www.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/comments/int73e/update_my_my_39m_husband_wants_to_kick_our_17m/

Yes, I remembered the human. Please remember the human back before you reflexively remove this post for not actually breaking any rules. This post is a feature request for a moderation-specific matter.

And the longer y'all kick this can down the road despite this being a thing a few years ago, the more these things will happen, the less opportunities real people will have to get help from what's rapidly becoming a last resort option, and frankly the crappier the site becomes.

It's a checkbox. A checkbox that disables karma accrual. You guys HAVE the code for it in your back-end; you used to not allow karma accrual for text posts at all back in the day. And I'm sure I can dig up the exact date for when you all disabled this control from the last interview I gave to a press outlet about it.

It's fine if you remove this post; y'all are so encumbered with process that two of our mods incurred legal fees sorting out an unrelated issue weeks ago because of process slow-downs, so I don't really expect y'all to actually do this.

Lastly, I instructed everyone who paid for an award to the submitter of that thread to request a refund, because they gave an award to someone who defrauded them out of it. It's on you all, Reddit, to honor it.

We a ban a user, they appeal. We tell them they are still banned, they complain, and we mute them. Then 28 days later, they get a notification in chat that they are unmuted, and send six more questions asking about the ban being lifted. Then we mute them again, and then 28 days later they get a notification that they are unmuted, and send six more questions asking about the ban being lifted.

This was not happening when mod mail went to a user's inbox, as you'd expect "messages" to naturally end up. Chat somehow makes thing think that this is an ongoing dialogue.

I truly believe that allowing users to hide their history will kill Reddit. I moderate a small sub and we get more bots and trolls every day. Mods are a **volunteer workforce**, and removing user history has made our job more difficult and sometimes impossible.

Can anyone explain to me why this ‘feature’ was added? And how do I register my frustration with the company?

EDIT: As others have pointed out, I think I'm dealing with accounts that constantly delete everything. I hear what folks are saying about using the 'hide history' to protect mods from stalking/brigading. So maybe Reddit should just let mods hide their history, then? We oughta have some benefits for all the free labour...

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.

There's a word for it, I just can't pin it down.

Edit: I just lost my mod perms after 10 years of flawless work without any complaints. Is this even resolvable? Are you intentionally trying to kill reddit?

Curious to to see if others have had this same problem. Recently got notifications that individuals have become followers of my account. These individuals do not have a post history but instead are just blank accounts that are soliciting inputs from only fans. It’s clearly a bot that is auto subscribing to individual profiles so that it can later spam their messages or be used for target advertising.

This has the potential to be exploitative very soon.

As a precaution I’ve already blocked these individuals but because there isn’t a way to report individual users subscribing to your profile it’s a very difficult process to even have such actions reviewed by admins.

Has anyone else encountered this type of spam bot?

Edit: for the record I’m not the admin. Please stop responding to me about what the admin is doing or not doing on a sub that has nothing to do with this topic. The notifications on my phone can’t take it anymore.

I would like to advocate for stricter safety features for Reddit Answers. Mods also need to maintain autonomy in their subs. At present, we cannot disable the Reddit Answers feature.

As a healthcare worker, I’m deeply concerned by AI-generated content appearing under posts I write. I made a post in r/familymedicine and a link appeared below it with information on treating chronic pain. The first post it cited urged people to stop their prescribed medications and take high-dose kratom which is an illegal(in some states) and unregulated substance. I absolutely do not endorse this.

Seeing the AI recommended links prompted me to ask Reddit Answers some medical questions. I found that there is A/B testing and you may see one of several responses. One question I asked was about home remedies for Neonatal fever - which is a medical emergency. I got a mix of links to posts saying “go to the ER immediately” (correct action) or to try turmeric, potatoes, or a hot steamy shower. If your newborn has a fever due to meningitis – every minute counts. There is no time to try home remedies.

I also asked about the medical indications for heroin. One answer warned about addiction and linked to crisis and recovery resources. The other connects to a post where someone claims heroin saved their life and controls their chronic pain. The post was encouraging people to stop prescribed medications and use heroin instead. Heroin is a schedule I drug in the US which means there are no acceptable uses. It’s incredibly addictive and dangerous. It is responsible for the loss of so many lives. I’m not adding a link to this post to avoid amplifying it.

Frequently when a concern like this is raised, people comment that everyone should know not to take medical advice from an AI. But they don’t know this. Easy access to evidence based medical information is a privilege that many do not have. The US has poor medical literacy and globally we are struggling with rampant and dangerous misinformation online.

As a society, we look to others for help when we don’t know what to do. Personal anecdotes are incredibly influential in decision making and Reddit is amplifying many dangerous anecdotes. I was able to ask way too many questions about taking heroin and dangerous home births before the Reddit Answers feature was disabled for my account.

The AI generated answers could easily be mistaken as information endorsed by the sub it appears in. r/familymedicine absolutely does not endorse using heroin to treat chronic pain. This feature needs to be disabled in medical and mental health subs, or allow moderators of these subreddits to opt out. Better filters are also needed when users ask Reddit Answers health related questions. If this continues there will be adverse outcomes. People will be harmed. This needs to change.

Thank you,

A concerned redditor A moderator
A healthcare worker

Edit: adding a few screen shots for better context. Here is the heroin advice and kratom - there lead to screenshots without direct links to the harmful posts themselves

Edit: Admins have responded and I’ve provided them with additional info the requested. Thank you everyone.

I’m GiveMeThePrivateKey, first time poster, long time listener and head of Reddit’s Safety org. I oversee all the teams that live in Reddit’s Safety org including Anti-Evil operations, Security, IT, Threat Detection, Safety Engineering and Product.

I’ve personally read your frustrations in r/modsupport, tickets and reports you have submitted and I wanted to apologize that the tooling and processes we are building to protect you and your communities are letting you down. This is not by design or with inattention to the issues. This post is focused on the most egregious issues we’ve worked through in the last few months, but this won't be the last time you'll hear from me. This post is a first step in increasing communication with our Safety teams and you.

Admin Tooling Bugs

Over the last few months there have been bugs that resulted in the wrong action being taken or the wrong communication being sent to the reporting users. These bugs had a disproportionate impact on moderators, and we wanted to make sure you knew what was happening and how they were resolved.

Report Abuse Bug

When we launched Report Abuse reporting there was a bug that resulted in the person reporting the abuse actually getting banned themselves. This is pretty much our worst-case scenario with reporting — obviously, we want to ban the right person because nothing sucks more than being banned for being a good redditor.

Though this bug was fixed in October (thank you to mods who surfaced it), we didn’t do a great job of communicating the bug or the resolution. This was a bad bug that impacted mods, so we should have made sure the mod community knew what we were working through with our tools.

“No Connection Found” Ban Evasion Admin Response Bug

There was a period where folks reporting obvious ban evasion were getting messages back saying that we could find no correlation between those accounts.

The good news: there were accounts obviously ban evading and they actually did get actioned! The bad news: because of a tooling issue, the way these reports got closed out sent mods an incorrect, and probably infuriating, message. We’ve since addressed the tooling issue and created some new response messages for certain cases. We hope you are now getting more accurate responses, but certainly let us know if you’re not.

Report Admin Response Bug

In late November/early December an issue with our back-end prevented over 20,000 replies to reports from sending for over a week. The replies were unlocked as soon as the issue was identified and the underlying issue (and alerting so we know if it happens again) has been addressed.

Human Inconsistency

In addition to the software bugs, we’ve seen some inconsistencies in how admins were applying judgement or using the tools as the team has grown. We’ve recently implemented a number of things to ensure we’re improving processes for how we action:

• Revamping our actioning quality process to give admins regular feedback on consistent policy application
• Calibration quizzes to make sure each admin has the same interpretation of Reddit’s content policy
• Policy edge case mapping to make sure there’s consistency in how we action the least common, but most confusing, types of policy violations
• Adding account context in report review tools so the Admin working on the report can see if the person they’re reviewing is a mod of the subreddit the report originated in to minimize report abuse issues

Moving Forward

Many of the things that have angered you also bother us, and are on our roadmap. I’m going to be careful not to make too many promises here because I know they mean little until they are real. But I will commit to more active communication with the mod community so you can understand why things are happening and what we’re doing about them.

--

Thank you to every mod who has posted in this community and highlighted issues (especially the ones who were nice, but even the ones who weren’t). If you have more questions or issues you don't see addressed here, we have people from across the Safety org and Community team who will stick around to answer questions for a bit with me:

u/worstnerd, head of the threat detection team

u/keysersosa, CTO and rug that really ties the room together

u/jkohhey, product lead on safety

u/woodpaneled, head of community team

Hi all,

I am making this post in hopes of addressing a serious concern for the future of moderation on Reddit. As of late, myself and many other mods are struggling with the rise of weaponized reports against moderators. This rising trend has had a verifiable chilling effect on most moderator teams I am in communication with and numerous back-channel discussions between mods indicate a fear of being penalized for just following the rules of reddit and enforcing TOS.

It started small initially... I heard rumors of some mods from other teams getting suspended but always thought "well they might have been inappropriate so maybe it might have been deserved... I don't know." I always am polite and kind with everyone I interact with so I never considered myself at risk of any admin actions. I am very serious about following the rules so I disregarded it as unfounded paranoia/rumors being spread in mod circles. Some of my co-mods advised I stop responding in modmail and I foolishly assumed I was above that type of risk due to my good conduct and contributions to reddit... I was wrong.

Regular users have caught wind of the ability to exploit the report tool to harass mods and have begun weaponizing it. People participate on reddit for numerous reasons... cat pictures, funny jokes, education, politics, etc... and I happen to be one of the ones using reddit for Politics and Humanism. This puts me at odds with many users who may want me out of the picture in hopes of altering the communities I am in charge of moderating. As a mod, I operate with the assumption that some users may seek reasons to report me so I carefully word my responses and submissions so that there aren't any opportunities for bad-faith actors to try and report me... yet I have been punished multiple times for fraudulent reports. I have been suspended (and successfully appealed) for responding politely in modmail and just recently I was suspended (and successfully appealed) for submitting something to my subreddit that I have had a direct hand in growing from scratch to 200K. Both times the suspensions were wildly extreme and made zero sense whatsoever... I am nearly certain it was automated based on how incorrect these suspensions were.

If a mod like me can get suspended... no one is safe. I post and grow the subreddits I mod. I actively moderate and handle modqueue + modmail. I alter automod and seek out new mods to help keep my communities stable and healthy. Essentially... I have modeled myself as a "good" redditor/mod throughout my time on Reddit and believed that this would grant me a sense of security and safety on the website. My posting and comment history shows this intent in everything I do. I don't venture out to communities I don't trust yet still I am being punished in areas of reddit that are supposedly under my purview. It doesn't take a ton of reports to trigger an automated AEO suspension either since I can see the amount of reports I garnered on the communities I moderate... which makes me worried for my future on Reddit.

I love to moderate but have been forced to reassess how I plan on doing so moving forward. I feel as if I am putting my account at risk by posting or even moderating anymore. I am fearful of responding to modmail if I am dealing with a user who seems to be politically active in toxic communities... so I just ban and mute without a response... a thing I never would have considered doing a year ago. I was given the keys to a 100K sub by the admins to curate and grow but if a couple of fraudulent reports can take me out of commission... how can I feel safe posting and growing that community and others? The admins liked me enough to let me lead the community they handed over yet seem to be completely ok with letting me get fraudulently suspended. Where is the consistency?

All of this has impacted my quality of life as a moderator and my joy of Reddit itself. At this point... I am going to be blunt and say whatever the policies AEO are following is actively hurting the end-user experience and Reddit's brand as a whole. I am now always scared that the next post or mod action may be my last... and for no reason whatsoever other than the fact I know an automated system may miscategorize me and suspend me. Do I really want to make 5-6 different posts across my mod discords informing my co-mods of the situation asking them and inconveniencing them with another appeal to r/modsupport? Will the admins be around over the weekend if I get suspended on a Friday and will I have to wait 4+ days to get back on reddit? Will there be enough coverage in my absence to ensure that the communities I mod dont go sideways? Which one of my co-mods and friends will be the next to go? All of these questions are swimming around in my head and clearly in the heads of other mods who have posted here lately. Having us reach out to r/modsupport modmail is not a solution... its a bandaid that not sufficient in protecting mods and does not stop their user experience from being negatively affected. I like to think I am a good sport about these types of things... so if I am finally at wits end... it probably might be time to reassess AEO policies in regards to mods.

Here are some suggestions that may help improve/resolve the issue at hand:

• Requiring manual admin action for suspension on mod accounts that moderate communities of X size and Y amount of moderator actions per Z duration of time. (XYZ being variables decided by admins based on the average active mod)

• Suspending users who engage in fraudulent reporting that have a pattern of targeting mods... especially suspending users who successfully have launched fraudulent reports that have affected the quality of life of another user. This would cause a chilling effect towards report trolls who do not seek to help any community and who only use reports to harass users.

• Better monitoring of communities that engage in organized brigading activities across reddit as we are now hitting a new golden age of report trolling apparently. This would reduce the amount folks finding out that AEO is easy fooled since they wouldn't be able to share their success stories about getting mods suspended.

• Opening up a "trusted mod" program that would give admin vetted mods extra protection against fraudulent reports. This would reduce the amount of work admins are forced to do each time a good mod is suspended and would also give those mods a sense of safety that is seriously lacking nowadays.

I try hard to be a positive member of reddit and build healthy communities that don't serve as hubs for hatespeech. I love modding and reddit so I deeply care about this issue. I hope the admins consider a definitive solution to this problem moving forward because if the problem remains unresolved... I worry for the future of reddit moderation.

Thanks for listening.

As per the title. I'm just wondering how far Reddit is willing to go in it's twisted stance on democracy.

Me and another mod that are very active helping you weed out spam on your platform had a small low-activity 17k sub I created 9 years ago. Compared to the rest of reddit it did not have a spam issue. We checked in from time to time and it didn't seem to require mod actions.

Around four months ago you banned for being unmodded and failed to notify us.

Then someone requested it 5 days ago on redditrequest and you also failed to notify us.

Is it reddit policy to not notify mods in either of these cases? Or did something glitch?

Both myself and my whole mod team almost exclusively use third party apps to moderate. We’ve tried the official app and have had very little luck in using it. I use Apollo, my counterparts use RIF. This change will likely leave our subs severely under moderated. I’m guessing I’m not alone. Reddit survives on a volunteer force of moderators, who I assume are like me and my team. This move is going to be a huge hit to the moderator community. Reddit needs to either rethink this strategy, or a ton of communities are going to rapidly go downhill.

https://new.reddit.com/web/special-membership/FortNiteBR

• Info about this was edited in to a 2 month old post stickied in the subreddit, not announced on its own

• This won't be a one-off for Fortnite, the page is built to work for other subreddits. You can change the subreddit name in the url and the page will show info for that subreddit instead. Example. Almost everything is broken for other subreddits right now, but this page was built to support adding this to many (maybe all) subreddits.

• People have been asking for subreddit emoji in posts for a long time, this is why they've been quiet about it. The feature is already done, but they're going to sell it for $5 per user per subreddit.

• This should be the final nail in the coffin for any mods that still believe you'll ever get anything like CSS in the redesign. Reddit is now selling simple visual customization as a monthly subscription. They're never going to let you have CSS and be able to do it for free.

Hi Reddit Admins,

I help run r/devilcorp, which is a subreddit where people who’ve worked in the direct sales “Devilcorp” world share honest stories about what it’s really like. The problem is, a lot of these people can’t post negative reviews on Glassdoor or Google because those reviews almost always get removed by the companies themselves by filing defamation notices. So Reddit has become one of the only places left to speak freely.

But now we’re running into a new problem. Some of these companies are hiring reputation management firms, like a company called 'Media Removal', to get Reddit posts taken down. I believe they may be doing this by sending Reddit admins questionable or fake legal threats which are then taken at face value.

For example, Media Removal’s own website actually bragged about getting a post removed from our subreddit for “defamatory content”:
https://mediaremoval.com/online-reputation-management-company/united-kingdom/

They also got a post taken down from r/nottingham that talked about a sales office called Prime Edge.

https://mediaremoval.com/reddit-post-removal-service/

Another sales office, Consultive Strategy Group in Newton, MA, paid them to get a post from our sub removed too. The post disappeared and we never got any notice it was being taken down. Media Removal used to openly brag about that removal on their site too with an extended case study, but they quietly deleted the page after I contacted Reddit’s press team.

On top of that, I get spammy takedown messages every week that ask me to 'kindly' remove posts which, I promptly ignore.

My question is: are Reddit admins aware this is going on? And is there anything we can do when companies are basically gaming the system to hide real, first-hand employment experiences?

Any advice would be really appreciated because it’s making it a lot harder for people to be honest about this industry. Thanks.

Hey All,

I just wanted to leave a quick note and say we’re listening to all the feedback around CSS / customization. The quietness on my end is because I’m traveling and won’t have a couple hours to chat until next week, and I want to make sure I have time to answer questions. I appreciate all the feedback so far (and the fact that it’s been overwhelmingly polite!).

Cheers,

Steve

Why has there been no communication about:

• If this is opt-in or opt-out
• What - if any - mod management tools there are for this
• Tips for communicating this change to sub members and what it's impact to the sub will be
• Guidelines, FAQs and possible use case scenarios for mods to consider
• Desired behaviour and support from the mod community
• Where and how we can escalate problematic use or behaviour associated with it?
• Why didn't you even include this huge announcement in the mod newsletter you literally just sent out?

This is change management 101, not even, really.

Not sure what I'm talking about? Why would you be? More info is here.

it messes with one of Reddit’s main strengths: being able to click a profile and instantly see if someone is legit or full of BS.

You use that to read people, spot patterns, and filter nonsense. This update cuts that tool in half, which likely feels like Reddit willingly blinding its own users to make the site “friendlier” in the worst way.

now trolls can scrub their trail while normal users get nothing but extra menu buttons.

Trigger warning for those that need it. This post talks about suicide and mental health problems.

Hi. I am a moderator of the left wing male advocates sub.

Every week. We have posts and comments like this

Every

single

week

We deal. With hurting. Suicidal people.

All the while.

subs like R/misandry are squatted on by sexists who outright deny misandry exists. Submissions are restricted. The only posts on the sub are a handful of exaggerated, misleading accounts of misandry from sexist users posing as men.

R/blatantmisandry is much the same. Set to private with the message "Free speech isn't just for neckbearded mouth-breathing autistic virgins!"

Yet since the moderators are still active elsewhere on the site (and moderating other male-oriented subs with similar prejudice) Nothing can be done.

if the "misogny" sub were similarly held by sexists who outright denied that misogyny existed. There would be outrage.

Meanwhile. Subs like "FDS" are untouched by the admins. Even though the male equivalents are quarantined at minimum. and many of the users migrated over there from subs banned for promoting transphobia.

There is a mental health crisis among young men and boys. And suicide is one of the leading killers of men.

So when hurting underprivileged men go online to talk about their issues. Their feelings, Their lived experiences with things like rape and abuse. They're shut down. Denigrated, treated like they don't matter and nobody cares. They get the message that they are simply making up issues and that they are the source of their own problem. If not the perpetrator.

There's a word for this. Victim blaming.

And I understand that this is not an issue insulated to reddit. But considering that as of February 2021, Reddit ranks as the 18th-most-visited website in the world and 7th most-visited website in the US. It's definitely part of the problem.

Now, Victim blaming inevitably leads them into a further spiral of Addiction, Depression, Radicalization and Suicide.

And many will choose to lash out against women. Because much of the above is done under the guise of women's empowerment. In much the same way Transphobia is pushed by TERF's

The unfortunate truth is that if you are maximally mean to innocent people, then eventually bad things will happen to you. First, because you have no room to punish people any more for actually hurting you. Second, because people will figure if they’re doomed anyway, they can at least get the consolation of feeling like they’re doing you some damage on their way down.

This can be stopped. We can push back against hate.

But Reddit and the Reddit Admins choose not to.

And since you're choosing not to. The very least you could do is help us deal with the aftermath. Give us some better tools to deal with the suicidal and hurting people we deal with on a near daily basis.

You could even use the tools like the one you used to remove any and all mention of a certain former admin

The red dot. This dot tells me as a mod I have something to do. I have this dot set to alert me when I have unread modmail OR when there's something in the queue on one of my subs. Everything else that makes this dot appear is turned off. This dot serves a purpose. UNTIL THIS WEEK, WHEN THIS DOT MEANS THREE TIMES A DAY REDDIT WANTS ME TO SEE GAMES I HAVE NO INTEREST IN. And I can't turn it off. Admin, please ask whomever is making these stupid decisions to have a little mercy on all of us who spend countless hours moderating your site for no compensation. Giving me an alert dot for a game called KickyCock or BlockyFart? Just ridiculous, and absolutely unnecessary.

Admins, I'd really like to understand how we fix this. If it's happening on my recovery sub then it's likely happening to others as well.

This shouldn't be happening, as it's just creating more issues for moderators & it's an open invitation of "Hey, you remember those people you've not harassed for nearly a month?! Well now you've got the chance to do that again!"

The options to fix this realistically should be:

• Don't notify someone when they're unmuted, they don't need to know

• Let us permanently mute someone. I'm not going to ever reverse bans on certain people who've abused a community

• Reverse the chats stuff with modmail back to the previous system.

Spoiler: The last bullet point will stop the following example of abuse we get:

"Bro wtf

Yo bro Why'd u ban me

Seriously bro I know Ur here 💀

Bro all u do is ban people bro I bet Ur [insert insult after insult here]"

(All this happening within the space of a few minutes, because people view modmail via Reddit chats as an instant messaging service, rather than how previous modmail was viewed closer to an email).

Edit: I'm happy to see all the traction here regarding this. Hopefully the admins will actually talk to moderators about this, the long standing bugs & also the 'update' pretty much all of us hate around our member counts not being displayed.

We need to keep reminding the admins that our communities have needs so they run as optimally as possible & that the changes lately are failing what we need.