back to article Reddit rolling out AI bouncer to halt harassment

Reddit is upping its AI game again, this time with the implementation of an LLM-powered harassment filter for the benefit of its army of volunteer moderators. The existence of the new Harassment Filter was discovered during an APK teardown by Android Authority, which spotted its existence in version 2024.10.0 of the official …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Bazinga!

    This will end well...

    I have a feeling that the subs that could really use it won't enable it, and those that do enable it will find the automod to be either heavy handed or erratic (or both).

  2. pimppetgaeghsr

    The whole site is under lock and key anyway. I guess they are rolling out the jobsworth mentality to specific comments.

    I suppose they only need a few bots to make the engagement seem organic at this point anyway.

    1. David 132 Silver badge

      Bots talking to bots, being scraped by bots to build LLMs to generate more AI garbage that can be scraped by other bots...

      It's turtles crap all the way down.

  3. MOH

    This could solve the problem of unruly users. Simply replace the users with AI. And handily boost your engagement numbers ahead of the IPO.

    There's already a ludicrous number of AI posts anyway

  4. Alistair
    Windows

    Reddit upgrade options..........

    .......As with all things to do with raising cash in 2024, that means sticking AI anywhere it can.

    I have some suggestions as to where............

  5. elregidente

    I left Reddit after AI deleted my two year old Amazon Redshift sub.

    I had the sub /r/AmazonRedshift.

    I was the primary poster, the sub was two years old, and had about 75 subscribers - organic, real people, mainly I think from r/AWS, gradually accumulated over that time.

    One fateful day I made a post, the abstract from the latest Redshift research PDF.

    Reddit then began behaving oddly.

    After some investigation, and some guesswork, I concluded my account had been silently shadow-banned, and the sub banned (and then shortly after, deleted).

    Two years of posts and the sub disappeared, instantly, abruptly, without warning, reason, appeal process or notification, and Reddit was trying to lead me into thinking my account was still active.

    Make of that what you will.

    (As an aside, El Reg have set up comments here so that if you're on Tor, posting will fail due to Cloudflare, and you'll lose your comment. I'm so used to forms failing I always copy the text before submitting, so nothing lost. It's just not good.)

    1. Andy Non Silver badge

      Re: I left Reddit after AI deleted my two year old Amazon Redshift sub.

      I've not had a Reddit account for a number of years now. The last straw was a mod deleting a poetic post I made claiming it breached copyright. As it was my own original work my reaction was feck that, I'm out of here.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I think the aggro redditors have a different plan

    cash in and then crater the IPO, then when the price tanks buy the whole thing for pennies on the dollar. After that fire management, and then roll the site code back to before the current ceo wrecked everything, and turn it into a Co-Op.

    That probably still won't "save" Reddit though, the flood of toxic users that settled in as other online spaces were enshitified or shut down have displaced a core user base that made the community sustainable. The barnacles will remain, and the community will continue to scatter.

    But at least we will have a laugh when some /r/wallstreetbets f*kboy or crypto-bro buys the company out with frikken doge coin.

    1. Lyndication

      Re: I think the aggro redditors have a different plan

      More likely that the WSBs "apes" end up being fodder for some investment firm to further pump and dump it. The ijits think that Gamestop is a video game infinite money glitch.

      Reddit is utterly woeful now. Any interesting subreddit lives in fear of hitting r/All and becoming swamped by raging Gamers and report bots. The whole site is sinking into an utterly toxic mire.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Reddit to halt harrassment :|

    Reddit is the only forum I've come across where the moderators brigand and troll their own subs. There's even a sub dedicated to hunting down wrong-think on other subs. First they infiltrate the sub and post abuse then use such abuse as evidence as to why it should be banned. If that don't work, they ban the moderator and then suspend the sub for lack of moderation. Then there's accounts getting shadow-banned with no warning or explanation. Mainly because some anally retentive mod disagrees with the contents. Months of original work gone down the memory hole. Your average Reddit super mod: Sexually dimorphic with identity issues on a power trip.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Sexually dimorphic with identity issues on a power trip.

      Wow, project much?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Sexually dimorphic with identity issues on a power trip.

        > Wow, project much?

        Well, if they specifically ban criticism of groomers, pedos and minor attracted persons .. /s

  8. imanidiot Silver badge

    Alternatively, it's an attempt to hide the stink

    Personally I think it's more of a sign that they're losing actually engaged mods in droves and they're trying to hide this fact somewhat. I see more and more subreddits implode because mods just give up on the shit-heap that Reddit has become. The API closing to stop 3rd party apps was the a big drive in this regard.

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