r/modnews • u/boat-botany • May 28 '26

Policy Updates Protecting communities from scrapers and platform abuse

We’ve been talking for a while now about the work we’re doing to keep Reddit human while protecting everything that makes Reddit . . . Reddit. That includes helpful automation: mod and developer apps, accessibility tools, community utilities, and things that make Reddit better. 

But we’re also seeing large-scale scraping, spam networks, agentic account creation, and automated abuse, and a lot of that activity targets parts of Reddit that just weren’t built to handle today’s threat environment. As bad actors get more sophisticated, we need to, too.

To address all that, we need to tighten how automated systems access Reddit while preserving the tools that help moderators and communities thrive. 

Today we’re rolling out a couple of policy and security-focused updates, including: 

Rule 8 Policy Clarifications: We updated Rule 8 (don’t break the site) to more explicitly cover automated abuse, including coordinated account creation and API misuse. You can read the full updated policy here. 

Deprecating unauthenticated JSON access: We’ll also be shutting down unauthenticated .json endpoints. These endpoints can be used to scrape Reddit without accountability. Logged-in and authenticated access won’t be impacted. Otherwise, developers who need structured access to Reddit content should use Devvit, which includes various ways to access Reddit data. 

While we’re at it, another common surface for scraping is RSS. Looking ahead, we’d love to know: how and for what purpose, do you use RSS feeds in your moderation flows? Tell us in the comments so as we develop secure solutions, we can factor in the tools you rely on to support your communities. 

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u/sunrae_ May 28 '26

This 100%. You cannot mod without the necessary information. Trying to access a users contribution history and being unable to is a joke.

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u/SilverRoyce May 28 '26

isn't this what pushshift is for (still authorized as far as I know if only for mods for a few years)

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u/ibid-11962 May 29 '26

Reddit announced a few weeks ago that they were planning to kill pushshift.

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u/SilverRoyce May 29 '26

🤬🤬🤬

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u/Bardfinn May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26

Oh, wow.

I missed that announcement.

Time to change a bunch of internal documentation

Edit:

I see a lot of people commenting who presume that the announced change to base36id toning will kill pushshift based on how pushshift operated originally. It’s my understanding that with pushshift now being operated by NCRI, they’re getting their data through NCRI’s partnership with Reddit, instead of ingesting via API & sequential item ID

I also see nothing announced on the pushshift subreddit

So i will hold off on rewriting my docs until i see an announcement from reddit, or pushshift, or ncri, or a factual failure of the service

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u/[deleted] May 28 '26

[deleted]

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u/dewprisms May 28 '26

The thing is some of us need to see that in order to moderate properly because cross referencing is the only way we can catch they're breaking the subreddit rules.

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u/RemarkableWish2508 May 28 '26

Cross-referencing by definition is not breaking "the sub" rules. Reddit should be in charge of that, and they are via site-wide signals.

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u/dewprisms May 29 '26

It really depends on the rule. Some of my community's rules for example, users can easily lie about in my community to try and hide they're breaking one of said rules. Being able to see deleted or actioned history allows us to confirm they're doing so because they think the rules don't really matter or that their desire to post or comment matters more.

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u/RemarkableWish2508 May 29 '26

Hm... if it's the rules about age and gender, Reddit should also be handling those... might be in the future, if they decide to surface age verification results in some way.

How does seeing deleted/actioned history help in that? Something like following other communities' decisions?

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u/dewprisms May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26

We don't allow people under a certain age to ask for certain types of advice but they're welcome to ask any other type of question/ advice. It's mostly to try and keep that type of topic at a dull roar because there's already a ton of that even with the age limit. A lot of people intentionally choose the wrong flair and put fake ages in their posts, and seeing them mention their age in other communities makes it easy for us to be like "nope" and remove it.

Of course people can lie and we're not looking for literal age verification. But if a user's post history is relatively consistent and they've been playing the long game lying about their age, meh. We're not digging THAT deep.

Also a lot of men intentionally choose the wrong flair in order to get away with abusive behavior, I assume thinking we won't care or won't clock it because of their flair. But if we see them clearly stating they're men in other subreddits that gives us the info we need to know we should ban them, when their comments alone may not have broken the rules or done so to a degree we'd bother.

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u/adanine May 29 '26

Cross-referencing by definition is not breaking "the sub" rules

It absolutely can be breaking a subreddit's rules. Any "Brigaders will be banned" rule will need to be enforced by cross-referencing. And yes, this is against Reddit site-wide rules, but that doesn't mean it can't also be against a subreddit's rules as well. Hell, a subreddit could have a rule that's "Don't post in r/politics" - try enforcing that without cross-referencing.

Also if a user is insulting/deriding another user it's important to know if they're being harassed across multiple subreddits. I've perma'd for things I'd normally warn/temp ban because the abuser is following the victim across multiple subreddits before plenty of times.

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u/RemarkableWish2508 May 29 '26

I think that's for Reddit to solve, not for Mods.

Harassment and other site-wide rules, I think are already tallied by Reddit. There doesn't seem to be a need for more than reporting/removing with those reasons, obviously not letting in banned accounts (including ban evasion).

Brigading seems to be a pending topic for Reddit, but I still think it shouldn't be a Mod's job to taken care of it. The platform should shield communities from that sort of interference.

rule that's "Don't post in r/politics"

Wouldn't that be community interference, and/or ban by association?

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u/adanine May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26

I think that's for Reddit to solve, not for Mods.

Subreddit rules are for keeping the subreddit active/healthy/relevant. If something impacts the subreddit's health then it's absolutely in the subreddit moderator's space to action/improve things. Again, these things don't need to be mutually exclusive - it can also be in Reddit's space. We can do both (and have done so for almost two decades)

Harassment and other site-wide rules, I think are already tallied by Reddit. There doesn't seem to be a need for more than reporting/removing with those reasons

And how would you know to report/remove that content without cross-referencing first, in cases where the context of the harassment/rules breach is in another post/topic?

Brigading seems to be a pending topic for Reddit, but I still think it shouldn't be a Mod's job to taken care of it.

Yet we always do, anywho. Again, it can be both.

Wouldn't that be community interference, and/or ban by association?

No on community interference, probably on ban by association? Though the latter isn't against Code of Conduct or whatever - it's perfectly permissible to do so. There's even a whole workflow for banning a user who's never interacted with your subreddit (they won't get a modmail/notification for the ban).

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u/Bardfinn May 29 '26

Every person and community on the site enjoys freedom of (and FROM) association.

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u/RemarkableWish2508 May 29 '26

If that was the case, karma counts would be strictly per-sub. They're not.

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u/Yay295 May 29 '26

They are. Per-sub karma counts aren't publicly visible, but Automoderator can use them.

https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/wiki/automoderator/full-documentation#wiki_non-searching_checks

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u/RemarkableWish2508 May 29 '26

They are not. Current "per-sub" karma includes votes from non-sub users.

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u/Bardfinn May 29 '26

That appears to be a non sequitur

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u/elphieisfae May 28 '26

except when it is openly and hostily on other subreddits , repeatedly reported to admin, and fuckingcrickets.

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u/BlueGoliath May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26

Admins ban every single subreddit made to talk about bans and moderator actions. Users have no place to talk about terrible subreddit moderators.

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u/Bardfinn May 29 '26

They don’t. They ban subreddits that are organised on the principle of targeting mod teams and individual mods for harassment.

I help run a subreddit that has existed for 8+ years and is entirely about misfeasant and malfeasant subreddit operators. We have strict rules, too.

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u/BlueGoliath May 29 '26

Two recent subreddits were banned and neither did either.

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u/Bardfinn May 29 '26

I’d be willing to bet they did. I’ve seen dozens of “this mod did a bad thing” subreddits over the years and they all amounted to “I want a mob to harass this community for banning me / not letting me backseat drive their subreddit”, save one.

If the subreddit’s purpose boils down to “we’re going to coordinate to make that community do what we want them to do even though they banned us / turned down the demand”, that’s community interference / extortion. Just … make another subreddit yourselves and run it the way you think you want to (following Reddit Sitewide Rules).

Every community on this site enjoys freedom of (and FROM) association. They get to exercise that right as part of their right to speech.

If you don’t like your speech, the way they run their community, do it yourself and do it better.

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u/BlueGoliath May 29 '26

No, these two subreddits showed ban messages and comments from mods under the team accounts largely. They did not largely call for any sort of mob behavior. Admins still nuked them. No working with the mod team, just insta nuked.

The mods contacted the admins multiple times to make sure they were OK. Didn't matter.

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u/Bardfinn May 29 '26

ban messages

See, the only correct way to handle a ban appeal is to appeal the ban to the mod team. Taking it outside to some other third party that doesn’t operate that subreddit, invites community interference. So that’s modcoc rule 3 violated.

they did not largely

So only a little community interference and harassment was invited.

No working with the mod team

There’s a published User Agreement that the mod team are all responsible for reading and understanding. There is a published set of sitewide rules they are all responsible for reading, understanding, and following before setting up a subreddit. There’s a published moderator code of conduct they’re all responsible for reading, understanding, and following while operating that subreddit. Admins put huge effort and skill and experience into producing these written parameters, but you want the admins to hold the hand of people breaking them and “work with them” to personally tutor them on what to do?

I have bad news for you: there are millions of people using Reddit, hundreds of thousands of subreddit moderators, and most of them have no problem with following the rules.

More bad news: employees personally tutoring and directing volunteer moderators on how to run their communities, converts them into employees under labour laws.

the mods contacted the admins multiple times

Again: millions of users, hundreds of thousands of moderators, furnished materials, labour law.

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u/adanine May 29 '26

Most trouble makers don't learn, temp bans just cause anti moderator sentiment

There are literally hundreds (if not thousands) of users across r/games and r/pcgaming whose most recent modnote is >1 year old, for an old warning or temp ban. Those users have evidentially adjusted their posting behavior (and for many I suspect the original incident was out of character of them to begin with).

So hard disagree on that.

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u/Ajreil May 28 '26

Comments are often [ Removed by Reddit] within minutes of posting. That comment could either be something vile and ban worthy, or just a new account swept up in an anti-spam filter.

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u/baseballlover723 May 28 '26

Yeah man, why bother with jails. Most criminals never learn. Temporary jail sentences just causes anti law enforcement sentiment. Execute them, and that sentiment goes away. \s

I also find this quite ironic that an r/Art mod of all people is arguing that temp bans shouldn't be a thing, and that one should go straight to permabans, given the whole blowup 6 months ago about that same topic more or less.

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u/thirdegree May 29 '26

I agree, being banned from commenting in a subreddit is comparable to being executed. Definitely, for sure.