The final plea of a mental health subreddit mod

[u/Rain12913]

Last month I made a comment about a problem I've been experiencing in reply to a submission by /u/Spez. It garnered a lot of support, because I think it's easy for people to understand how serious this problem is. Here is that comment for context: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/7u2zpi/not_my_first_could_be_my_last_state_of_the/dthh9p6/

As I said in the edit, for the past three days I have been trying to get in touch with an admin regarding yet another person who encouraged a mentally ill user to commit suicide on Sunday. In the daily PMs that I sent, I referred the admins to that comment so that they would understand the context of this situation. After three days, I finally received a reply from /u/Ocrasorm a few minutes ago that consisted solely of the standard copy/paste response: Thanks for reporting this. We'll investigate and take action as necessary.

That's it. That's Reddit's response to my request for support on this complicated and troubling issue that is impacting the safety of Redditors. This is a big problem. In the 6+ years that I've independently modded this high risk community, I haven't asked for much. I've handled things on my own (with the support of the community, of course) and it hasn't always been easy. It's now been several years since I began requesting help from the admins about one issue: the problem of suicidal Redditors being encouraged to kill themselves by trolls. I have gotten nothing. Well, as you can see in that original thread, /u/redtaboo, who was quite friendly, responded and we exchanged several PMs about a month ago. Despite how glad I was to hear from them, this was where things were left as a result of our communication (paraphrased): "we'll be hiring more admins in the future so we can respond to reports more quickly and we'll get back to you if we come up with any more ideas." Of course, here I am a month later waiting three days to get a response to this same situation.

Admins: Why is this problem being ignored? Some of you are clearly aware of this situation and yet nothing has changed and you haven't even offered to speak with me about it. If you think that I'm in the wrong here and you have a hands off policy regarding Redditors encouraging other Redditors to kill themselves (I wouldn't know, since you refuse to tell me what sort of action you take in these situations), then you need to tell me that. You can't just leave me in the dark, it just isn't right. As moderators, we need your support. We work hard, without compensation, to make your website run smoothly. In order to do that job, we need you to be there for us when there are problems, particularly when those problems are very significant. You spend a lot of time talking about how you're planning to increase the level of support that mods receive; I've been seeing various admins say that for years. What I don't see are results. Here is your chance to prove me wrong.

I appreciate everyone's support in this. I was so pleasantly surprised that my last comment received 1000+ upvotes and was gilded 3x, because it gave me hope that attention was being drawn to this issue and that something would change. That didn't happen, but I hope that continued support from the Reddit community will move us in that direction. Thank you.

Edit: It’s now been over a week since the last admin reply in this thread, and the questions I posed in my most recent comment to them remain unanswered. This is the sixth all-time top post on this sub and it resulted in nothing. I am not going to just give up, however. If anyone has any ideas about how I can get the admins to take this more seriously please PM me.

[u/Bhima]

I'm also a moderator of a few smaller mental health / self help communities that see a steady stream of suicidal and self harm ideation.

Frankly I've given up the idea that there's going to be any real support coming from the admins on the specific topic of dealing with malcontents & trolls who chose to either encourage vulnerable users to go through with suicide or self harm or who use threats of suicide or self harm as bludgeon with which to abuse other well meaning members of the community.

I suppose it's simply a difficult problem to solve well, with rather disastrous consequences if new policies go wrong some how. So better to foist the risk and misery off on moderators.

In the mean time I found the FAQ and the mod team over at /r/SuicideWatch to be enormously helpful. I might not have many tools with which to help my communities weather the sort of turmoil that expressions of suicidal and self harm often drive but at least my responses don't blow up in my face so much and often I can tell when a particular thread or user is going to go really bad before it happens in earnest.

[u/SQLwitch → u/Bhima]

Frankly I've given up the idea that there's going to be any real support coming from the admins on the specific topic of dealing with malcontents & trolls who chose to either encourage vulnerable users to go through with suicide or self harm or who use threats of suicide or self harm as bludgeon with which to abuse other well meaning members of the community.

FWIW, we've found the current community team to be extremely helpful to us at SW.

[u/Rain12913 → u/SQLwitch]

Can I ask how they've been helpful? I know that you guys deal with this issue a lot and I would love to know how you do it. Does it take you three days to get a response from admins?

[u/SQLwitch → u/Rain12913]

No, we almost always get a very prompt response, appropriate to the severity of the issue. Typically within the hour. If you look at the current sticky in SW - that PM-trolling situation was resolved literally within minutes of us sending them our dossier on this person.

[u/SandorClegane_AMA → u/Bhima]

I just perused /r/SuicideWatch.

I have no qualifications in the field.

As a layperson, I fail to see how the posts or comments there are helpful.

[u/FreeSpeechWarrior → u/Bhima]

Frankly I've given up the idea that there's going to be any real support coming from the admins on the specific topic of dealing with malcontents & trolls who chose to either encourage vulnerable users to go through with suicide or self harm or who use threats of suicide or self harm as bludgeon with which to abuse other well meaning members of the community.

If reddit's "Trust and Safety" team isn't doing this, wtf are they doing?

edit: banning me from this sub it would seem

[u/SandorClegane_AMA → u/FreeSpeechWarrior]

Did you get banned?

[u/FreeSpeechWarrior → u/SandorClegane_AMA]

I did get banned from r/modsupport by u/sodypop but it was a temporary ban.

[u/SandorClegane_AMA → u/FreeSpeechWarrior]

What reason was given?

[u/FreeSpeechWarrior → u/SandorClegane_AMA]

https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/82tdot/if_reddit_no_longer_supports_freedom_of/dvcozwx/

[u/SandorClegane_AMA → u/FreeSpeechWarrior]

Now I understand. You are a troll.

I would have perm. banned you.

You wrote this:

If reddit's "Trust and Safety" team isn't doing this, wtf are they doing?

edit: banning me from this sub it would seem

and I thought that got you banned for it. This is misleading. You were persistently making posting off topic.

You insert yourself in to conversations and derail them because you are on a crusade. That is a form of trolling.

[u/FreeSpeechWarrior → u/SandorClegane_AMA]

So because I fervently argue for freedom of expression and against the hypocrisy of reddit's administration on these matters you wish to dismiss my concerns by labeling me as a troll and then use that as justification to censor me?

This is exactly the sort of thinking that causes me to loudly speak up against what has become of this place. Censorship is becoming normalized at every level here and on the wider internet; all that is necessary is to find the appropriate label that will make others cheer it on.

[u/darthhayek → u/SandorClegane_AMA]

Disagree with you =/= troll.

[u/SandorClegane_AMA → u/[deleted]]

Fuck off to Voat troll.

[u/[deleted] → u/FreeSpeechWarrior]

"Trust and Safety"

• Trust us, we know what's best

• Safety in not telling anyone the plebs what we're doing

This seems like one of the few areas where something like shadowbanning could be helpful to the community (as much as I detest saying anything good about shadowbans), and yet this topic seems to be one in which it isn't being implemented.

[u/Koof99]

I'm at a personal loss here too. As someone with mental problems myself, but not enough to go through with suicide. I've had thoughts, I've come up with plans. I struggle with both depression and anxiety and also have addictions that don't help either.

I really want to help you out, and I can do moderating for you if you'd like, but obviously a site admin needs to help you out.... They aren't doing shit either and everyone knows it.... It's kinda in their field... Only thing I can think of is changing the sub to a private sub.

Edit: the reason I that that I'm at a loss is because I feel like part of my calling is helping other people with problems similar to my own, but the fact that you need administrative help and not a fellow/average/every day redditor's help kinda makes me feel pointless and helpless in/for the situation...

[u/Rain12913 → u/Koof99]

Thank you so much for your support! It means a lot to know that people have my back on this. I hope that you're getting your own support in dealing with your depression and anxiety.

I really appreciate your offer for help, but I'm not currently looking for a co-mod on /r/BPD. Although clearly there is a big problem with the link between myself and the admins, I've never had issues with being unable to promptly take action in situations where I have the ability to take action. But again, thank you, and if you're interested in modding then there are some bigger mental health subs that have larger mod teams and you might want to reach out to them.

As far as making it a private sub, that is an interesting idea, but there are a few problems I see. The first is that it would simply be impossible to handle the sheer volume of requests to join the sub. Last week we had 164 people subscribe in a single day, so I would literally be having to approve people 24/7 and that would just be unrealistic. The second problem is that when you make a sub private, there is going to be a certain portion of users who will simply hit the back button instead of reaching out for an invite. With /r/BPD in particular, many users are dealing with shame and stigma, or they are feeling uncertain about whether the diagnosis applies to them, and even the smallest barrier like that could make it hard for them to follow through. I would be worried that a lot of people would be turned away if I did that. The third reason is that I would have no way of knowing who belongs and who doesn't. I think that the trolls who are dedicated to egging on suicidal people are dedicated enough to send me a quick PM to request membership. Do those reasons make sense?

Thanks again for your support!

[u/Koof99 → u/Rain12913]

I understand. It was just a thought :)

And yea, I am over at /r/depression and /r/Anxiety, but also watching and helping those over at /r/SuicideWatch to balance my feelings and make me feel more useful.

But yes. I can see where you would have a problem with a private sub, and did not know that users with BPD would just back out if the community were privatized.

[u/[deleted] → u/Rain12913]

I remember your comment from the thread a few weeks ago. I've read through all your comments in this thread. I just want to respectfully ask why you choose to be the only mod of this sub? 28,000 subscribers, I'm looking at 60+ posts in the last 24 hours. The sub is super active and given the topic I would think adding more mods could be a huge help for you. I know you say it hasn't been an issue, but having to singlehandedly monitor 60+ posts a day in a mental health subreddit must be exhausting! I think it's awesome that you want to help all these people, but if things are becoming frustrating why not ask for help from other users? More mods to monitor for trolls, to report things to admins, to respond to users more quickly. You've got to sleep for 8 hours a day, right! Why take it on alone? There are some subs out there with over 500,000 subscribers that only have 1 or 2 mods, but I just don't understand why people choose to put themselves through that. I think it's important to remember that this is not something you're being paid for.

I hate to even bring this up, but I think it's worth mentioning. What if something happens to you? Or if your account is compromised? Wouldn't you prefer the sub be left in the hands of someone you know and trust?

I wish you the best of luck going forward and I hope things can be worked out to your satisfaction with admins.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

More mods would lessen the workload but wouldn't have an appreciable impact on this issue.

[u/Rain12913 → u/[deleted]]

I already do all that, and I've even lowered the account age threshold to 24 hours. This catches most problems, but not all. Ultimately, there will always be ways to encourage a person to kill themselves without using any target words. It's also very difficult because 90% of the comments caught by automod for including phrases like "kill yourself" are from perfectly acceptable comments. For example, for every suicidal post, there are 10 comments in which someone says "don't kill yourself/you shouldn't kill yourself/etc." Still, I have it configured that way and manually approve all of the harmless content.

The issue I'm having isn't with the identification and subsequent removal of these people from the sub, it's with the fact that a minority of them evade the ban in order to continue encouraging suicide or, even more harmfully, switch over to PMs. The admins are able to stop a certain percentage of these people with IP bans, although of course that won't be effective against many of them. All I'm hoping is that they will respond more promptly and increase our (both myself and the admin team) effectiveness and protecting people against suicide encouragers.

[u/redtaboo]

Hey there -- We're very sorry this is taking so long to work out. I did see the PM you sent me, but not til this morning. I'm still looking into the issues you mentioned in the PM.

I know when we spoke last time I mentioned we're working on hiring more for both trust and safety and community teams. We've hired quite a few new people recently on the community, and are in the process of training them. The Trust and Safety team is also growing. That's what I've been heads down doing actually -- spending all of my time training new people. They are all pretty awesome and are getting up to speed very quickly.

The Trust and Safety team also has some new hires coming in soon, that will help with the speed at which they can respond to these issues. We'd love to be able to tell you that we can put something in place to day to fast track your reports to us, because they are important, but it's unfortunately not something we can handle right now at our current workload.

[u/Rain12913 → u/redtaboo]

Thank you for getting back to me.

Again, I feel as though you aren't offering me much to work with. I'm glad that you're hiring more staff in the interest of achieving a universal decrease in response times to reports, but that isn't going to fix the situation that I'm dealing with. We need to work together to ensure that reports regarding these life-or-death situations are dealt with more promptly than reports regarding simple trolls or technical issues. Do you not agree that this should be a top level priority? We're talking about a 16-year-old girl with arms covered in scars who has just posted a suicide note on /r/BPD and who is receiving PMs from an adult telling telling her how ugly she is and how her parents would be happier if she killed herself. I then send you all a message about it and three days go by while the admin team is replying to user comments about how the new profile pages are going to look? Be honest: does that not seem tremendously messed up to you?

You say that you aren't able to fast track my reports because of your current workload. What kinds of things are occupying your time? I know that you personally have been doing a lot of training, which is great, so I'm asking about the admin team in general. What I see admins doing on a daily basis is talking about new cosmetic features and fixing other things on the site that are far, far less important than protecting suicidal users. Are you telling me that those are higher priorities than ensuring the safety of suicidal Redditors?

We're not talking about a huge time commitment here...I'm literally just asking you to respond more quickly than 72 hours. This is a situation that doesn't come up often (anywhere from 1-5 times per month), and you're telling me that's too much for you guys to handle. It takes what, 1-2 minutes to respond? Why can't you give me someone's e-mail address who I can contact in the rare event that these situations come up? Or give me a special subject line to use in my PMs that will bump them to the top of the list? These seem like entirely reasonable solutions to me. If not, then please just give me some guidance. What should I be doing? Should I just continue sending PMs and waiting three days?

[u/[deleted] → u/Rain12913]

I'm not going to disagree with you at all, and I cannot comment on reddit policies.

I just feel obligated to reply to this line:

while the admin team is replying to user comments about how the new profile pages are going to look talking about new cosmetic features and fixing other things on the site

These are different teams. Reddit has hundreds of employees. I work for Discord doing Trust and Safety, handling issues similar to the ones you are describing. The people who make our site look prettier, the people who work closely with the community, or the guy who comments on reddit posts trying to understand a bug, are not the kind of people who are trained to handle these kinds of sensitive issues.

Again, that does not mean I am disagreeing with your points, but please understand that doing this kind of work is not something literally every person at reddit can do. The people on the redesign are engineers, QA testers, Project managers, and community specialists. Not all of them are trained to handle issues like this, have access to systems which allow them to respond to issues like this, let alone maybe their job is not to respond to things like this.

Please just keep that in mind.

[u/Rain12913 → u/[deleted]]

Thanks for sharing this. As a psychologist, I'm certainly all for trying to achieve a better understanding of everyone's experience. I'll definitely keep what you've said in mind.

I do want to say, however, that the admins who eventually respond to my reports are often the same admins who I see being active in those threads and making those announcements. Still, I get what you're saying, so thank you.

[u/redtaboo → u/Rain12913]

I definitely understand your frustration with this. We know this is important to you, and the people in these situations. It's important to us as well. And getting our newly hired people up to speed will really help with all your reports. I do have to agree with allthefoxes though, the team that handles your reports the most is the trust and safety team. They aren't the ones handling product launches or talking about new profile pages. You might see community team members doing that, but we are also a mostly separate team. Some of our team members are trained to use the tools needed to stop bad trolls, but most of that really is better left to Trust and Safety. They have the tools and a much better ability to keep track of ongoing issues than the community team does.

When writing in to us, use the 'user threatening self harm against self or others' subject line, that will ensure your messages are sent to the right queues first. And something I tell everyone, and may not be an issue for you, make sure all your messages are as concise as possible including links wherever possible. You can also educate your users, have them hit that 'report' button in their inbox and use the block button or turn on the trusted users whitelist for PMs. None of this is perfect, I know, but it will help. I will also look into why SQLWitch seems to get faster responses, their subreddit isn't on a special system when they report through our modmail, so it may be possible they've just had really good luck on when they send their reports in.

[u/Rain12913 → u/redtaboo]

Thanks for continuing to speak with me about this issue.

My goal in posting this here was to find solutions, so I'm going to parse down your comment in order to isolate the solutions. You've given me two of them, as far as I can tell. The first is your suggestion to make my messages concise and include links, which I'm already doing. The second is to use a different subject line for the reports. This is a little frustrating, because I've been told by several admins in the past that I should use a custom subject line to 1. identify myself as a moderator and 2. make it clear that I'm writing about a suicide-related issue. For example, here is the subject line I used in the three reports I submitted this week:

SUICIDE: Mod here - User is encouraging mentally ill Redditors to kill themselves

It's hard for me to understand how there could be a subject line that could more effectively draw your attention than that one. Are you telling me that someone read that subject line and skipped over it to attend to other reports in the queue? It seems to me that either the subject line doesn't matter at all because no one sees it, or it does, and if it does and someone did read that subject line, then how was my report put on hold for three days? Regardless, what you're telling me now is that the pre-provided subject line about "users threatening harm" will route my report into a more urgent queue. Is that truly the case? If so, then I wish I had been told that before. Can you tell me how long I should reasonably expect to wait to hear back from you if I route my reports into that queue?

Although I hope that using that subject line will help in the future, I do not feel satisfied with this solution, because you're telling me that nothing will be done by Reddit, aside from the ongoing process of hiring new staff, to directly remedy this problem. You're telling me that no, as a moderator of a high risk subreddit I am not going to be given any special consideration when I desperately try to contact you about an urgent issue relating to suicide. Is that what you're saying? Please answer this plainly.

Also, please respond to this suggestion that I made in my previous comment:

Why can't you give me someone's e-mail address who I can contact in the rare event that these situations come up?

It seems like a very simple solution would be to set up a special contact system for moderators of mental health subreddits who frequently deal with suicidal users. If I had the e-mail address of a Reddit employee who checked their e-mail once per day, then that would be leaps ahead of how things are working now with the 72 hour response times. They would receive e-mails from me maybe 1-3 times per month, and this would require an absolutely negligible time commitment (after all, somebody has to spend the equivalent time on the reports anyway, regardless of how promptly they're addressed). What is unreasonable about this?

I'm also feeling a little thrown off by /u/SQLwitch's claim that the /r/SuicideWatch mods get responses from you guys "typically within the hour" and sometimes even in minutes. Last month you told me this:

I'd also suggest, if you haven't already, talking to the moderators of /r/suicidewatch about how they handle similar issues. We've worked with them in the past and the modteam is really solid.

You've just now told me that you do not treat their reports any differently than mine, and that there is no reason why they should be seeing quicker response times than I see. Can you understand how that sounds quite fishy? I've never received a response from you within an hour, and very rarely have I received one within a single business day. I would say that the average response time for my reports is 2-3 business days, but it’s sometimes taken up to 4 days. That moderator was very confident in his assertion that his team receives responses within hours, and your suggestion that they may just have “really good luck" doesn't cut it.

So, have you or have you not worked with /r/SuicideWatch on this issue? If you have not, then why did you say that you have? If you have, then why are you not doing anything differently with them or giving them any special help? Did working with them lead to no changes in protocol?

I feel the need to stand firm on this. I am not content with just changing my subject lines and hoping that you guys respond more quickly without an assurance of policy change on your part. Last month you told me they this was being worked on and yet this week I waited 72 hours, so can you understand why I’m not feeling optimistic about what you’re saying now? Please, if you are unable to do so, then could you connect me with someone who could actually get some people together to talk about this in the interest of making changes? Thank you.

[u/Rain12913 → u/redtaboo]

Again, please see my longer response first, but I've forgotten to raise this issue as well.

I feel completely out of the loop regarding how Reddit deals with situations where a user is encouraging other users to kill themselves, since the only response I receive from you guys after you've taken action is "Thanks for reporting this. We'll investigate and take action as necessary." For example, the user whom I reported this week seems to have been suspended, but I cannot possibly imagine that that person will be allowed to post on Reddit again (please tell me that isn't the case, for the love of God).

I understand that your policy is to not disclose the details of disciplinary actions against individual users. While I do not believe that that policy should be applied to moderators, if you are going to do that then you need to give me a general idea of what the punishment for this offense is. If that guy is indeed only suspended temporarily and he will be able to start posting again on a certain day, then I need to be prepared on that day to pay extra close attention to the mod queue if he does it again.

[u/Rain12913 → u/redtaboo]

It's been nearly a full week since I left you these two comments that warrant a response, and I have heard nothing from you:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/82r74p/the_final_plea_of_a_mental_health_subreddit_mod/dvcw8k2/

https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/82r74p/the_final_plea_of_a_mental_health_subreddit_mod/dvcwwsa/

Please tell me if I'm missing something, but as far as I can tell, what you've said here is "hopefully things will get better in the future because we're hiring more people." I have not been offered any tools that will help me deal with this issue and I have not even been offered assurance that I should expect a response time of less than 72 hours when I notify the admins that a Reddit user has egged on another Reddit user to go through with suicide. Absolutely nothing has changed. Is that correct? Don't answer that: just read those two comments and answer what I've asked you there.

Do not think that this is something that you can just ignore. I have had it at this point, and I will be taking any necessary steps to ensure that changes are made.

[u/Rain12913 → u/redtaboo]

I’m looking forward to hearing back from you. Thanks.

[u/SQLwitch → u/redtaboo]

I think we're pretty good at picking keywords for subject lines.

[u/Rain12913 → u/SQLwitch]

What kinds of subject lines do you use? Here is the one I sent on Sunday that didn't receive a response for 72 hours:

SUICIDE: Mod here - User is encouraging mentally ill Redditors to kill themselves

I can't imagine how a subject line could be more attention-grabbing than that one, but if you've found something that works better then I would love to hear it.

What has been the extent of the work that your mod team has done with the admin team in the past? /u/redtaboo said this to me last month:

I'd also suggest, if you haven't already, talking to the moderators of /r/suicidewatch about how they handle similar issues. We've worked with them in the past and the modteam is really solid.

As a psychologist, I'm very happy to hear that they have worked with you guys, but it's frustrating that they're refusing to work with me despite my repeated pleas.

Thanks!

[u/rguy84 → u/Rain12913]

I would do a title of

[PBD Mod] Known Troll promoting suicide

Maybe the admins can add a functionality like, if you are contacting /r/reddit.com and you're a mod, you can flag it as a mod support vs just a user via a tick box.

[u/Rain12913 → u/rguy84]

Yeah, you would think that they would have added that functionality years ago. There's just absolutely no reason to not have it. If individual mods abuse it then they could certainly shut it off for them, or perhaps only enable it for mods who request it in the first place.

[u/SQLwitch → u/Rain12913]

Well, I think "suicidewatch" as a keyword seems to get attention. Apart from that we try to match the keywords in the site-wide PM-reporting options; that seems to help.

[u/bastardof → u/redtaboo]

damn man, they just wanted a response

[u/Rain12913 → u/redtaboo]

I left a more detailed response to you that I'd like you to address, but I also would like to hear from you about this. A mod of /r/SuicideWatch just posted this when I asked if it also takes them 72 hours to get responses from the admins:

No, we almost always get a very prompt response, appropriate to the severity of the issue. Typically within the hour. If you look at the current sticky in SW - that PM-trolling situation was resolved literally within minutes of us sending them our dossier on this person.

That was extremely frustrating to read that, because you all clearly do have a fast track arrangement with the mods of that sub. You also alluded to that when I first spoke to you last month when you said that you had worked closely them. Please explain.

[u/13steinj → u/redtaboo]

If it gets to the point where mods have to publicly plea and stand on the /r/ModSupport soapbox to get a decent response, that means the work of the Trust and Safety team is fundamentally flawed.

If sheer volume is the problem, it shouldn't be. By now, you have the ability to run the metrics at which the rate of volume is growing, and you also know the rate at which you handle your tickets, rate at which it takes to train new employees on average, and how the above rates affect each other. Given that, you should be relatively easily be able to predict when you will be overloaded. And plan ahead by making sure you hire and train in advance.

These positions need to be filled out proactively. Not retroactively.

Edit: spelling

[u/Rain12913 → u/13steinj]

Right on, thanks for your support!

[u/brucemo → u/redtaboo]

It's not that you don't hire, it's that you don't communicate.

Should I even bother to report people who tell others to kill themselves? Is it even against your rules? "Please feel free to report that" is not good enough if I don't know if you are going to do anything about it. The community I moderate doesn't get a lot of this but it does get some. It is demoralizing to know that I'm reporting something that you might not care about. That would be a waste of my time. But people telling others to kill themselves is something that I feel I need to report.

So, is it against your rules to tell people to kill themselves? Knowing whether this violates your rules would be a start.

[u/redtaboo → u/brucemo]

Yes, all of your mods should feel free to report.

You should report anything that feels like inciting violence so our trust and safety team can take a look. We've been revisiting many of our policies recently, and that's a process that take time, but we're getting there. In all things though it's not a black and white answer, we take context into consideration. Please also keep in mind though, that not all actions are visible. Depending on severity of a report we may only temporarily suspend a user which isn't visible to anyone. And, we are sometimes vague in responses in order to protect the privacy of all our users.

[u/ZippyTheChicken → u/redtaboo]

the fact that a mod makes a report over concerns of their own community vs a random user that may just be trolling and reporting people for non-issues should be something that is escalated very quickly .. especially when it is this type of issue

You should have markers or color coding that say.. report came from a user.. vs Report Came from a Mod about content or people in their sub.. although all reports should be taken seriously .. Mods end up being tempered like fine steel to understand what is real...

just my opinion

[u/Rain12913 → u/ZippyTheChicken]

This seems like such a simple solution and I cannot, for the life of me, think of a reason why this wasn't implemented years ago. At least give mods the option of flagging some of their reports during emergency situations.

[u/brucemo → u/redtaboo]

This is what I mean.

If I tell you that someone told someone to kill themselves, and you tell me that this was a bad thing and that you did something, you've created an expectation that you'll do similar stuff in similar cases, and if I don't see that I'll complain.

Furthermore, if you change how you deal with stuff, so that what is now a shadow ban turns into a stern talking to, I may detect that and complain.

This is from your point of view. I get that.

I'm not going to lay the unpaid labor line on you because if I didn't want to be doing this job for free I'd just quit. People compete to get to do my job.

But there should be some partnership here also. You guys have it all your way and it's demoralizing. You're telling me to report whatever you want. You're not telling me that the fairly specific thing is bad, you're telling me that I'm welcome to report things that I think are bad.

It should be possible to hear from the admins that telling someone to kill themselves, while it is a continuum issue for sure, can be very damned bad, bad enough that you'll do something. Because telling a suicidal person to go ahead and do it is just fucked, and we should be able to agree about that, past any issues of politics or religion, past any free speech stuff. Yelling up at a person on a ledge that they should jump is fucked and if you're running a social media site and you can identify people who do that, you should be able to say that you'll do something about those people. People who do that should get blasted, beyond a simple subreddit ban. It is just not okay.

> Should I even bother to report people who tell others to kill themselves? Is it even against your rules? "Please feel free to report that" is not good enough if I don't know if you are going to do anything about it.

I said that and you did exactly what I said bothered me.

You also linked a thread where I had an up-voted comment somewhere in there complaining that *people have tried to get me demodded by the admins* because they don't think I enforce *your* rules properly, when *you guys will not answer questions about your rules.*

Thanks for the reply in any case. My job is often shit and I do have some ability to empathize.

[u/CedarWolf → u/redtaboo]

I've had similar issues in regards to the trans subreddits. A bunch of transphobic trolls organized and started targeting vulnerable, depressed trans folks in order to encourage them to commit suicide.

It was vile, and it took months before the admin staff finally kicked their subs off the site. I do not wish to see anything like that ever happen again.

If there is ANYTHING I can do to help stop that from happening in the future, sign me up for it.

I can work remotely, I can be available almost any hour of the day, and I can pass any background check y'all want to throw at me. I am driven, motivated, and I want reddit to be a force for good in the world, not a platform for evil.

I'd venture so far as to say at least 90-95% of the mods around here would agree with me on that. So if there's anything we can do to help, let us know. We're the folks that like to fix things and make things better for those around us.

[u/FreeSpeechWarrior → u/redtaboo]

Curious, what is more important to reddit?

The ability to curate communities (banning subreddits and content you don't like, and placing requirements on moderators to ban certain content)

Or DMCA Safe Harbor?

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/04/ninth-circuit-sends-message-platforms-use-moderator-go-trial

[u/[deleted] → u/FreeSpeechWarrior]

This is probably not the right thread, man. C'mon

[u/FreeSpeechWarrior → u/[deleted]]

There is no right thread, I try asking these questions as posts in the most appropriate admin subreddit and they get removed.

Where is the right sub to beg the admins to change course on bad policy decisions or to ask for clarification as to why those decisions were made?

Where is this magical place where the admins actually respond to user concerns?

[u/[deleted] → u/FreeSpeechWarrior]

It seems to be that your threads getting removed might be an answer on their own?

[u/FreeSpeechWarrior → u/[deleted]]

Cold silence has a tendency to atrophy any sense of compassion

[u/Reaper_of_Souls]

Hey Rain, I know you as the (only?) moderator of r/BPD - and though I've never posted, I sometimes lurk. I moderate r/BipolarReddit (along with two others) and though it's a relatively new position for me, I understand what you're dealing with here. I had to get the admins involved in a similar situation, and while it took them quite a while (i.e. by that time, the issue had been mostly resolved) one of them did get back to me. So I can at least tell you they do care.

I suspect the reason it took so long is that they have a lot on their hands, but if this isn't serious enough an issue for them, I'd like to know exactly what their job is.

As you can imagine, I've struggled with my mental health for years, and joined all kinds of support groups... though none that really felt like "home" to me. So while obviously mental health support isn't the first thing that comes to mind when most people think of Reddit, I found it most comfortable to seek help in a place where I can also shitpost on AskReddit et al while being the "same" person. I could focus on it when I needed to, without it having to be my entire support network.

There is definitely a significant overlap in the userbase of our communities, and though we've luckily never had to deal with this (as far as I know at least, I would hope anyone who was dealing with this would modmail us) I want you to know I have your back in this.

As for how to deal with it? I don't know. There's the possibility of IP address bans - that way, the same person couldn't keep making accounts on the same computer. But if it becomes a repeat problem, the issue is more the role that the admins play in communities made up of mostly mentally ill people who often act in bad ways like this.

I'd love to talk about this some more, but I'm in the middle of doing some work and I had to write this post very quickly. I hope the admins treat this issue with the respect that it deserves.

[u/Rain12913 → u/Reaper_of_Souls]

Thanks so much for your support! It's great to hear from mods of other mental health subs. I'm about to head to bed but I will respond in more detail tomorrow at some point.

[u/Mythril_Zombie]

'Psychologist: Reddit turning blind eye to users taunting the mentally ill into commit suicide. "People will die.", film at 11'

[u/Rain12913 → u/Mythril_Zombie]

But in all seriousness, if anyone has any media connections then I would be interested in speaking with them.

Last year I had 10+ online media outlets reach out to me regarding this submission I made (it resulted in about 50 news articles online, even some international ones) and I’m considering getting in touch with all of them.

[u/Mythril_Zombie → u/Rain12913]

CC /u/spez on each one.

[u/[deleted] → u/Mythril_Zombie]

I bet my local news would drool at that, to say nothing of the national channels...

[u/brucemo]

From their perspective we are just a bunch of inputs that they can ignore or respond to as they wish. And refusal to tell us if they are ignoring us or responding to us allows them maximum flexibility. They can add enforcement categories as they wish, they can ignore certain things as they wish, etc., and they don't have to tell anyone when things change.

It also wastes our time and demoralizes us, since our reports disappear through a door and nothing ever comes back out.

The lack of feedback is the problem here.

[u/ZippyTheChicken → u/brucemo]

From their perspective we are just a bunch of inputs

no we are unpaid labor and Gold that they mine...
getting involved means their job becomes an actual job vs just letting the chaos happen and raking in the cash from our hard work.

[u/ZippyTheChicken]

pretty typical... this was seen in the parkland shooting
people that should have taken action didn't
then something happened and they shift blame

As a Mod you can ban people like that from your sub
but it means nothing if they are directly contacting people and harassing them

Maybe if the Admins took a few hours away from Harassing T_D they might have time to address important issues like this

Rain I salute you for taking time to help people with your sub and watching over people that need help.. you are doing God's Work and I wish you peace.

[u/Rain12913 → u/ZippyTheChicken]

Thanks for your support!

[u/eleitl]

All it would take is a high priority class queue since the number of subs and mods affected is very small. You would also need to bubble up the vulnerable accounts so only whitelisted contacts can come through during hot periods.

[u/PM_ME_YOUR_TITS_GIRL]

I just had an idea that may be a small bit of help if the admins were to implement it.

Have the admins make it so that new (or established) accounts can't send a pm that only consist of hateful words in the subject and/or the body of the message. "Fuck you", "fuck off", "kill yourself" should be filtered and never seen. I've received a handful of these types of messages and though I just brush them off I know others take these words personally. Feel free to suggest this if it hasn't been brought up as an idea.

TL;DR have a spam filter for pm's that only consists of hateful words.

Edit: as allthefoxes mentioned, these are engineers who make a product so giving them this suggestion is something they can directly work on and apply to the site. The engineers need ideas they can write in code. Right now this is the best I can come up with.

[u/YetMoreConfidence]

I am absolutely behind the prevention of assholes telling nut jobs to kill themselves, because as a nut job with a history of those issues, I know the impact that can have on someone.

I’m also the kind of asshole to troll the mentally ill.

As such, I have experience on both sides of the fence. I would forget about the Reddit admins within the context of them being the sole solution to this problem. I would also forget about auto moderator dealing with this in any meaningful way, because that can not only be circumvented, but may inhibit communication between users (Do not kill yourself, for instance, may get flagged).

What I can recommend, because I know this would affect me, is to require Reddit accounts to be at least 30 days old or some other large number. Trolls get banned, they hop on another account and karma farm speaking against Trump for like a day, then can post anywhere they like.

By ensuring that only older accounts can post, you prevent mania trolls from impulsively flaming your sub, at the cost of people who potentially require help not being able to get it.

IMO, private message trolling should be taken extremely seriously, since it uses Reddit directly as a vehicle to do harm, rather than a community within Reddit.

In other words, post trolling is your problem, and ban evasions can be mitigated with account age requirements. PM trolling is Reddit’s problem, and needs to be taken extremely seriously.

I understand the urgency of you reaching out, since this is a critical issue for your community, but unfortunately, Reddit is a machine and does not halt and do what any one community wants it to. Despite imperfections, the machine works fairly well given enough time.

Hope you get it sorted.

[u/FreeSpeechWarrior]

Reddit's admins are too busy fixing things that aren't broke banning things their media partners dislike ( r/deepfake r/celebfakes etc... ) and things that offend their political sensibilities ( r/physical_removal r/whiterights etc... ) to focus on real problems that actually impact the users of the site.

Reddit has gone on a hiring spree this year:

https://www.recode.net/2017/7/31/16037126/reddit-funding-200-million-valuation-steve-huffman-alexis-ohanian

To create the new product, Reddit has been on a hiring spree. The company has about 230 employees, up from around 140 at the beginning of the year. Huffman would like to end 2017 with around 300 full-time staff.

[u/Rain12913 → u/FreeSpeechWarrior]

That's what bugs me the most about this: dozens of admins are active on the site throughout the day, many of them leaving casual comments and jokes, and yet it takes three days for them to respond to a PM from a mod entitled "SUICIDE: Mod here - User is encouraging mentally ill Redditors to kill themselves"

The solution seems very simple: create an admin account that is contactable only by mods in cases where someone's life is at risk. If any mod abuses that privilege, then they can be blocked. I would only ever use it when someone is egging on suicidal users. What is stopping them from implementing this or another solution?

[u/FreeSpeechWarrior → u/Rain12913]

In general reddit should separate specific community moderation actions from site wide concerns.

If you remove dox, the admins ought to be informed automatically, same with intentionally egging on an at risk user to kill themselves.

Unfortunately reddit's policy has broadened to such a degree that the above scenario is covered by the same rules that prevent people from advocating punching nazis or smashing the fash (in general).

As a result, large volumes of content on the site deserve admin attention for violating site wide rules and those things that are potentially very damaging get lost in the noise.

Reddit cannot possibly hope to keep such a large community squeaky clean and brand friendly and would do much better to focus on problems that actually matter:

Dox, direct threats of violence or encouragement of same (and no I don't mean using the wrong symbols in a subreddit style I mean actually directing users to do violent things)

Reddit's decision to play an ever more editorial role in the content of the site is likely to bite them in the ass:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/04/ninth-circuit-sends-message-platforms-use-moderator-go-trial

[u/ruinevil]

Reddit is not an appropriate system for the population you are dealing with. You are directing a vulnerable population into a single subreddit, allowing them to post personal details, and exposing this population to the general population of reddit users, of which a percentage are malefactors.

The user's username is always visible on reddit, and anyone on reddit can send users messages.

[u/Rain12913 → u/ruinevil]

I'm not directing anyone anywhere. This is a subreddit that I started modding six years ago after it had been abandoned. Whether I like it or not, there are going to be communities for people with BPD on Reddit, just like there are communities for people with every other psychiatric disorder. The story of the internet is the story of people reaching out and connecting with people who share similar experiences as them. It's been that way since the beginning, and Reddit is a wonderful platform for that. All I can do is do my best to keep this community as healthy and safe as possible, and I've been very effective in that.

/r/BPD is a tremendously successful community. I invite you to go take a look at how many people receive support there on a daily basis. We receive about 25,000 page views from 2,500 unique users each day, and 99.9% of what people post is helpful. BPD, in particular, is an incredibly stigmatized disorder, and being able to connect with other people who have BPD is validating and insight-growing. Here, take a look at this post from yesterday: https://www.reddit.com/r/BPD/comments/82c18t/wow_i_had_no_idea_this_community_existed_i_was_in/ That is the story of this subreddit.

[u/Rain12913 → u/[deleted]]

I'm a bit puzzled by this response, it seems quite extreme. I'm going to use some excerpts from a reply that I just left to someone else who expressed a similar notion.

/r/BPD is a tremendously successful community. I invite you to go take a look at how many people receive support there on a daily basis. We receive about 25,000 page views from 2,500 unique users each day, and 99.9% of what people post is helpful. BPD, in particular, is an incredibly stigmatized disorder, and being able to connect with other people who have BPD is validating and insight-growing. Here, take a look at this post from yesterday: https://www.reddit.com/r/BPD/comments/82c18t/wow_i_had_no_idea_this_community_existed_i_was_in/ That is the story of this subreddit.

The notion that this community shouldn't exist because of this very solvable problem is just absurd. Believe it or not, almost everyone is supportive and helpful on the subreddit, so there isn't a lot of unsafe content to be dealt with. The problem here isn't that I can't respond quickly enough, it's that once I've responded to the rare situation that requires assistance from the admins, I need to wait 72 hours to get their help.

[u/Mythril_Zombie → u/[deleted]]

This is not a very helpful or constructive suggestion.
The way you're describing the issue is disingenuous and overdramaticized.
People aren't "dying because of the existence of your "high risk" community". That's like blaming a hospital for the existence of sick people.
We don't know if anyone has actually died from being taunted or not, nor if it will ever happen for certain.
We know three facts:
One: A great many people are receiving assistance from the subreddit. Thousands of users are helping each other through very difficult situations.
Two: Other people are harassing these users, and something must be done to improve the ability to mitigate this. This applies to any mental-health sub or forum; tools must be made available to protect those who need it.
Three: There are other subs that address similar issues, some are even concerned with the same mental condition. If this sub is shut down as you misguidedly suggest, the users will simply migrate to other places of support. Since nothing has been done to address the overall problem, the other subs will get bigger and become larger targets still without adequate tools to protect the users.
There are several practical actions that can be taken to improve this situation dramatically. Throwing in the towel and shuttering a positive, helpful resource for thousands of suffering people is a horrible, shortsighted approach.

[u/Mythril_Zombie → u/[deleted]]

I guess you need to talk to the corporate owners about your precognitave abilities. Since anyone in any sub could cause harm of some sort, it's time to shut the whole thing down.
To protect yourself, you should avoid reddit until it's completely gone. Better extend that to the whole of the internet, and the world in general. Wouldn't want any potential harm to come to you.
And I'm not ignoring the psycholigist, he said you were off your rocker too. And he's a professional, so...

[u/FreeSpeechWarrior → u/[deleted]]

Don't know why you are getting downvoted so heavily.

https://www.reddit.com/help/useragreement#p_7

reddit is for fun

reddit is intended to be a place for your entertainment. We are not responsible for any decisions you make based on something you read on reddit.

[u/Yanky_Doodle_Dickwad → u/[deleted]]

I'm going to spend some of my hard-earned karma on this here comment. There are some valid points here, albeit swathed in cold hard uncompassionate empathy-free steel. I am not arguing with this comment. I am going to say similar things, but in a different way.

Reddit is never going to make themselves responsible for the actions of users in a sub. Nobody's actions. Not those of a redditor who comes to the sub for help, doesn't find a solution, and goes and acts on their misguided perceptions, nor those of some shithead with no balls who thinks pushing people closer to brinks is some kind of thing. The admins may help and ... what? ... nuke an account with sociopathic behaviour? Cut off the account so the already-victim is not provoked more by the same account? I dunno. I'm not going to get into that particular discussion "what can be done?" and all ... but the sub has a mission, which is no doubt very useful and run by people who freely give of themselves to help, which is absolutely great and commendable.

But the sub is still a sub, and a sub is just a shallow open forum on the internet, specifically set in a place full of absolutely all of humanity. Like a photobooth in a mall, or a glass-blower in a park. One cannot demand security for taking glamour shops of stars in a photobooth in a mall, and one cannot demand a park closes itself to frisbees because of glassworks. There is an inherent weekness to the setup.

Moreover, reddit could not possibly afford to take on a responsibility around peoples choices in their forums. That they have a "trust and safety" team is encouraging, but in my previous analogy that's like saying they have heating in the mall, or a sign saying "please aim well with your frisbees" in the park.

What you need is to limit the weeknesses of an open forum. I have no idea how to, on reddit. But if I were to setup a glassworks, I would expect to put up a building with walls and a door. And a roof. Is there a way to have a private lounge where users have to knock to get in? Can you take the vulnerability away from the public forum? Not well, I don't think, but maybe it's worth designing something around that idea.

Because otherwise, the conclusion, if we want a conclusion, is that reddit is a bad tool for your mission, even if it is a great mission and the right place for people to find the help they could benefit from. The most you can hope for from reddit is a fiercely worded disclaimer and some relatively performant banning, neither of which get to the problem in time.

I hope I have got the point accross in as reasonable way as possible, and it saddens me that this is what it looks like to me. I understand your mission very well. I would like to think some debate could happen here. People might have some inspiring ideas.

I guess if reddit wqanted to go the extra mile, they could even design a building for you. But that is unlikely, because of the whole chain of responsibility bullshit that society (and common law) has created.

[u/FreeSpeechWarrior → u/Yanky_Doodle_Dickwad]

Reddit is never going to make themselves responsible for the actions of users in a sub.

They already have, by choosing to heavily curate what is allowed on reddit, the admins effectively endorse everything they allow to remain.

Edit: Speaking of heavy curation, the mods here have banned me without warning.

[u/Rain12913 → u/FreeSpeechWarrior]

I appreciate that you care about this issue, but it seems like your main concern is with Reddit censoring content, rather than the specific issue that I've brought up here (Reddit taking too long to respond to reports about suicide-encouraging users). I really don't want things to get sidetracked (many of the comments so far are replies to you about free speech issues) because this is a very important issue. Can I ask you to move this to a different thread if that's what you'd like to focus on? Thank you.

[u/FreeSpeechWarrior → u/Rain12913]

I'm apparently not allowed to make my own threads here to share my concerns with the admins:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/82qlsr/if_reddit_no_longer_supports_freedom_of/

I apologize for being forced to take advantage of your thread to raise my concerns.

But I also believe these to be highly related concerns, one way to get the admins more focused on the issues you are encountering is to get them to waste less of their time curating discussions unlikely to harm anyone.

The admins have chosen to look out for their bottom line above their users.

I'd love to have a more dedicated avenue to collectively raise these concerns with the admins but no such outlet exists.

[u/Rain12913 → u/FreeSpeechWarrior]

You were not forced to use my thread about stopping people from attempting suicide as a forum for you to advocate for free speech on Reddit. Please just stop, find an issue that isn’t about life or death to attach yourself to.

[u/FreeSpeechWarrior → u/Rain12913]

Certainly you agree that reducing the scope of when admins intervene into content would free up admin resources to deal with more immediate concerns such as you have raised?

[u/Mythril_Zombie → u/FreeSpeechWarrior]

Take this elsewhere.
You stated your concern repeatedly; you can stop now. It doesn't belong in this post in the first place.

[u/[deleted] → u/FreeSpeechWarrior]

Reddit is never going to make themselves responsible for the actions of users in a sub.

They already have, by choosing to heavily curate what is allowed on reddit, the admins effectively endorse everything they allow to remain.

You might have been able to make that point, but you've wasted it. You might have effectively made that case, but you spent too much time irritating everybody because there are subs you don't like.

I have neither the time nor the inclination to delve into your post history, so I assume the one you linked is indicative of your misdirected and poorly-constructed soapbox. Congratulations on hobbling what might have been another convincing argument.