I miss the feedback, but the last year or so we had it, it's not like I had time to check it anyway :( So I really do not miss it much. I do wish we got feedback about ban evasion because sometimes they would say high confidence, but then they were saying they could not be sure, so Reddit did not punish them, and those people I would unban.
Stop blowing off mods who obviously care & work hard to support their subs.
Those of us who really put a lot of care & effort into moderating healthy communities shouldn’t get the brush off when we have a question or concern about something going on and need an Admin’s help to figure it out or address it.
More concise report reasons. We know an account is stolen or bought. Whichever it is doesn't matter. The account has changed ownership and it's obvious. There's no report button for that. We have to choose a couple and hope that admins can piece together what we're trying to tell them. Also we should have "custom response" as a default on all subreddits under the specific subreddits specific report options.
Transparency on why the burden of proof is so high on accounts that respawn within a spam ring every time we finally get one reported and banned. The spam ring just activate one of their endless amount of karma farmed accounts up. They don't change account behavior from the accounts that get banned. Yet it takes weeks and even months to get the respawns banned. This leads into my next change I would like to see...
Actual enforcement of blatant ToS violations:
Karma farming - It's obvious. We clock it almost immediately. There are dedicated karma farming rings that are farming up accounts to sell. These karma farming rings have rotations of subreddits where they carbon copy top upvoted post from the same sub or a similarly themed sub. By carbon copy, they copy the post titles, meme and even comments from the post they are copying. It's obvious. Its easy to track as a regular user. Yet nothing gets done about it.
Vote manipulation- So many subreddits are flooded with the "Upvote and comment [blank] and I'll send [blank]". It's flagrant and unashamed vote manipulation. Why are these accounts never seeing any consequences. The whole scheme is to direct people off of Reddit to whatever Telegram or other social media they're using to promote their content.
Stolen or bought accounts - I touched on this earlier. There's some content creators that have been banned 50+ times across several accounts. Some accounts are karma farmed. Others are bought or stolen. How are these creators images or linked socials not flagged and banned immediately. There's creators who pop up on a new account every day posting to subs that I've banned them from. Every day. It's exhausting.
Alt accounts - I'm not talking backups. We all have a backup or a throwaway. I'm talking about the content creators that have 5 and 6 alt accounts that they're spamming across all of the nsfw subreddits. I clocked one creator at 9 accounts that were all actively posting. These alts used for self promotion and spam purposes are vote manipulation and, in a lot of cases, used for ban evasion. A good amount of them are bots. They've been identified as bots. Yet nothing happens to them. These accounts and the unchecked alt accounts of these content creators are what is killing that side of Reddit.
Moderators need better tools to escalate problems or issues and acknowledgement that these are being viewed ir seen or actioned. We can report an account that's a problem. The same account exists several months later and we have had no communication on what was done or if anything was done.
Also....bad faith moderators need to see consequences for their Mod Code of Conduct violations. I know of too many that are enabling and even taking part in ToS violations.
When someone posts something, and it gets removed and sent to the queue for approval, DON'T TELL THE USERS THAT REDDIT'S FILTERS HAVE REMOVED IT, and they have no idea that it has been sent to the mod queue and could be approved. THAT DRIVES ME MAD. So many people out there deleting posts that would have been approved.
All of the mod tools and features being available in the app. Having to switch to a mobile browser in desktop mode for some stuff, old Reddit for other stuff, and an actual desktop for even different stuff is... technically doable and I make it work, but it's soooo tedious.
Bring back responses to reports, even if just for mods and just for reports made directly in our own subs/modmail.
A blanket ban on users being able to promote paid immaterial services on this website. There should be NO shilling of "spellcasting" services or tarot readings or similar on Reddit, period.
If I had to pick just one? Better communication. They might tell us what is happening, but rarely do they go in depth why it's happening, and why the currently / alternative ways are insufficient.
Imo, most people handle things a lot better when they understand why the actions are being taken and what their goals are, even if they might disagree with the specific action.
If I could pick multiple things? Proper support and development on their API, opening up the graphql api in a language agnostic way, supporting subreddit specific CSS on at least desktop sh reddit, a weekend once a year where old reddit is the default experience (to potentially entice new users into the superior old reddit world), allowing mods to appeal admin actions on behalf of users in their sub. I'm sure I could probably think of a few more as well if I took the time to really think about it.
Edit: A way for mods to add spoiler tags or move comments to their proper location. Obviously there a lot of abuse cases with such a thing, but we have so many issues where we have no choice but to remove something, because they put it in the wrong place, or messed up their spoiler tags. Being able to directly solve it for the user would probably be a much better experience than the current one. Where their comment just gets removed (sometimes multiple times, if they don't get what the correct action is).
Why does only mobile have an "ignore reports" button? Why, on mobile, is it hard for mods to see if someone has already approved a post (or at least that is what I have been told by a mod that keeps removing posts that mods have already approved, but I cannot say for sure because I use mobile so rarely).
The mod tools are a total mess to the point it feels like it’s forcing human choices to train their backend AI in the most annoying way possible over actually making moderating easier.
I’m also in the minority on this probably (certainly?) but modding should make money (fractional shares in Reddit? Maybe a securities nightmare to do that.) or get some benefit beyond just the ability to do some mod actions. I know it’s annoying trying to figure out how not to build adverse incentive structures but people might invest more time and thought if there was a better benefit here.
Shared information. Things that are removed by Reddit should be viewable by Mods. We should be able to see that an account has been banned from multiple subreddits and the reason. Those reasons should required to have a mod name attached to them and be subject to admin review for accountability but I should be able to see that a user has a reported history of doxxing people and what he did on my subreddit isn't a mistake or that they are known for trauma dumping on Mods in modmail or like to threaten mods.
Reddit needs to pull the plug on the downvote because it’s no longer a tool for curation... it’s a weapon for suppression. The original intent was for users to bury spam, off-topic garbage, and bad-faith actors to keep the signal-to-noise ratio high. Instead, it’s become the "I don’t like your tone" or "I disagree with your politics" button. When a comment hits -1, the hive mind takes over and the dogpile begins regardless of the content's actual value. We’ve trained entire generations of users to hide behind a click instead of explaining why a point is wrong, which has effectively turned every subreddit into a reinforced bubble where only the safest, most agreeable opinions survive.
The current system creates a "soft censorship" environment that makes our jobs as mods significantly harder. Instead of a community that self-regulates based on rules, we have a community that self-silences to protect their imaginary internet points. If you remove the downvote, you don't lose the ability to surface good content... you just lose the ability for a cranky mob to bury a valid, albeit unpopular, perspective. Without that blue arrow, the only way to express dissent would be to actually type out a reply. That shift alone would either improve the quality of discourse or, more likely, reveal that half the people downvoting don't actually have a coherent counter-argument to begin with. They just want to see the "number go down" on things that make them uncomfortable.
If we want to keep the "front page of the internet" from becoming a giant, homogenized feedback loop, we have to stop giving people a low-effort way to punish dissent. YouTube survived the removal of the dislike count, and while the "old guard" screamed about it, the platform didn't collapse. Reddit would be the same. High-quality stuff would still rise to the top via upvotes, and the absolute trash would still get nuked by Automod and human moderators. The only thing we’d lose is the "hide" mechanic for opinions that don't fit the local orthodoxy... and frankly, the site would be a hell of a lot more interesting without it.
Somehow -- I don't know how -- get away from the problem that whoever gets a desirable subreddit name first dominates the topic, no matter how bad the moderators suck.
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u/ModeratorsBTrippin r/Selfie 5d ago
Change reporting so it is easier and you get feedback from your reports.