https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/gr6fsc/following_up_on_awards_abuse/
created by redditcma on 26/05/2020 at 21:48 UTC
461 upvotes, 39 top-level comments (showing 25)
Hi everyone! As promised, here is an update on what’s been happening behind the scenes with Awards since our previous post[1] highlighting the “Hide Award” feature.
We wanted to follow up on the issues with respect to Award giving and receiving. Awards given in insensitive or offensive ways constitute a problem, as are Awards given with the intention to harass. Currently, an Award recipient cannot stop a user from repeatedly Awarding them in an insensitive manner, especially with anonymous Awarding.
In the past year, Awards have become a form of expression. And like comments, Awards should have reporting and blocking options.
The goal here is twofold:
1. Reduce abuse, via both Awards and PMs attached to Awards
2. Avoid creating significant overhead for moderators
Because we're still speccing out the details, we can't yet provide a strict timeline, but we hope to start phasing in changes in the next month. We promise that these changes and the underlying abuse are among the highest priority projects for our team. We will continue to update you all with progress.
Thank you for caring so much about making Reddit a great place for everyone, and for bearing with us as we work to get these new safeguards into place. Please let us know what you think about the updates outlined above.
Comment by Meepster23 at 26/05/2020 at 21:59 UTC*
505 upvotes, 8 direct replies
Comment by Watchful1 at 26/05/2020 at 22:00 UTC
89 upvotes, 4 direct replies
Can you add hiding awards to the API so moderators can create bots to automatically hide awards in certain situations?
Or better, just allow subreddits to disable certain awards entirely.
Comment by [deleted] at 27/05/2020 at 00:18 UTC
25 upvotes, 0 direct replies
This is almost the exact opposite of what people have been begging you to do. What good is blocking awards if you can't block the ones sent anonymously, which are THE ONLY ONES THAT'LL BE USED TO HARASS PEOPLE. You must keep a server side record of who sent the award and it would be trivial to let the recipient block the sender without revealing their identity. Jesus christ I could probably code that myself in an afternoon.
Comment by DramaticExplanation at 26/05/2020 at 22:45 UTC
58 upvotes, 1 direct replies
How about 1. Stop putting out awards that are blatantly inflammatory and you know will cause trouble for your unpaid volunteers that you rely on for your site to work and profit aaaand 2. Give mods some type of ability to control awards on their subreddits (but we know you’ll never do that because it’s way too easy and you only care about money)
Comment by masterspeler at 26/05/2020 at 23:14 UTC
55 upvotes, 3 direct replies
Will you refund the money when a reward is hidden? It would make sense that if somebody pays you for a service and that service gets denied that you then also refund the user that bought that service. I'm sure you don't want to make money off harassment.
Comment by darknep at 26/05/2020 at 21:51 UTC*
177 upvotes, 10 direct replies
what if moderators for large subreddits create a movement and hide every award except for gold/silver/platinum since we're tired of all the other awards clogging up our posts? anti-abuse features can be abused too, yknow?
but seriously, every other award other than the original 3 suck. Gold/silver/plat do not carry meaning, and therefore can not be abused. Get your shit together, admins.
Comment by [deleted] at 27/05/2020 at 00:33 UTC
16 upvotes, 0 direct replies
can we please remove all of the shitty awards that don't actually give anything to OP? keep platinum, gold, and silver, and change community custom awards so that they ALL give premium (but there's less maybe? or one that does nothing like silver)
Comment by KKingler at 26/05/2020 at 22:07 UTC
28 upvotes, 1 direct replies
May I ask what is considered award abuse and can result in action against your account?
Comment by [deleted] at 27/05/2020 at 02:46 UTC
15 upvotes, 1 direct replies
• Block - Allow you to block users from awarding you when it is done to offend or harass. This will initially be for Awards that are not anonymously given, but we are also investigating a path for blocking anonymous awarders who offend or harass.
Why can't you do this for reports, too? Allow mods to say "block whoever made this report from reporting again"
Comment by plagueisthedumb at 26/05/2020 at 23:21 UTC
12 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Seperate question which I can't find an answer for- how much did you actually raise for Australia bush fires with the Firefighter Koala award and did we actually see any of those funds?
Comment by senses3 at 26/05/2020 at 23:15 UTC
13 upvotes, 1 direct replies
How about you just get rid of them because they're worthless and only give reddit money.
Comment by jman005 at 26/05/2020 at 22:11 UTC
23 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Agree with the others here, in my opinion gold silver and platinum should be the only universal ones, then mod awards and (maybe) community awards. Maybe all of these other global awards can be implemented into a free hideable "reactions" system that appears at the bottom of a post? Or, removed entirely
Comment by MisterWoodhouse at 27/05/2020 at 11:57 UTC
11 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Or.... just let moderators disable the meme award hellscape you've unleashed and let their communities go back to Silver, Gold, Platinum, and any community awards they designed... like we asked.
Comment by iOgef at 27/05/2020 at 14:28 UTC
12 upvotes, 1 direct replies
you guys created a "yikes" award and didnt realize people would use it to insult people
Comment by honestbleeps at 26/05/2020 at 22:30 UTC*
25 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Hide - Extend the current “Hide Award” feature which is currently available for moderators and the poster/commenter on desktop only, to our Android and iOS apps.
While I appreciate the action thus far, this is not enough. We need an API endpoint for this so that 3rd party apps and/or users of old reddit can hide flair also.
You're gonna have better numbers on this than me, but I think it's fair to say that the statistical likelihood of anyone who moderates a sufficiently large subreddit being on "new" reddit is lower than that of "all of reddit". Hilariously, on "old" reddit, I can't even see WHAT the awards are. There's no alt text or tooltip, even.
If you're not going to give us the ability to hide these on "old" reddit, please give us an API endpoint so that we can add functionality to browser extensions and/or use third party apps when we're on mobile.
For users like me, this is literally zero help at all. It's so cumbersome to have to bounce back and forth between old/new reddit, and I have liked the mobile app I use for years and am not going to change my entire reddit experience just for one mod feature.
I cannot fathom a reasonable business reason, nor "community" reason, why such an API endpoint should not be offered. I get not wanting to add anything to old reddit, even if I disagree with it, but you need this API endpoint for your official apps anyway. Why will you not open it up to others? If there IS a real business reason besides "trying to coax people to our official apps and new reddit", can you please share?
Comment by sharkstax at 26/05/2020 at 22:22 UTC
23 upvotes, 1 direct replies
This is fairly off-topic, but since abuse was mentioned, I wanted to ask if there are any plans to introduce a way to **permanently mute an offending user in modmail**. One of the subs I moderate has a serious problem with a permabanned user who has been abusing modmail and harassing us even after being asked to stop. We've reached out to reddit admins via the regular methods but no action has been taken against this user.
I apologize for not sticking to the theme, but I wouldn't be commenting here if the situation weren't so "dire" (desperate/frustrating) at the moment. I think there might be other mods too, who want something more effective than a 3-day convo mute in modmail.
Comment by kyew at 27/05/2020 at 06:56 UTC
10 upvotes, 1 direct replies
99% of the harm done by an abusive reward occurs when the poster gets notified that they received it. Hiding rewards after the fact does nothing to address this. There need to be ways to stop it from happening in the first place.
Comment by whyohwhy115 at 26/05/2020 at 23:08 UTC
6 upvotes, 0 direct replies
We've encountered situations where the awards seem to be used to supervote themselves. It is especially noticeable in posts that are downvoted and have a sparse to zero engagement. Will this count as misuse of an award as well that we can report to you?
Comment by indi_n0rd at 26/05/2020 at 22:16 UTC
8 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I would rather have the ability to enable/disable certain awards manually than having them on by default on my sub. Your award page looks like a microtransaction store now. I have to scroll half a page just to find plat.
Comment by cahaseler at 27/05/2020 at 01:24 UTC
10 upvotes, 0 direct replies
This does very little to fix the issue. Just let moderators opt out of certain awards on their subreddits. Abuse aside, lots of awards simply don't fit and are totally inappropriate for serious communities. We have our own awards we've designed for our communities, yet they're pushed to the bottom of the list by random memes and frankly childish nonsense.
Comment by [deleted] at 26/05/2020 at 22:55 UTC
8 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Related to this, and hopefully a simple fix, but can subreddit-unique awards be placed above Reddit-wide awards? There's little reason for moderators to make sub-specific awards when there are 30+ *other* awards that users will see first and likely use first. The ability for mods to toggle what awards are available per-sub would be wonderful too.
This is coming from a mod of r/regularshowmemes, where I've considered making awards and we *do* have a list already prepared, but we see no reason to go through with it because there's already a ton of other options for users to choose from.
This does look like a step in the right direction, however. #nerfawards
Comment by remedialrob at 27/05/2020 at 00:02 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I'd love it if I could just post something and then block all potential awards that could be given to me. A sort of nicer way of saying "please don't spend money on reddit but rather if you feel you must do something in response to my post please give to charity" or something like that.
Comment by BuckRowdy at 27/05/2020 at 12:17 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
This is Reddit monetizing upvotes. While people are begging for them to be turned off there is a team working on new awards and other ways to monetize upvotes. I don’t like the new awards either because they are fundamentally changing Reddit, but they’re here to stay.
Comment by SecondTalon at 04/06/2020 at 13:12 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
So, again, you're saying
"It's up to the person getting punched in the face to take action after being punched in the face"
when you should be saying
"We have prevented people from punching others in the face"
It's not that goddamn hard to fix.
Comment by DoctorWaluigiTime at 26/05/2020 at 22:35 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
How's about some opt-in action?