260
Weaponized reporting: what we’re seeing and what we’re doing(self.ModSupport)
Hey all,
We wanted to follow up on [last week’s post](https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/...
5 years, 11 months ago
—
6 years ago16 of 16
Tip Reveddit Real-Time can notify you when your content is removed.
your account history
Tip Check if your account has any removed comments.
view my removed comments you are viewing a single comment's thread.
view all comments
The original message you received should have told you why you were actioned, but if it didn't we'd love to know as that might be something that is broken. As I mentioned in my last comment, can you send us a modmail so we can look into it?
It didn't.
As I mentioned in my last comment, I did this three days ago.
Ah sorry, didn't see your other comment. Lots of comments on this thread.
I am virtually certain this is a case of mistaken suspension, my comod was suspended instead of the troll he reported.
In the six years I have been active on this site I have not once seen that user use abusive language - it would be wildly out of character for them to do so.
The problem here is manifold.
1) Users are suspended without being told why.
2) Appeals are handled long after the suspension timed out.
3) Appeals are as far as I can determine* denied automatically, without the reason for the suspension being looked into.
This is not just an issue affecting moderators. What is an average user going to do, who is not aware of reddit protocol and various avenues for adressing this issue with admins? This is in my opinion a serious issue, as it might very well cause decent users to leave the site completely.
*(I know I am speculating based on an incomplete dataset. But I have seen multiple users/ mods suspended apparently instead of the person they were reporting. With their appeals consistently denied.)
Addendum, 4) Trolls are very aware of weaponised reporting. Only this week I was told in mod mail by a user banned for anti-transgender bigotry that I better watch my step, as admins suspend moderators who use the term "TERF".
If I get suspended over the next couple of days it will be because I wrote, verbatim: "This is a TERF free zone." Not a slur, not directed at a user per se. However the atmosphere that has been created over the past couple of months now has me somewhat worried that I will be suspended over this, by tonedeaf anti-evil.
This is 100% what happened to me. Nobody from AEO in the course of their normal duties actually looked at my first suspension. It was not until one of the CMs from here acted internally that anybody looked at it, at which point I was informed it was stricken because it was too late to overturn it.
Despite this clear and incredible incompetence, I remain the only person I've seen to get chastised for my choice of words on describing it. /shrug?
I won't name names, but I have seen multiple mods suspended for reporting a clear and abusive troll.
For regular users as well as mods, in my experience especially the "special interest groups" who hate certain gender and sexual minorities weaponise reports to get mods and users suspended. Just like they do on Facebook, where it's been a known problem for years.
Apparently anti-evil neither knows what a TERF is or what is wrong with that sort of hatespeech.
stop trying to take everything out of public discussion. You guys just move stuff to DMs or modmail then stop responding there where there's less visibility into how bad your process is when you actually have someone refuting your generalities
I suspect you use modmail to communicate with your users and would be irritated if they wanted to discuss all issues via deeply-threaded comments. Resolving individual issues is best done via a ticket system so we can easily keep track of them.
I just looked at all messages I can find from you to the Community team in our queue and they all have replies. Please let me know if you have any that need a response, but we do reply to the messages here and you shouldn't be getting silence.
I typically use whatever they used to communicate with us. So if they send us a modmail message, I'll respond through modmail. If they bring up something in a public comment, I'll respond to that comment if I have a response.
and it's not my messages that I have issues with (although i am semi-bothered that the autosubscribing issue I identified almost a year ago hasn't been addressed despite me being told multiple times by admins in DMs that it had). But i read this sub regularly and there's a lot of stuff like this where the admin immediately tries to take the conversation into PMs, only replies with PR speak, then stops engaging once the person they're talking to pushes for real action instead of vague promises
It seems like you feel that there's some way to make immediate progress on structural issues. How do you recommend doing this?
Returning to threads after several days to re-engage substantively with hard questions, engaging proactively with moderators of at-risk communities, , and diverting investment away from profit-focused features and back towards tools for helping those moderators surface issues quickly.
Those are all very reasonable things that don't have immediate results, but we are trying to do more of. We'll keep working at it.
Yes and no.
There are definitely old threads where users have asked you substantive, good faith questions but haven't gotten a response yet. So you can start working on those if you want an immediate payoff.
At risk support is trickier but I think you can make immediate progress with some more openness about where they are as a priority. If they aren't important because they aren't marketable then say that. If they do matter then give more concrete breakdowns of what the plan is to support them, what specific changes are/aren't being made, and what the time line is.
Our main focus with at-risk communities right now is rolling out a better process for supporting suicidal users. Hoping to have an update on that this quarter, assuming the development happens when it's supposed to.
Plus there's a lot of opportunity for retroactive transparency by going back to major initiatives, changes and errors that you never officially announced and making an official post about them. The paid monthly subscriptions in the fortnite sub or the content partnership with the NFL are both examples of major initiatives that reddit should have proactively told the user base about in a site wide announcement. But even though it's too late to do those ahead of time, making an announcement about them now with admins ready to handle follow up questions in the comments would show you're actually committed to making up for past transparency lapses.
Sorry if that came off a bit short. I guess I just feel like many of these issues require major, long-term internal improvements so I'm struggling with how we can satisfy anyone in a comment thread who wants an answer right now. I'm not saying you don't deserve to be frustrated, but I'm just not sure what else can be done in these situations.