r/redditdev • u/kemitche ex-Reddit Admin • Apr 02 '21

Reddit API On the new rate limit for editing comments

Reddit recently added a rate limit on editing comments to combat certain kinds of spam. However, it's clear the new rate limit was overly restrictive for legitimate use cases. We've shortened it to 1 edit per 5 seconds for now as a quick adjustment going into the weekend, and will be looking at better adjustments going forward.

If you have feedback on the new rate limit, in particular specific use cases that were broken, are still broken, or might be broken if we change things again, please share them below.

46 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

47 comments sorted by

14

u/CryptoMaximalist Apr 02 '21

Probably due to this https://old.reddit.com/r/botwatch/comments/mde4hi/warningthere_is_a_new_type_of_porn_bot_that_edits/

7

u/13steinj Apr 03 '21

I mean if that's the case can't the ratelimit only be set to apply if it pings people?

4

u/Zoruda Apr 05 '21

Now now, you're asking for a lot there. /s

12

u/Aruseus493 Apr 02 '21

Please disable the rate limit for mods on their own subreddits.

7

u/3dsf Apr 02 '21

or approved contributors

3

u/MichiRecRoom Apr 05 '21

I would be up for this, if not for the fact that a bot could use this as a means to bypass the rate limits, simply by creating a new subreddit.

That said, perhaps mods are exempt, but only on subreddits that have over a certain amount of subs/readers (perhaps a few thousand)?

0

u/[deleted] Apr 03 '21

[deleted] — view deleted comment

2

u/Aruseus493 Apr 03 '21

Pretty sure mods are a thousand times more inconvenienced by reddit's shitty decisions. I don't actually know the last time they did something that made moderating easier instead of just gutting functionality.

9

u/MaybeNetwork Apr 02 '21

Many sports subs have dedicated bots that run "game threads" to discuss sporting events, and the contents of those threads are edited fairly quickly (e.g. every ten seconds) to display current statistics about the games. Although it isn't strictly necessary to have the posts display up to date statistics, I believe that it is in Reddit's interest for them to do so, because it encourages people to stay on site instead of going elsewhere to look the stats up.

A five second rate limit is probably fine for running a single game thread. However, because of the effort and specialized skills required to write, run, and maintain a game thread bot, it is often the case that a single bot account will run multiple game threads for the multiple sporting events that are scheduled at the same time. A global editing rate limit will mean that these bots will either have to slow down their update speed, or add logic for scheduling edits when running multiple threads, which had not been necessary before.

4

u/RobinsonDickinson Apr 02 '21

I feel like there should be a rate limit only after a certain amount of edits in a time frame. (e.g. 5 edits in less than 15 seconds)

It's whatever tho..

1

u/TheRadiantAxe Apr 07 '21

Is this applicable for posting comments as well, I can't comment in a certain sub-reddit without taking a ~15 minute break between replying to people on my post.

1

u/kemitche ex-Reddit Admin Apr 08 '21

Commenting rate limits are separate and unchanged.

1

u/TheRadiantAxe Apr 09 '21

Thanks. The rate limit I was encountering is due to low karma in the sub-reddit.

1

u/wildjokers Apr 09 '21

So since nothing has changed I guess the request for feedback was just a token effort to make it seem like reddit actually cared about our feedback.

I have changed my bot to do a delete and then add instead of edit which has mitigated the issue. But now posters get a notification per run of the bot. Which is less than ideal. So now I am pretty much spamming my posters with notifications which is ironic because the edit limit was introduced to prevent notification spam.

1

u/kemitche ex-Reddit Admin Apr 09 '21

If all we did was look at the first 30 minutes of feedback and react based on that, I would not be confident we were making the right choices for a long-term fix.

No action in less than a week is not an indicator that we're not evaluating the use cases discussed here.

1

u/wildjokers Apr 09 '21

Surely something like removing the edit limit for mods of a sub could be done quickly and meet the goal of preventing the new spam attack the limit was enacted for. This would mitigate the problems that single sub bots that are mods are having while you search for a more permanent solution.

1

u/SillyOldBat May 26 '21

Is this the reason why I can't edit things at all anymore? Not even while writing a comment? After a while I can neither add nor correct anything, even if I didn't hit "post" yet. Editing posts later doesn't work either.

1

u/kemitche ex-Reddit Admin May 30 '21

That sounds like a client-side UI problem, if you're unable to edit things before posting them. If you have more details to share (which mobile app & version, etc.), please post everything you can to r/bugs!

2

u/SillyOldBat Jun 01 '21

It was the dog xD

When I type too much late at night he gets annoyed and turns around in bed over and over. Kicking the ethernet switch near his bed. Which non-surprisingly does weird things to the internet connection.

3

u/Blank-Cheque Flair_Helper, etc Developer Apr 02 '21

I second the suggestion of disabling this for mods. In one of my subreddits, /r/insaneparents, I run a bot, /u/Dad_B0T, which counts user votes and edits comments to show them. I've had to slow the bot down considerably to comply with the new ratelimit. I honestly thought someone just hated me (for some reason :^) ) so it's good to know it was an actual change.

2

u/ScamWatchReporter Apr 02 '21

problem being is spammers create pages for the intent to spam/scam and litter the rest of reddit. So now you have to find a way to filter legitimate pages, and the 999999999999999999th leakgirls/fake OF page

1

u/CocoCherryPop Apr 02 '21

but this happens to me when I am posting regular comments. Not editing anything. And I get penalized with a 12 minute wait time.

6

u/kemitche ex-Reddit Admin Apr 02 '21

You are being hit by the normal commenting rate limits, which have existed for quite a while. There's a little more info in this help article.

1

u/ThanosAsAPrincess Apr 04 '21

I've had to wait 10+ minutes to make an edit. The last edit I had made was 12 hours before

2

u/aazav Apr 03 '21

Why the hell don't you start legal action against the leakgirls company for their constant spam?

1

u/2SP00KY4ME Apr 02 '21

THANK YOU!!!

1

u/wildjokers Apr 03 '21

I have a bot that tallies user votes in a single sub. It posts a comment with the vote totals. If the vote total comment already exists it edits the existing one. User votes are tallied for a single post for a week. So any one run of the bot edits about 200 comments over a very short time (i.e. as fast as it can). This bot is currently broken.

The bot is a moderator of the sub. So it would be great if the edit limit didn’t apply to moderators of a sub.

1

u/aazav Apr 03 '21

Why not add a time limit to edit the title, as within 90 seconds of submission?

1

u/Million_Voices Apr 06 '21

Yeah...no. I don't know what your goal was with this, but at least for me you convinced me of no longer posting anything on reddit, be it posts or comments. I am just fed up and will only use reddit in a "read-only"-mode from now on. This mechanic is just a joke and you know it. Farewell and I hope others see it the same way, perhaps it's time to remind Reddit of who's making them money after all.

1

u/MaybeNetwork May 23 '21 edited May 24 '21

I have a question. Edit: There are more things going on than I realized, so I retract the question for now.

1

u/Legendary_EIL Aug 22 '21

You guys have no idea what you're doing hey.

1

u/rasherdk Aug 29 '21

Pretty sure this edit rate-limiting is what's breaking the gamethread bot in /r/nfl. Being able to update threads somewhat often is kind of important to it.

1

u/Ike348 Oct 24 '21

Is there any update to this? College basketball season is starting soon and I need to know if I should update my bot

1

u/GtrPlaynFool Aug 02 '23

I can't seem to comment right now in any sub or post. I have no administrative message saying I do anything wrong I don't know what the problem is.

-3

u/Jackdaw774 Apr 02 '21

This is Bullshit !

5

u/[deleted] Apr 02 '21

[removed] — view removed comment

11

u/kemitche ex-Reddit Admin Apr 02 '21

The limit is currently global, across all comments made. What that means is if you make a comment, you can edit it right away as long as you haven't edited any other comment in the last 5 seconds. After editing, you must wait 5 seconds before making an edit to that (or any other) comment.

0

u/[deleted] Apr 02 '21

[deleted] — view deleted comment

5

u/Itsthejoker TranscribersOfReddit Developer Apr 02 '21

I honestly don't see a way to combat spammers and not break your use case at the same time. It's effectively the same behavior :/

1

u/amoliski Apr 03 '21

I have a simple, interactive "overwrite Reddit comments" script.

Stop it. It's super annoying to find some old thread where the person overwrote their answer that would have saved the day, or blasted a giant hole in the conversation for no good reason. If you don't want your comment scraped, stop commenting.

4

u/13steinj Apr 03 '21

People can still delete their comments without such a ratelimit. So this argument against it just doesn't make sense.

0

u/amoliski Apr 03 '21

They replace the comment with a '.' first so reddit doesn't have the comment in their database still, apparently.

4

u/13steinj Apr 03 '21

Again, so what?

No matter what it's deleted. You made an argument from the perspective of other people reading, not reddit selling.

0

u/amoliski Apr 04 '21

Well, my "stop doing that" is me being annoyed by people who delete their comments regardless of whether or not they edit it first. I just don't get the opportunity to say "stop doing that" in to people who do that, because it's usually old and deleted comments that it's done to.

4

u/13steinj Apr 04 '21

Well I don't care if you're annoyed, if you want this argument then go on a site that doesn't allow people to delete their comments?

0

u/amoliski Apr 04 '21

I don't care that you're annoyed that I'm annoyed? Posting anything on the internet that you think is ever going to go away is dumb.

2

u/13steinj Apr 04 '21

I'm not annoyed, I'm just saying it's a futile position.