Reddit introduces a new moderator for all new threads, and users aren't happy
New moderation tools are coming to Reddit in a bid to help communities stick to the rules, yet while they could prove to be more efficient for some, their introduction has received significant backlash from users due to the involvement of AI.
Reddit, unlikely many other social media platforms, has a moderation system driven almost entirely by users themselves, with communities designating a handful of individuals as the arbiters of good and relevant content.
Not everything can be done by hand, however, and that's where existing 'Automoderator' tools come in handy as they let mods select pre-determined keywords and patterns that are blocked by a bot before making it onto the subreddit's feed.
Leadership at Reddit have decided to take things in a different, arguably enhanced direction though with the introduction of what they call 'Rules Hub' — a new LLM-powered system that provides a more nuanced automatic detection system to ease the burden on human moderators.
How does Rules Hub work?
As reported by The Verge, Rules Hub will be available to all newly created subreddits, with a full expansion and integration expected to arrive at some point later this year.
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It will utilize AI detection tools in order to check whether content shared on the subreddit matches all of the pre-existing rules, which is currently impossible to automate due to the complexity of many requirements like post layouts, banned topics, and more.
Instead of relying on picking up individual and specific keywords – like slurs, or contentious topics banned from discussion – this new system "allows Rules Hub to better handle nuance, natural language, and edge cases while preserving moderator controls."
Furthermore, moderators will have the ability to directly toggle which of the subreddit's rules will be automatically enforced by the AI tool, making it a customizable experience if some rules are better dealt with through human assessment.
Why is Rules Hub an unpopular addition?
It shouldn't come as a surprise that the involvement of AI technology has made Rules Hub contentious at best, with many both unconvinced that it will even work and unhappy that their content is being scanned by AI.
Reddit already has several agreements with AI companies to have content shared on the site included in training data, yet the implementation of similar AI-powered moderation tools on other platforms like YouTube have left people less-than-confident that it'll work flawlessly here.
"A bot to remove bot content?" questioned one user in response to the new, perhaps suggesting that it won't be able to accurately pick up 'slop' that is dominating the internet at an increasing rate.
Another even joked that the "unpaid Reddit mods are not spared by AI," with a third signalling that this is a "major recession indicator."
One moderator even chimed in with their own assessment of these new tools, writing: "As someone who moderates a small regional hip hop/rap subreddit that constantly has lyrics as comments, I do not expect this to work well with that kind of content.
"There’s a ton of stuff I already have to fish out of the filter because it’s “violent” or whatever and it’s just a song title or lyric. I doubt AI will be able to grasp the nuance of the lyrics of someone like Lee Scott or Jam Baxter," they added — but it doesn't appear as if Rules Hub will be mandatory across all cases, at least in its current application.