Content moderation in Reddit
Content moderation [hyperlink to] in Reddit is the process of filtering and removing posts or comments that do not confine to the rules of Reddit. Nearly all content moderation is done by volunteer moderators who enforce their subreddit’s rules in addition to the site-wide [hyperlink] rules. Reddit moderators have almost complete control over their subreddits. However, there have been several cases in which the Reddit administrators have stepped to moderate, remove moderators, or even ban entire subreddits. Ethical issues include freedom of speech, bots, bias of algorithms and moderators, effects on volunteer moderators, lack of moderations by moderators, and lack of moderation by administrators.
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Overview
Reddit uses a highly decentralized model of moderation. Subreddit moderations, in general, have the freedom to enforce their own subreddit rules as they see fit, with administrators only becoming involved in extreme circumstances.
- Auto-Moderator is a bot built into Reddit for moderators to use to enforce rules that are tedious or repetitive for moderators themselves to do as well as some recurring community discussion posts. It has the ability to flag and detect rule-breaking or inappropriate content on a subreddit. [1]
- User Reports are the action of a user of Reddit who uses the report feature of Reddit to bring possible rule-breaking comments or content to the attention of moderators to review and take action if necessary. These reports are anonymous. [2]
- Moderator Action is a moderator or moderation team taking action to remove content considered rule-breaking for their subreddit and issue suspensions or bans if necessary.
- Administrator Action is the Reddit Administrators taking action either because they have deemed the moderators to have not properly moderated their subreddit or if an entire subreddit is deemed to be breaking the site-wide content-policy.