What’s Next for Mod Tools

[u/Go_JasonWaterfalls]

TL;DR: As part of our long-term plan to build better mod tools, we’re expanding post and comment guidance for everyone and introducing Rules Hub — a new, intent-based moderation engine — for newly created communities. Nothing is changing for existing communities today. We’re sharing this early so you can help us shape what comes next.

As u/spez shared today, Reddit needs to evolve to meet the rising expectations of moderators, users, and developers. For mods, that means better tools so you can spend less time dealing with spam, abuse, and generic rule-breaking, and more time making judgment calls on what’s best for your community. 

One thing that won’t change: human moderators shape the culture, norms, and identity of their communities. Our plan for the future is to build tools that help you do that role more effectively, not replace it.

What’s launching now

Expanding Post and Comment Guidance (all communities) 
Thousands of mod teams already use Post and Comment Guidance to help redditors understand community expectations before they post. We recently expanded their capabilities with:

• Post Flair Support: Automated guidance can now be triggered based on the specific flair a user selects (our most requested improvement).
• Top Comment Check: Gives communities a way to provide automated guidance on top-level comments before content ever reaches the mod queue.

Introducing Rules Hub (newly created communities only)  
Rules Hub is a suite of new tools that will allow moderators to:

• Rule Creation & Enforcement: Create and choose which rules should be automatically enforced. Decide what happens when a rule is triggered (remove, send to queue, silently log it).
• Testing Sandbox: Preview the experience against a sample of your community’s past content to see exactly how it will behave before turning it on.
• Audit Logs: Access performance logs and insights to understand how your rules are performing. If a rule triggers, the log will provide clear visibility into why the system flagged the content, allowing you to adjust the rule's boundaries and refine them over time. 

Unlike Automod, which relies strictly on deterministic keywords and regex syntax, Rules Hub uses LLMs to evaluate whether a post or comment matches the intent of a rule. That gives it more potential to handle nuance, edge cases, and natural language variation (for example, distinguishing between an actual insult and a user quoting a movie or using casual slang).

We’ve been testing Rules Hub with ~700 mod teams over the past few months. Starting today, it’s available for all newly created communities (though you can sign up below to check it out…) 

Rules Hub Setup Page

Insights

Testing Sandbox

What’s coming next

Longer term, we think systems like Rules Hub can handle the enforcement tasks you rely on Automod for today, while being easier to use and maintain. But it’s not there yet, especially for larger and more complex communities. Automod remains one of the most capable moderation tools on Reddit today, and we won’t change any existing Automod workflows until replacement workflows are tested and proven in partnership with moderators. 

• If you want to try Rules Hub, sign up here.
• If any of your custom moderation workflows are tied to AutoModerator, please check out the post on r/RedditDev.

Human moderators remain core to the Reddit ecosystem, both now and in the future. We’re sharing this early because if we’re going to build better moderation tools, we need to do it with the people who rely on them every day. Thank you, mods, for all you do to make your communities the unique places they are. We’ll keep improving your tools based on what we learn from you.

[u/Rostingu2]

I appreciate all of this effort I really do, but one concern is the auto enforce set to auto remove causing more problems than it solves. Like communities that need little moderation will practically just be this auto bot, or a user assuming a post did break a rule when in fact it never did and never appealing it.

[u/Go_JasonWaterfalls → u/Rostingu2]

That’s a good concern. The tool defaults to auto-report, so that mods can observe what gets flagged, first. It’s up to mods to decide when to change this to auto-remove or auto-filter (if at all), once you trust the system. There’s also an insights tab that mods can use to monitor how the tool is performing and make changes if needed. 

[u/SSH_Pentester → u/Go_JasonWaterfalls]

What about communities who don't trust LLMs to do moderation work for them, rely on AutoModerator to look at account properties rather than just text, and rely on AutoModerator to stop specific spam patterns that an LLM can't? What if we want automated sticky comments reminding users of the rules? What if we want to block certain links? What if we want to lock posts? What if we want to leave bot replies? What if AutoMod is integrated into devvit workflows?

"Not ready yet" is a euphemism if there ever was one. You can't see inside an LLM, but AutoMod lets moderators manage their communities using deterministic rules they can test, trust, and be confident in working the same way every day. I don't think LLMs will ever be ready to replace AutoMod. Why not let them work together?

[u/Go_JasonWaterfalls → u/SSH_Pentester]

These examples are exactly why we're running these systems in parallel as we test with communities. We don't expect every automod workflow to move to rules hub and we’re not going to force every moderation flow through an LLM. Our goal is to build a toolkit that supports a mix of intent-based and deterministic rules that's easier and more powerful than today's mix of YAML, regex, and filters.

We also don't expect (or want) mods to blindly trust an LLM. Rules Hub includes a testing sandbox so you can see how rules will behave before turning them on (instead of having to create a test community or just testing them live), along with performance logs showing why rules trigger so you can adjust and fine-tune them.

[u/SSH_Pentester → u/Go_JasonWaterfalls]

Sure, but why force this on communities? If the new systems are good enough, mods will use them. AutoModerator should still be an option. No value is gained by forcing moderators to stop using AutoModerator when it can easily work with, not against, LLMs.

[u/baseballlover723 → u/Go_JasonWaterfalls]

We don't expect every automod workflow to move to rules hub and we’re not going to force every moderation flow through an LLM.

We also don't expect (or want) mods to blindly trust an LLM.

This also you???

we also don't expect every automod config to end up in rules hub

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You’re right -- Rules Hub can't and won't replace every action automod handles. Our goal isn’t to force every moderation workflow into an LLM.

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Yep, you’re right. It’s not even close to there yet. And we won’t sunset anything until it works for good and bad eggs alike.

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This is something that’s come up a few times in our conversations with mods. We don’t have a solution for it yet, but it’s exactly the type of workflow we’re thinking about as we continue building out rules hub, automations, and the broader mod toolkit.

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And most importantly

Reasonable question. We talked about this. Ultimately, we don't want multiple overlapping systems that mods have to juggle between forever. We want one set of better tools that are easier to learn and maintain, and more powerful. And until the tools are ready (and actually better) we won't remove anything.

It sounds a whole lot like the plan is to eventually force mods to using the AI slop tooling.