Hi there! OpusCroakus here today to talk about my favorite (or least favorite) topic, account security! 

Account security is always important, but it’s really important for mods. If your account is not secure, it is vulnerable to being hacked. And while no one likes a hacked account, a hacked moderator account has the potential to cause quite the headache and do quite a bit of damage to the communities that they moderate. So let’s talk about some ways to keep your account secure! Don’t worry! There are not that many! It’s easy!

Use a strong password that you don’t use anywhere else. A strong password should have both numbers and letters. Feel free to throw in a special character here and there if you want! You can use a password  manager if that helps you. However, I would recommend keeping a hard copy of your passwords offline just in case something goes awry. This is where I recommend against sharing your password and/or your account with others. 

Have an email address on your account that you will always have access to. Please make sure that you use good account security practices with that email as well. It doesn’t do much good to have an email with a weak password that is associated with your mod account. If the email gets hacked, they can log right into your Reddit account. It also is not advisable to use an email account that you could lose access to one day, like one provided by a school or an employer. We made a post in r/help here the other day about this scenario. 

Enable 2fa. Two factor authentication is an added layer of security where you will be prompted to enter a 6-digit code after entering your password.. Without access to the device on which the authenticator is installed, the account will be unable to be logged into. We would recommend choosing an authenticator that stores your credentials in the cloud so that if anything ever happens to your device, you can still get into your Reddit account to remove the authenticator. You can see 2fa in action here. 

If your account is hacked and 2fa is enabled, we can help. Please write in using this form.  Under "What do you need assistance with?", please choose "Account help". Under "What type of account issues are occurring?", please select "Security problems" and "I think my account has been hacked". Under “Was two-factor authentication (2FA) enabled onto your account without your knowledge?”, please choose “Yes” and fill out the rest of the form. Hacked account reports are generally responded to within 24 hours during the week. 

If your mod account is hacked and your subreddit is vandalized, we can help with that, too. Please send a mod mail message to this sub and we’ll get you squared away. 

What do you think about account security? Because most people don’t think about account security until it’s too late! After someone has been hacked, they think about it a lot! But I’m really hoping to get folks to think about it before all of the hacking!

I’m no expert on how AEO works or exactly how Reddit uses AI and automated systems to detect harassment. However, it’s difficult to understand why Reddit couldn’t implement a system that automatically identifies and reports the most blatant forms of abuse sent through modmail—death threats, wishes that moderators “burn in h*ll,” and other messages that clearly have no legitimate or good-faith purpose.

From my experience, AEO often fails to catch this kind of harassment in the first place. But even when Reddit’s systems do automatically detect a modmail message as harassment and filter it, moderators still appear to be responsible for manually reporting it.

That makes very little sense to me. If Reddit’s automated systems have already determined that a message is sufficiently abusive to filter it as harassment, why shouldn’t that detection automatically trigger a report for review as well?

The same applies when moderators ban users for violating Reddit-wide rules. If I ban someone specifically for Harassment, Hate, or Threatening Violence, why shouldn’t Reddit automatically generate a report for the offending content? It seems like a relatively straightforward system to implement: when a moderator selects a Reddit-wide rule as the ban reason, automate a report for that assigned reason.

If I’m banning someone for violating one of my subreddit’s specific rules, that’s obviously different. Reddit doesn’t need to review every user banned for being off-topic or breaking some community-specific rule. But if I explicitly select Harassment, Hate, or Threatening Violence, I am already telling Reddit that I believe the user violated a sitewide rule. Why should I then have to go back, find the same content, report it separately, select essentially the same violation again, and submit it?

For moderators of large communities dealing with thousands of contributions, this becomes extremely repetitive. We already reviewed the content, determined that it violated a Reddit-wide rule, selected that rule as the reason for the ban, and took moderation action. Having to separately report the exact same violation feels like duplicating work for no meaningful reason.

I’m not suggesting that a moderator selecting a Reddit-wide ban reason should automatically result in an account suspension. False positives and incorrect moderator decisions obviously happen, and Reddit can still independently review reports before taking sitewide enforcement action. At minimum, I think Reddit could implement two fairly simple improvements: automatically escalate modmail that Reddit’s own systems have already filtered as harassment, and allow bans issued under Reddit-wide rules such as Harassment, Hate, or Threatening Violence to automatically generate reports for the assigned reason.

Moderators volunteer significant amounts of time to keep communities functional and enforce both subreddit rules and Reddit’s own policies. We shouldn’t have to perform the same moderation action twice just to make sure a sitewide violation actually reaches Reddit.

Anything that reduces moderators’ exposure to threats and blatant harassment while cutting down on redundant manual work would be a significant improvement to the moderation experience.

One of the biggest sources of unnecessary work in our mod queue is misuse of the report system.

A significant portion of the reports we receive in r/gamedev are not for content that actually violates subreddit or Reddit rules. People use the report button as a dislike button. They disagree with a legitimate topic, dislike a particular post, or don't want that kind of discussion happening in the community, so they choose the closest report reason and submit it.

There is also a less malicious, but equally frustrating version of this problem: people do not understand the community rules they are reporting under.

We try to make our rules as clear as possible. We explain what they cover, what they do not cover, and provide additional guidance where necessary. Yet we regularly receive reports where even a basic reading of the rule makes it clear that the reported content does not violate it.

Sometimes that is an honest misunderstanding. That’s going to happen in any large community, and I don’t expect Reddit to eliminate it somehow.

But there is also a point where a report reason becomes a convenient way of saying “I don’t like this.” A user sees a post they disagree with, opens the report menu, and selects whichever community rule best matches their objection. The moderator then has to review it just like any legitimate report.

At scale, that becomes a real moderation problem.

Every nonsense report enters the same system as spam, harassment, genuinely rule-breaking content, and other reports that actually require our attention. The more noise added to the queue, the harder it becomes to identify and efficiently deal with what matters.

I understand why this is a difficult problem for Reddit to solve. Reports should remain anonymous to moderators. Someone reporting harassment, hate, or other problematic content should not have to worry about moderators knowing who submitted the report.

But anonymity should not mean there are effectively no consequences for repeatedly abusing the system.

The limited tool we do have is the ability to snooze reports from certain anonymous reporters for seven days. Even that isn’t available on every report. It is primarily available in situations involving custom report reasons, not every report submitted using the community’s predefined reasons.

If someone repeatedly uses the rules we created as report reasons, it can generate unnecessary work for the moderation team, and we may not have the temporary seven-day option available to deal with it.

And even when Snooze Reports is available, seven days isn’t much of a solution to repeated abuse. It postpones the problem.

Moderators need stronger tools that preserve reporter anonymity while allowing us to deal with patterns of abuse.

We should be able to mute reports from a specific anonymous reporter permanently. Reddit does not need to tell us who that person is. From the moderator’s perspective, they could remain “Anonymous Reporter #12345.” If we determine that account is repeatedly submitting reports unrelated to the rules being cited, we should be able to stop their reports from entering our community’s mod queue.

For more serious or persistent abuse, there should also be a way to escalate that anonymous reporter to Reddit. Reddit knows which account is behind the reports even if moderators do not. If someone is abusing the report system across multiple communities, Reddit should be able to restrict or remove their ability to report.

There could absolutely be safeguards around this. Permanent muting could require a history of reports being dismissed without action. Reddit could monitor communities that mute unusually large numbers of reporters. Sitewide restrictions could remain entirely in the hands of Reddit administrators.

I am not asking for moderators to be told who reports things. I don’t want that information, and I think protecting reporter anonymity is important.

I am asking for moderators to have meaningful tools to handle anonymous users who repeatedly abuse the report system.

The report button exists to help communities surface problems. On larger subreddits, it increasingly feels like we spend too much time sorting legitimate reports from people who are using it to express “I don’t like this.”

Protecting good-faith reporters and protecting moderation teams from serial report abuse should not be mutually exclusive.

update: the app is now public and ready to be installed: https://developers.reddit.com/apps/dejarepost

Hello moderators! I'm excited to introduce you to something I've been working on for the past month or so: DejaRepost!

Reposts are a moderator’s worst nightmare, and video reposts are especially hard to stop. Traditional bots only check a single thumbnail for video posts, so spammers easily bypass them by trimming a second, cropping the frame, or adding some frames to the beginning. Change the video thumbnail, and the bot is blind.

To solve this, I built DejaRepost: A Devvit app that actually watches the whole video to catch video reposts (even if the reposted clip has been trimmed, cropped or re-edited), while also stopping image and text reposts.

How DejaRepost catches video reposts:

• Instead of checking a single thumbnail, DejaRepost fingerprints one frame every second across the entire video.
• Sliding Window Matching: DejaRepost doesn’t just catch reposts through strict frame-by-frame alignment: each frame is compared against a local time window of surrounding frames from the other video, so that trimmed, cropped, or padded versions of the same clip are still caught.
• The fingerprinting is done using a perceptual hashing algorithm.

DejaRepost also catches image reposts (even if they’re cropped or altered!):

• Images are compared using visual similarity algorithms rather than exact file hashes.
• Crops, color shifts and other edits will not bypass detection unless the crop is severe.

Finally, DejaRepost catches text reposts by comparing their titles:

• It uses lightweight hashing to instantly check post titles and text against past submissions, catching exact copies and stolen titles.

What happens when DejaRepost detects a repost:

• It will report the post
• It will send you a modmail giving you: the link to the reported post, the link to the past post it matched it with (evidence), and a confidence score
• You can choose whether or not DejaRepost removes any reposts it detects (off by default, you can turn it on in the app settings)

DejaRepost requires almost no setup, no extra work from subreddit members, and all you have to do is watch the modmail as it detects reposts. It fits seamlessly into most subreddits, and it's perfect for video/image heavy subs.

Note: DejaRepost fingerprints your recent posts automatically in the background after install, so detection accuracy ramps up over the first little while.

If you have any questions or bug reports or feature requests, feel free to comment or make a post to the offical subreddit for this bot: r/DejaRepost I’m happy to help. 

I understand why Reddit might have slightly different interfaces across the iOS app, Android app, and desktop. What I don’t understand is why there seem to be so many different versions of the interface within the same app on the same device.

I primarily use the iOS app, and I’ve noticed that switching between my alternate accounts can sometimes give me completely different interfaces. These accounts are being used on the exact same iPhone, with the exact same installation and version of the Reddit app, yet features, menus, layouts, and moderation tools can appear or function differently depending on which account I’m using.

There seem to be a surprising number of variations. I assume much of this comes from A/B testing or features being rolled out to different groups of users, but doesn’t having so many variations create problems of its own?

This is especially frustrating as a moderator. When users ask how to find a setting, use a feature, or perform a particular action, it can be surprisingly difficult to give them instructions because their Reddit interface may be completely different from mine, even if we’re both using the current iOS app. Instructions that work perfectly for one account may simply not apply to another.

It also seems like this could contribute to bugs and inconsistencies. If Reddit is simultaneously maintaining and testing numerous variations of the interface and feature set, I imagine it becomes considerably more difficult to ensure everything behaves consistently.
I know Reddit is almost certainly aware of this, but I’m genuinely curious: why is there so much account-level variation in the Reddit interface, and is there a reason Reddit relies on it to this extent? I use plenty of other major social platforms, and I can’t think of another where I regularly encounter this much variation between accounts on the exact same device and app version.

Hi, Is there any way to report/flag post report abuse?

occasionally we (datahoarder) are getting bots spam reports to a post to try take it down.

In the modqueue today we had a users 7 month old post with just 71 upvotes get reported 36 times today for various reasons,

This has happened to a couple posts mentioning the same company over the last couple months.

We have received several very vague messages from a user asking if they can sponsor our subreddit and they honestly sound like some sort of scam.

I’ve messaged them back asking for more information, clarifying Reddits rules on paid sponsorship (not allowed!), and directed them to Reddit ads instead.

What other steps can I take?

Edit: I am using the mobile app.

Clicking at a username in mod queue list used to open the user summary panel to the right. Now it goes to the user profile.

Is this intentional?

I'm a mod on a legal subreddit. For the past month we're getting 2+ posts a day from someone who describes a ridiculous scenario and asks "can I sue?". They create a new account each time and delete it shortly after.

I've no idea how to deal with it. Reddit's auto-spam filters are doing absolutely nothing.

The only thing I can think of is putting "can I sue" into the auto mod filter.

Any ideas?

TIA

The community leaderboard didn't change to september 2026 and is stuck at August

The community leaderboard is the most liked poster and liked commenter for that month in your community.

In the Moka Pot community it didn't reset to 0 for both and is still stuck at August

Don't know if it's a bug or not

Reddit's automatic translation features have led to an increase in content written in languages not permitted by specific subreddit rules.

While AutoMod regex rules exist for this, they rely on rigid character matching and often trigger false positives on loanwords, names, or slang.

(In case you are looking for an AutoMod rule check out the AutoModerator Wiki)

How the app differs from AutoMod

• Context-Aware: Instead of flagging individual foreign characters or words, it analyzes the overall sentence structure and word density to prevent false positives on names or loanwords.
• Broad Support: Detects over 60 languages automatically without requiring custom regex rules for each.
• Slang Protection: Built-in whitelists for common internet slang, acronyms, and brand names.

Available Settings

• Select your permitted languages.
• Choose independent actions (Report, Filter, Remove) for posts and comments.
• Send automated notifications to users via Modmail or a comment

If you are interested in trying it out you can install it here: Language Detector

Please be aware that, even with more complex detection systems, incorrect detections can occur.
If they do please let me know so i can improve the system further.

The top admin of our sub is awol, we're presuming he died as he had some health issues. None of us here or on discord heard from him in 3 years.

Is it possible to get the mods reordered? There's sadly 2 of us active, and we don't have all permissions

I'm taking over some moderation of some smaller subreddits - so sorry if this is a repeat (I searched and couldn't find a direct answer).

But a user of a subreddit was incorrectly / falsely shadowbanned - they appealed and were reinstated. But all their content was deleted.

I read somewhere that Reddit's servers are supposed to "undelete-all" after a shadowban is lifted, but that hasn't happened yet (it's been a ~week?) ... And I don't see any place in the mod tools where I can reinstate Reddit-deleted posts.

What's the process for this? Is the user just out of luck and all the content is incorrectly purged? Or is there a way to fix this for them?

I have a user that's currently unable to post in our sub and I can't figure out what's triggering it. they are a new account with one karma, but our Auto mod is set to only remove people with negative karma. I will provide a screenshot in the comments.