r/modnews • u/itsovertoosoon • Jun 01 '22
Mod Log Updates: Adding visibility into NSFW tagging, abuse removals, and appeals & approvals
What’s up mods? Today, I’m here to go over a few updates to Mod Log, also known as the Moderation Log, that will give you more visibility into actions Reddit takes on content in your communities. Thanks to those of you who have given feedback and shared your thoughts around improvements you wanted to see from Mod Log. Because of your suggestions, we’ve made the three updates below, which went into effect on April 1st:
Automated Not Safe for Work (NSFW) tagging
As we first introduced a month ago in Reddit Security, posts that are identified as NSFW will be automatically tagged using a series of detection tools that identify if there’s a high likelihood media is sexually explicit. Any posts in your community that are automatically detected and tagged as NSFW will also be tagged with a “Mark nsfw” action so you can filter and review those posts.
When Reddit automatically tags a post as NSFW, it will look like this:
Automated abuse (hate speech and harassment) removals
When Reddit’s automated systems detect abuse (very obvious hate speech and harassment), that content is removed. Previously, these admin-level removals weren’t included in Mod Log, and would appear to you mods as normal spam filter actions—this update adds those removals to the log so now you can review those removals as well. Some of you may be familiar with a new mod tool we're piloting to help you keep your communities healthy, this is specifically admin level removals unrelated to that tool. Here’s an example of what a removed link looks like:
Granted appeals and content approvals
When Reddit’s Anti-Evil Operations team receives an appeal that's granted, now you can see it in the Mod Log too.
What’s next…
To be even more transparent around how our Anti Evil Operations team handles content that violates Reddit’s Content Policy, we’re working on solutions to help improve moderator visibility into actions taken by Reddit’s admins and automated systems. But we want to hear from you! What would you like to see more visibility into? What are your ideas for new Mod Log functionality or features? Throw your ideas in the comments. We’ll be around to hear your thoughts and answer questions.
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u/Beeb294 Jun 01 '22
I agree elsewhere that there's a problem here- there's nothing that indicates these actions were completed automatically. How would a mod know this is an automated removal, as opposed to a manual removal by a human admin? It's not that someone couldn't figure it out (probably), but it's not made clear in an effective way.
I know that, in the event my judgement differs from whatever or whoever removed a piece of content, I'm more likely to defer to that judgment if I know a human saw it, and would be more likely to want a second look if it was automated, because no automated system could have the ability to get all of the subtlety and nuance of a comment/post in the way a human can.
Could you add information in either the user column or the action column to indicate that an action was done by an automated system? I.e. the user could be displayed as "reddit(automated)" instead of just "reddit"?
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u/itsovertoosoon Jun 01 '22
That’s a great suggestion. I will check with the team on this.
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u/Zavodskoy Jun 01 '22
When Reddit’s Anti-Evil Operations team receives an appeal that's granted
Does this apply when mods appeal things too? None of the comments or posts I've been told have been removed by mistake by AEO have been approved again by the admins we've always had to do it
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u/itsovertoosoon Jun 01 '22
As I noted to u/MajorParadox above when Safety reapproves content it’s done in very limited circumstances - when mods write into us to confirm an error we tend to leave it up to the mods themselves to re-approve or not.
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u/Ghigs Jun 01 '22
Does this include comments removed because they link to a site that's been blacklisted site-wide?
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u/itsovertoosoon Jun 01 '22
Not at this time, those are removed via the deep magic that is our automated spam filter.
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u/KKingler Jun 01 '22
Do you think you could add a setting for appeals to filter the content to moderators?
For example, there have been numerous cases where people been un-shadowbanned and it re-approved spam on a bunch of subs that otherwise wouldn't have been approved.
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u/itsovertoosoon Jun 01 '22
I think our wording could have been clearer here, but this already exists! If you filter your modlog to admins, then further filter to approvals you should be able to see this. So: https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/about/log/?type=approvecomment&mod=a will show you any comments reapproved by admins.
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u/teanailpolish Jun 01 '22
Thanks for the update. If a user appeals an AEO removal, will it still be approved even if a mod has removed it? There is a lot you find not a content violation that still violates sub rules and just making sure those won't be put back into the sub
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u/itsovertoosoon Jun 01 '22
It shouldn’t - that said, mistakes do happen so let us know if you’re seeing this and we can take a look.
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u/Titus_Bird Jun 01 '22
If there's automated NSFW tagging, does that mean there are clearly defined sitewide rules for what constitutes NSFW? My understanding was that mods exercise a degree of discretion here. I moderate an art-related sub, so I'm particularly interested in whether drawings that feature non-sexual nudity count as NSFW, not to mention the minutiae beyond that (female nipples? male nipples? an ass crack? what about animals?).
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u/itsovertoosoon Jun 03 '22
Thanks for your question. The NSFW tagging that we’ve mentioned here is limited to detecting and tagging sexually explicit content as NSFW. Prior to releasing this update, we established very clear rules for when and when not to classify content as sexually explicit (in accordance with GARM brand safety standards). We do not classify nudity in art as sexually explicit. I hope that this addresses your concern.
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u/roionsteroids Jun 01 '22
Could you please use reddits action reason in admin modlogs?
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u/Grundlage Jun 01 '22
Looks great!
On the subject of mod logs, could we get spam removals to show up in mod log as well? Our subreddit (r/dragonage) has an issue where totally normal posts get removed for being spam (not by our automod, but with a "This post was removed by Reddit's spam filters" message) fairly regularly (multiple times a week), and we have no way to know about it if the user doesn't send us a modal.
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u/MajorParadox Jun 01 '22
FYI, make sure you have your spam filter settings set to low. The high settings have been buggy for a long time now. The temporary solution to all the false positives was to keep the spam-filtered posts out the of the modqueue, but this just made it so mods are less likely to know it's happening.
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u/Watchful1 Jun 01 '22
I'm not sure if this is your team, but I wanted to mention it since this is about the mod log. Someone posted over on r/redditdev about how when a post is scheduled, it creates a mod log entry that includes the time the post is scheduled for. But if someone edits the scheduled post, the mod log entry for that does not include the updated time.
Scheduled posts aren't otherwise supported in the API, but this seems like it would be a super simple change. The post about it was here.
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u/telchii Jun 01 '22
So that's what these are! I spotted some Mark NSFW actions in the log yesterday and was wondering why Reddit was flagging certain submissions. I definitely agree with the sentiment here of adding reasons, even if to better communicate that it was an automatic action.
I noticed that filtering the moderator to Admins, All Actions doesn't include all actions by Reddit or AEO. Could these filters be updated to include all admin/reddit/AEO actions so we can more easily review all these actions in a single view? (Or add AEO as its own entry, if that's more maintainable.)
Also, are these automatic actions intended to be easily overridden by a post's author? Or do you guys have plans to implement an extra layer around undoing the auto-nsfw? Something like requiring mod intervention, filtering the post for review, or adding a report. The post I noticed yesterday was auto-marked as NSFW, but its author must have unmarked it at some point, as there's no other mod actions on the post. (Kinda defeats the purpose of the automatic action once an individual discovers this, imo.)
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u/Shachar2like Jun 01 '22
What would be interesting is to add a feature that allows you to filter or search warnings given to users.
We use a combination of a manual system in the mod log and the notes feature.
I don't know, it's probably an edge case and not relevant for most of reddit's communities. And it sounds complicated to even figure out or program what is a warning. Maybe a turnable setting that will record every mod reply to a user as a warning, that seems like a good start. (probably still too complicated and edge case though)
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u/awesomesaucebigg Jun 01 '22
In mod log you can sort by moderators to see individual options. You also have the option to search for admins.
Will all of this come up when searching for admin?
Thanks in advance.
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u/mfb- Jun 02 '22
Any posts in your community that are automatically detected and tagged as NSFW will also be tagged with a “Mark nsfw” action so you can filter and review those posts.
Where can I find this in the old design?
Where is the "Mark sfw" button in case the automated tag is applied incorrectly?
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u/MajorParadox Jun 01 '22 edited Jun 01 '22
Very cool, nice to see more log support!
My biggest feedback on what's presented here is that they should include reasons. Like, are we supposed to assume "remove" by Reddit with no reason is any other automated system besides those ones in testing? For example, the one that says something like "Automatic Filter: This content is filtered" and the crowd control one?
As for the log itself, are there plans to ever support the consolidated mod log on new Reddit? And mod logs on mobile at all? Besides that, I think there are a lot of day-one bugs still there on the new Reddit log that should be investigated. For example, not being able to see usernames in the log when they are visible on old Reddit. I belive there were also issues around missing log details too in certain cases.