Reddit is ramping up its AI moderation tools. Moderators aren’t happy.

Reddit is making changes to its moderation tools, launching its AI-powered Rules Hub to all new subreddits. Moderators are not thrilled.

Announced in a blog post on Wednesday, Reddit is expanding testing of its Rules Hub AI moderation tools to all newly created subreddits. Powered by large language models, Rules Hub has already been tested across more than 700 subreddits, with the company planning to make it widely available across Reddit later in the year.

Significantly, Reddit states that while Rules Hub isn’t a replacement for human moderation, it and other systems could eventually replace Automoderator (aka Automod). Integrated into Reddit since 2015, Automod is a bot that helps moderators automate various tasks such as blocking specific keywords or removing probable spam.

“Unlike Automod’s enforcement tools, which depend on exact keyword and pattern matching, Rules Hub uses LLMs to evaluate whether a post or comment matches the intent of a rule,” Reddit states. “That allows Rules Hub to better handle nuance, natural language, and edge cases while preserving moderator control.”

Expanding on this in a post to the r/modnews subreddit, Reddit admin u/Go_JasonWaterfalls offered the example of “distinguishing between an actual insult and a user quoting a movie or using casual slang.” (u/Go_JasonWaterfalls has previously identified themselves as Reddit’s VP of Community, a title currently held by Laura Nester.)

“Our goal isn’t to force every moderation workflow into an LLM,” said u/Go_JasonWaterfalls. “We’re building a broader toolkit (including Rules Hub, Automations, Post & Comment Guidance, some we haven’t thought of yet) to support both intent-based and deterministic workflows. And we want to put all of that into a central place (i.e. a hub). This future is still far away. But it’s the future we’re building toward.”

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Moderators aren’t happy with Reddit’s plan to sunset Automod

Despite such assertions, Reddit’s moderators remain unconvinced. Many reacted to Wednesday’s news with alarm, baulking at Rules Hub’s introduction and demanding that Automod remain.

“Oh hell nah. We use automod HEAVILY in all of our communities,” r/Animesuggest and r/attackontitan mod u/DustyAsh69 commented (emphasis original). “PLEASE stop ‘fixing’ things that don’t need to be fixed.”

“Automod is load baring [sic], are you seriously sunsetting automod?” wrote r/piercing and r/bodymods mod u/SampleOfNone. “I’m in the Rules Hub beta, it doesn’t even come close to doing what automod can. One of my sub has 8 rules, Rules Hub can only enforce 2…. I love automations, I really do, but it’s for guiding the good eggs. I doesn’t [sic] stand a chance against the bad eggs.”

In response to moderators’ concerns, u/Go_JasonWaterfalls conceded that Rules Hub is “not even close” to being able to replace Automod at present, as it doesn’t have all the same functionality. Automod will remain in place for now, and nothing is set to change in the immediate future.

“PLEASE stop ‘fixing’ things that don’t need to be fixed.”

Even so, improvement of and eventual migration to Rules Hub remains Reddit’s end goal, with u/Go_JasonWaterfalls attempting to reassure mods that the platform “won’t sunset anything until it works for good and bad eggs alike.”

“I don’t think you’re hearing your moderators,” replied r/freesofware mod u/happyxpenguin. “They’re telling you DO NOT SUNSET automod. Period.”

Reddit has had a rocky relationship with its unpaid moderators in recent years. In 2023, CEO Steve Huffman likened them to “landed gentry”, earning widespread ire from many mods who felt their hard work was being taken for granted. Moderators guide subreddits, which includes setting and enforcing rules, deleting spam or off-topic posts, and acting on reports.

This occurred amidst moderator-led protests against Reddit’s widely derided decision to begin charging developers for access to its application programming interface (API), which had been free since its introduction. In response to these protests, Reddit threatened to remove mods unless they backed down. Unsurprisingly, the company’s subsequent attempts to make nice were met with disbelief and derision. 

Judging from reactions to this week’s news, moderators’ faith in the company appears to remain on shaky ground. (Reddit stated on Wednesday that it will gradually restrict new requests for access to its API, and require third-party apps to migrate to its Developer Platform.)

Reddit to also tackle “abusive” scraping of users’ data

In addition to rolling out Rules Hub more broadly, Reddit further announced that it will be making more changes to prevent “abusive” scraping of users’ data. However, this doesn’t mean users’ posts won’t be used to train AI at all. Though Reddit barred search engines from crawling its platform for free in 2024, it also struck $60 million deals allowing Google and OpenAI to use redditors’ data to train their AI algorithms.

Reddit also stated that it will make changes intended to encourage new users and help them make successful posts. Currently, some subreddits remove comments and posts from new accounts, or from ones that haven’t accumulated many upvotes across their various contributions (a function that Automod is capable of executing). Though this system counters issues such as spam or people creating new accounts to evade bans, Reddit states that it also presents an obstacle to new users attempting to join a subreddit for the first time. As such, the platform is looking at implementing alternative solutions.

“Over time, our goal is to improve Reddit’s systems and moderation tools so communities can rely less on things like karma and account age, which prevent many first time users from successfully posting in a community, and more on stronger abuse prevention built into the systems they use,” Reddit’s blog post states.

Exactly how Reddit intends to do this is unclear, but it seems likely that AI will be involved.

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