Addressing Mod Harassment Concerns

https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/l4vkc1/addressing_mod_harassment_concerns/

created by jkohhey on 25/01/2021 at 19:36 UTC

658 upvotes, 77 top-level comments (showing 25)

Hey Mods,

We’ve been hearing from you in Mod Councils and through our Community team (yes, they deliver feedback to product teams and we act on it!) about harassment in your messaging channels from users who were already causing issues in your communities, often on newer accounts. To address these concerns and reduce harassing PMs, we began piloting some messaging restrictions last month.

Today, we’re happy to share that these measures are now in place for all mod accounts. The restrictions make it harder for users to create throwaway accounts to contact mods and require a verified email from a trusted domain for new accounts[1]. We’ll be piloting similar restrictions for chat messages in the coming weeks and if we see the same encouraging results we will release that for all mods as well.

1: https://www.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043047552-Why-should-I-verify-my-Reddit-account-with-an-email-address-

But wait! There’s more! We’ve also been hearing from mods about issues with report harassment. A little further out, but in the works, is a pilot feature for muting abusive reporters. This will eventually be part of the larger report abuse flow the team is working on, but it’ll be rolling out as an experiment as soon as it’s fully baked as a standalone feature.

But wait! There’s even *more*[2]*!* In addition to these mod harassment efforts, we’ll also be rolling out Crowd Control[3] as a moderation feature for all subreddits in the coming weeks.

2: https://media1.tenor.com/images/e8662f4f14405a95339c4c79272afbfc/tenor.gif

3: https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/e8vl4d/announcing_the_crowd_control_beta/

We appreciate the care you put into keeping your communities safe, so thanks for partnering with us to help keep you safe. We’ll be posting another update next month to keep you in the loop on our progress.

Comments

Comment by CorvusCalvaria at 25/01/2021 at 19:41 UTC*

168 upvotes, 5 direct replies

whistle knee seed cake screw worry point unused strong angle

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact[1]*

1: https://redact.dev

Comment by ThaddeusJP at 25/01/2021 at 20:17 UTC

32 upvotes, 2 direct replies

The restrictions make it harder for users to create throwaway accounts to contact mods and require a verified email from a trusted domain for new accounts

So does this mean throw aways will become no more or you can pm a mod without an email?

No throwaways would likely upset TONs of advice subs

Comment by Bardfinn at 25/01/2021 at 19:54 UTC*

57 upvotes, 2 direct replies

a pilot feature for muting abusive reporters

Sidechannel privacy leaks. Go hard into making sure that feature doesn't leak useful user identifying info (the way "block each moderator on the modlist one at a time until finding the one that causes the sent-as-subreddit modmail to be blocked" "feature" leaked user-identifying info.)

Otherwise great news!

Comment by SometimesY at 25/01/2021 at 20:06 UTC

19 upvotes, 1 direct replies

So I just tried this with a new alt to test but PMs went through just fine, both to mod accounts and to the subreddit. Is this correct behavior? Or is the feature borked right now?

Comment by redneckrockuhtree at 05/02/2021 at 17:04 UTC

11 upvotes, 0 direct replies

How about actually taking action against users who harass mods via PMs or stalking them on other subs? This needs to be addressed, as well.

Comment by kallisti_gold at 25/01/2021 at 19:39 UTC

18 upvotes, 0 direct replies

woot!

Comment by bilde2910 at 26/01/2021 at 14:13 UTC

9 upvotes, 0 direct replies

require a verified email from a trusted domain for new accounts

How does verification with trusted domain help anything at all, compared to any other email address? Anyone can create a Gmail account in 2 minutes and use it to instantly verify their Reddit account. That doesn't necessarily mean it's a "good" address.

Comment by [deleted] at 25/01/2021 at 19:41 UTC*

19 upvotes, 1 direct replies

[deleted]

Comment by [deleted] at 26/01/2021 at 00:59 UTC

10 upvotes, 1 direct replies

[deleted]

Comment by thecravenone at 25/01/2021 at 20:32 UTC

13 upvotes, 0 direct replies

A trusted domain refers to a commonplace email domain that is from a well-established and trusted source. This includes gmail, apple, hotmail, outlook, or yahoo.

Question: Is that @gmail.com (and etc) or is that email handled *by* those providers?

If it's only at those domains, that seems a little weird. A Yahoo account that takes seconds to create anonymously is trusted but the Office365 (ie, Outlook) email account of a Fortune 500 isn't. Seems almost like you'd be achieving the opposite of what you'd set out to.

Comment by chaseoes at 25/01/2021 at 20:09 UTC

11 upvotes, 1 direct replies

and require a verified email from a trusted domain for new accounts

So an email is required to create a Reddit account now, or just to message moderators?

Comment by StringOfLights at 26/01/2021 at 16:55 UTC

5 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Does this apply to chats as well? I had a user sending me profane and violent chats for hours yesterday after I banned them. I’ve reported them and asked for help but I don’t know that any action was taken. I feel like I haven’t gotten much support, particularly since I got a pretty threatening one last night.

Comment by muuus at 26/01/2021 at 15:30 UTC

9 upvotes, 0 direct replies

I reported a guy for creating two alt accounts to go around a mute and harass us in both PMs and modmail after getting banned for multiple violations.

His message involved threats as well:

unless i get prober communication from admins, i will not stop. I can go public, i can easily with my proxy network and API bypass spam the shit of forhire and get it really annoying for the mods, but i'm not doing that, not for the time being. All i asked is prober discussion, and until i get that, i won't stop.

The only action your team took is suspending his newly created throwaway, without suspending his two other accounts – so not even a slap on the wrist.

So don't pretend that you care when you allow blatant violations and threats like these go unpunished.

Comment by MajorParadox at 25/01/2021 at 19:48 UTC

10 upvotes, 1 direct replies

But wait! There’s more!

I was expecting Scary Movie 😀

This all sounds awesome, can't wait to see it all in action!

Comment by maybesaydie at 26/01/2021 at 21:43 UTC

4 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Tell whoever it is that gets our reports that they need to read what we report in context. Or at the very least they need to read the background we give them in the message.

Comment by Borax at 27/01/2021 at 12:57 UTC

4 upvotes, 0 direct replies

/r/ukpersonalfinance has a significant problem.

We currently require all first-time posters to send a PM to our moderation bot to say "I have read the rules and I agree to follow them".

However, we are now getting complaints from users who say they are unable to do this because their email address does not meet the requirements.

Could you make it so that users can alter these rules on a per-account basis and allow PMs from unverified users please??

Comment by RicottaPuffs at 11/02/2021 at 20:23 UTC

4 upvotes, 0 direct replies

This is great news, but has some room for improvement. Recently, we banned a user. The user simply went to a related sub and posted inferring moderator abuse. It was quite the post. contacted me via my chat and continued the rants via two sock puppet accounts.

Admins were contacted. There was no action taken at all.

I understand admins are much overwhelmed. However, simply because the sub in question may be considered fringe, the reports should still be evaluated?

Comment by BunyaminBUTTON at 26/01/2021 at 08:24 UTC

7 upvotes, 1 direct replies

Also it would be great to be able to make our profile private. you can get harrased for something you said in a random comment years ago or you can get profiled with the random bits and pieces you left behind througout the years.

Comment by Cornicum at 25/01/2021 at 22:18 UTC

3 upvotes, 0 direct replies

I'm really glad it's being worked on.

What I am not clear on is what this actually affects?

Is seems to be PMs but does it also happen for direct-chat?

Also while I like that harassment is being tackled, I've noticed that quite often people also can't seem to find modmail, or don't even know what it is, and a lot of people with good intentions reach out via direct chat.

Is there anything in the message of mods that shows how to find the modmail?

I'm very curious how you intend to make it harder for harassers while also making it easy to contact mods.

Comment by BuckRowdy at 26/01/2021 at 05:01 UTC

3 upvotes, 0 direct replies

What about chat? Will it affect that? That is the most popular route for this these days.

Comment by lazenbooby at 26/01/2021 at 13:24 UTC

3 upvotes, 0 direct replies

A little further out, but in the works, is a pilot feature for muting abusive reporters