r/AutoModerator • • Jul 15 '26

Mod Post Expanding the scope of the subreddit r/AutoModerator

60 Upvotes

This post is about a very minor, teensy-weensy change to the subreddit here, but it is significant enough to merit a formal post about it.

r/AutoModerator was originally created to discuss the u/AutoModerator moderation tool and support moderators in using it. Historically, AutoModerator was unique among moderation tools, but over the years, admins have developed Other-Tools which supplement or facilitate similar kinds of effects as AutoModerator. I had mentioned this earlier this year:

The primary purpose of the subreddit here is for moderators to find updates, support, and resources regarding the AutoModerator mod tool. More generally, moderators also discuss other similar or related mod tools like subreddit settings, safety filters, Automations, Devvit apps, and API bots, particularly if those other tools supplement or interact with AutoModerator. (Which is fine! but more on those topics another day.)

Today is that another day.

As the full suite of moderation tools has matured, the community of moderators familiar with configurable moderation tools has similarly evolved. Many times these days, people will ask questions here, and the solution to their questions may or may not be with AutoModerator the mod tool, but the people in AutoModerator the subreddit still know the answer. There is a community of peer support among technical-oriented moderators here, and it is our desire to serve that community.

We have, even some time ago, updated the rules and description on r/AutoModerator to reflect this trend, changes in bold:

  • Rule 1 - Stay on Topic - /r/AutoModerator is for moderator discussions about the AutoModerator program and similar automated moderation tools. - Report as: Off-topic / Unrelated to AutoModerator or Moderation Tools

  • Rule 2 - Behave and Be Respectful - Be nice. Report as: Incivility, insults, trolling, aggression, or other malicious behavior

  • Rule 3 - Moderation complaints - /r/AutoModerator is a support space for moderators. This is not a place to argue or complain about moderation actions, moderators, or AutoModerator performing its intended functions. - Report as: User is complaining about moderation

Effectively, this means that moderators who have questions about configuring subreddit settings and mod tools are welcome to post here, even if those questions are not necessarily about AutoModerator the original moderation bot. For examples, this includes questions regarding Safety Filters (eg Crowd Control, Harassment Filter), Devvit Mod apps (eg Auto-Modmail, FloodAssistant), Automations (aka Post and Comment Guidance), and configurable tools like these.

Let us know if you have any questions or concerns, about this change for the subreddit, or about the subreddit in general.

We are looking for feedback regarding updating our post flairs, which historically have been oriented around "Help", "Solved", "Not AutoMod", "Not Possible with AutoMod" and "Not Possible". We have recently added post flairs for "Wiki Updates" and "Guide", though they are still set to mod-only. We are adding a devvit app which allows people to subscribe to get notifications for specific post flairs, so that function would be paired well with clear guidelines or categories for post flairs.


r/AutoModerator • • Oct 14 '26 Bravo

Mod Post From the admins on Sept 30th - Changes to automod access for new communities and communities not using automod - and some information for Rule Hub and Automations.

34 Upvotes

https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/1wubgvt/continuing_our_infrastructure_updates_whats/

Changes to automod access for new communities and communities not using automod

If your community uses automod, nothing is changing for you. We’re continuing to improve Rules Hub, including ways for mods to prompt and otherwise provide more context for their rules. We’re also exploring how existing automod configurations can help carry community-specific enforcement logic into newer tools. If you’re interested in pilot testing to help shape this effort, sign up here.

For newly created communities and communities that have never used automod, automod enforcement capabilities – specifically Report, Filter, Remove, Mark as spam, and Approve – will be disabled and Rules Hub and Automations will become the default path for rules enforcement. Automod’s non-enforcement capabilities remain available and unchanged.


You may have already seen the above announcement, or you may have already ran into the new changes yourself on a subreddit you were setting up.

Subreddits that had AutoModerator set up before October can still use the action command.

Subreddits that did not have AutoModerator set up before October are limited to the following non-enforcement actions:

  • comment - replies publicly

  • modmail - sends a notification to the moderators in modmail

  • message- sends a chat message to the user

  • set_flair - adjust user flair or post flair

  • set_sticky- send a post to the top or second highlight spot

  • set_nsfw

  • set_spoiler

  • set_contest_mode

  • set_suggested_sort

  • set_locked- lock a target post or comment

  • set_post_crowd_control_level

Admins have been suggesting to use Automations and Rules Hub in place of AutoModerator for enforcement actions. You can find more information from admins about these tools here:

Both Rules Hub and AutoMations have their limitations.

For example, Rule Hub states it has current known limitations like User attributes like account age, karma, flair, posting frequency, or prior removals; and Rules with conditions like “allow this in weekly threads”, “remove only if both conditions are true”, or “exclude approved users”.

Likewise, Automations only acts prior to a user posting, and can currently only "Inform", "Report", or "Block" - it cannot filter nor remove in the same way that AutoModerator can. (and as a minor note, the automations "report" does not add into the count for a classic reports threshold, nor does it show up on old reddit.)

The articles linked do not mention it, but each subreddit is also limited to 15 Rules and 50 Automations total. The articles do mention that Rules and Automations have further character limitations for their individual components, eg 500 characters for a Rule Description, or 500 characters for an Automation message, or a single Regular-Expression for an Automation that uses RegEx.

Admins may change these limitations in the future, but this is what is capable now.


If you are looking to set up something highly comparable to classic AutoModerator on a new subreddit, then you may want to consider https://developers.reddit.com/apps/automod-neo. Developer u/fsv introduced this app here - https://www.reddit.com/r/AutoModerator/comments/1vgy5d6/i_made_an_app_to_replicate_automoderator_but_with/

AutoMod-Neo has some differences from classic AutoModerator, which you can read on its Devvit page and linked full documentation. These differences include some classic checks not supported by Devvit and some new checks and actions which make use of additional Devvit capabilities.

Most classic AutoModerator rules can be copied directly into AutoMod-Neo with minimal or no alterations necessary. Particular attention should be made to rules which use RegEx, as classic AutoModerator uses Python flavored RegEx while AutoMod-Neo and other Devvit apps use JavaScript flavoured RegEx.

There are some other differences in the way Reddit treats AutoMod-Neo versus AutoModerator - for example, stickied comments by AutoModerator are collapsed to a single line, which does not apply to AutoMod-Neo or other Devvit apps.


Moderators seeking help with configuring any of these mentioned tools - classic AutoModerator, Rules Hub, Automations, or AutoMod-Neo - are welcome to post about it on r/AutoModerator.


r/AutoModerator • • 1h ago

Help - Automations Automations + crossposts?

1 Upvotes

Hi,

I'd like to allow crossposting from certain communities only, but I'd like that prompt to be pre-emptive.

I know how to do this in AutoModerator.

Is there a way to do it in the posting window so that people don't crosspost just to have their contribution removed by AutoModerator? I wasn't able to figure out how to do this.


r/AutoModerator • • 1d ago

How to get this to work with the new terrible Automod

2 Upvotes

Dang it, had no idea and missed the cutoff for a new-ish community !

How do I rewrite to get this to work but instead of Filter, which is no longer allowed, it will send a message to the mods (modmail) ?

---
# Filter new comments on old posts
    type: comment
    parent_submission:
        past_archive_date: true
    action: filter
    action_reason: new comment on old post
---

r/AutoModerator • • 3d ago

Help - AutoMod Help triggering automod comment with multiple keywords

1 Upvotes

Hi! Yes, I see the "match multiple keywords" wiki entry. I just have a hard time parsing this stuff, and I would appreciate help sorting this out. :)

I'd like automod to trigger a comment on posts that contain "looking for" and "therapist" OR "therapists"

I'm not sure how to properly edit this code example in the wiki to reflect that action. Can someone help?

title+body#color: ['blue', 'green', 'red']
    title+body#shape (regex): ['circles?', 'squares?', 'triangles?']
    action: filter
    action_reason: "Colored shape filter [{{match-title+body#color}}] [{{match-title+body#shape}}]"

r/AutoModerator • • 4d ago

Help - AutoMod Is automod having problems?

3 Upvotes

I invited automod to a subreddit of mine about an hour ago and it still hasn't accepted. Did I invite the right one? I invited u/automoderator


r/AutoModerator • • 5d ago

Help - AutoMod Was automod hacked?

0 Upvotes

So automod is just repeating WHATS 9+10 is automod hacked idk


r/AutoModerator • • 5d ago

Help - AutoMod automod no longer sets images to NSFW

1 Upvotes

I've got an old automod script that set posts with images as NSFW based on the post being a link submission. But that is from before reddit allowed uploading of images and they had to be linked.

Is it possible to change the script so all image posts and linked image posts are flagged this way?

This is what we have now:

### Mark posts containing images as NSFW
type: link submission
priority: 80
set_nsfw: true
set_locked: true

r/AutoModerator • • 8d ago

Help - Any / Other "you can't contribute in this community yet"

8 Upvotes

One of my subreddit has this pop up when a user without a minimum amount of community karma tries to create a post. We don't know how it was activated or how to edit it. Would someone be able to tell me where this setting is so it can be edited please?

Thank you


r/AutoModerator • • 9d ago

Help - AutoMod Is there a way to edit Auto-mod so that it does NOT add a comment to announcements?

5 Upvotes

New Mod here. The way our Auto-mod is set up is that it automatically flairs all posts to "searching" and adds a comment that says to change the flair to "solved" when OP finds the answer. For announcements, this comment is not applicable so for now I am just removing the comment, but I am now noticing that if I edit an announcement it keeps adding the comment again and again. I have one main announcement that I just update ever so often and it has multiple comments from Auto-mod that I have to keep removing. Is it possible to edit Auto-mod to prevent this?


r/AutoModerator • • 11d ago

Devvit Showcase AutoModerator can't spot reposts, so I made a free app that can

6 Upvotes

AutoModerator checks each post on its own, so it can't tell when an image or link was already posted in your subreddit. I made Seen It Before to cover that gap. It's a free app on Reddit's Developer Platform: https://developers.reddit.com/apps/seen-it-before

- It matches images even after they were re-saved, compressed or resized, and links even with tracking tags or a different YouTube format.

- By default it only reports likely reposts to your mod queue, with a reason like "Possible repost (94% match)" and a link to the earlier post. You can have it remove them instead, with a reply you write.

- It needs no setup. After install it indexes your existing posts, so reposts of older posts get caught from the first day.

- It runs alongside AutoModerator and doesn't change your rules.

It doesn't handle videos, GIFs, titles or text posts. Questions and bug reports: r/SeenItBeforeApp.


r/AutoModerator • • 13d ago

Help - AutoMod Flag to queue for specific flairs?

2 Upvotes

Hi! One of my subreddits has used the following rule for awhile to screen certain strings on all posts EXCEPT posts with one specific flair. For October, we added a second flair (costumes!), and I think it broke the rule.

  • Was working with af132826-b523-11f1-a4e2-3af042506efc

  • Stopped working when we added 6f3cd346-c5ea-11f1-bbd0-2ee8cd28a98c and changed the markup slightly on flair_template_id to match what I THOUGHT was the plural syntax for that argument

Would someone glance at this and let me know if I botched the syntax/how to fix? Appreciate it!

    # YELLOW LIGHT STRING: off topic (appearance)
    # DOES NOT APPLY TO FLAIRS: Feedback Welcome (Anything Fashion), Costume
    type: comment
    parent_submission:
        ~flair_template_id: "af132826-b523-11f1-a4e2-3af042506efc, 6f3cd346-c5ea-11f1-bbd0-2ee8cd28a98c"
    body: [VARIOUS STRINGS]
    action: filter
    action_reason: "Off topic (appearance): {{match}}"

r/AutoModerator • • 13d ago

I hope this is useful, combating spam bots.

15 Upvotes

Hello all,

I hope what I've learned can be of use to my fellow moderators. Lately all of my NSFW subs (5) have been hit by bot posts that all have the same signature:

  • Garbled titles that make no sense

  • A women in a sexually-suggestive position

  • A link to some random site like, "tr.ee..."

I have had trouble using Automod to catch these until I recognized a pattern, which is in all of these posts, is a series of repeating punctuation marks, like (4) commas or periods, and found a snippet or Regex code for Automod that has so far caught all (7) attempts to post this on my sub(s), and have returned no false-positives. I've only been running this code for a few hours, so time, and your mileage, may vary, but I thought it worth sharing.

The code is as follows:

 ---
 # Blocks titles with excessive repeating letters, multiple commas, or underscores replacing spaces
 title (regex): 
- "[aA]{4,}"
- "[sS]{4,}"
- ",{2,}"
- "_\\w+_"
 action: filter
 action_reason: "Spam bot title pattern (repeating letters/commas)"
 comment: |
Your post has been filtered for review due to an irregular title format.
 ---

I hope this helps. If I am posting th is in the wrong place, or not in the place where it could prove to be most useful, please let me know and I can c/v this elsewhere.

Cheers!


r/AutoModerator • • 13d ago

Help - AutoMod Help with comment_subreddit_karma

3 Upvotes

Hi all, we want to prevent people who have greater than (meaning more negative, so presumably "less than") -5 subreddit comment karma from being allowed to post until they interact in the sub in a more positive manner. We had this rule working properly a while ago, but it "broke" several months ago for some unknown reason. It was around the time I was seeing posts from reddit admins about glitches in automod due to a change, so I figured it may be a temporary issue, but it's still not working. I've since tried different iterations to see if it was a formatting issue, but still can't get the rule to act. Users who have far exceeded -5 comment karma in our sub have been able to post.

I now have two rules in automod with slightly different formatting, and neither work:

type: submission 
author: 
    comment_subreddit_karma: < -5 
set_locked: true 
action: filter 
action_reason: "significant negative karma in our sub specifically {{url}}"
comment: | 
    Hi /u/{{author}}, your post has been removed...

Second rule:

type: submission 
author: 
    comment_subreddit_karma: "<-5" 
set_locked: true 
action: filter 
action_reason: "significant negative karma in our sub specifically rule2 {{url}}"
comment: | 
    Hi /u/{{author}}, your post has been removed...

Is there something I'm doing wrong? Or is there an issue with automod? Thanks!


r/AutoModerator • • 14d ago

Help - AutoMod What is the best way to get into Automod Neo?

10 Upvotes

I know very little about Automod, but I'd like to use it in a subreddit I'm working on. I'm seeing a lot of people saying that Automod no longer works, and Automod Neo is the version that does. I know the basics of coding, but not this language and not how Automods as a whole work. This is brand new to me and I'm looking to get into it. I have a lot of questions about it if anyone can help me.

How does it work? I see on the Automod Neo site I can add it to my subreddit, but do I need to code it myself to do anything? And if so, what are some generally good things to have it do?

I see more often than not, subreddits that use an Automod have a comment after you post saying basically "Your post isn't deleted, Automod is just here to tell you some things". Is that by default?

Should I just go through everything on their site to learn about it, and then some back here/to other subs to see how other mods use it? Where can I go to find the best resources to learn about it? Any tips or tricks for a newbie?

Any help is appreciated, and sorry that I'm kind of asking a clusterfuck of things. Thank you all for your time!


r/AutoModerator • • 15d ago

need to allow image and video only to specific users

2 Upvotes

is it possible for automod or any other method will work

plz tell if other method


r/AutoModerator • • 16d ago

Help - Automations Failed post word count minimum automation regex

1 Upvotes

Hi All, I tried to create an automation to prevent people from posting posts with fewer than 50 words in the body, but it recently failed on a post so I'm wondering how to fix it.

It's a newly created subreddit that's not permitted to use the auto-moderator for removals, so I'm attempting to use an automation instead.

Here's the parameters I'm using:

Area: Body

Condition: Doesn't match regex

Enter regex: \W*(\w+(\W+|$)){50}

Then: Block from submitting

The post that slipped through had zero words in the body. Is it possible that that's why the automation didn't work - it doesn't evaluate a post body with zero words?

Does anyone have any advice on how to potentially fix it?


r/AutoModerator • • 16d ago

Automod in r/fantasyfootball needs to access an updated NFL player database

1 Upvotes

The Automod AI is using an older NFL player database in assessing whether a post is relevant and involves current NFL players. We often have issues where people post about rookies and even second-year players where the Automod, and they're flagged to us as rules violations because the post is perceived as being hallucinated news about college football players.

See, e.g., this:

Auto Enforced: Rule 3

The post appears to be a hallucinated or fabricated news article from an unverified source about a college player ('Makai Lemon') purportedly playing for an NFL team (the Eagles) alongside players from other teams, which constitutes low-quality content, irrelevant media, or potential AI-generated spam. It violates the subreddit's rule requiring high-quality, on-topic fantasy football information and the prohibition against spam or AI-generated output.


r/AutoModerator • • 18d ago

Me when I get added to a new sub and they never configured AutoMod

20 Upvotes

picture

this is such a pain, having to use the new automod is such a pain


r/AutoModerator • • 18d ago

Help - AutoMod Need help setting up AutoModerator

2 Upvotes

I'm one of the two mod running the r/TCM subreddit. We'd like to set up AutoModerator to help with blurring images on posts, but we're unable to get it set up.

This may be a problem with "wiki" and "config" moderator permissions, but we have no idea how to find it/check.

Any help you could give us would be appreciated.


r/AutoModerator • • 19d ago

Help - AutoMod I cannot figure out why this automod strings keep breaking

2 Upvotes

Written in the Neo Automod App using YAML, made by assembling other automod posts on this sub

---
type: submission
title (includes): ["Strands",”Fibres”]
set_flair: [BB (EP)]
moderators_exempt: false
comment_stickied: true
comment: "This post is talking about organic instrument parts, this post has been set to BB (EP) Mode."
---
type: comment
action: remove
body: ["guitar","violin","Pigstrings","Horse-Hair"]
moderators_exempt: false
author: 
 combined_subreddit_karma: "< 5"
parent_submission:
flair_text: [BB (EP)]

comment: "Your comment was removed because it either hit a catchword or had too low karma"
action_reason: "BB"
---```

At first the title flair adding thing worked fine, would add a flair and comment easily, But any attempt to put a more than 1 word filter on this automod breaks it, and the comments IDK if they even work as I haven’t even made it that far? Help?!?

r/AutoModerator • • 19d ago

Solved I want to filter posts/comments from users with a spam flag

1 Upvotes

I would like to filter out posts from users with a moderator note on them so that I can make sure that they haven't reverted to the bad behaviour that they were doing before. So Spam Warning, Abuse Warning, those ones.


r/AutoModerator • • 20d ago

Help - AutoMod My idea is - Could Reddit Pro and AutoModerator please have a conversation before recommending where I post?

Thumbnail reddit.com
0 Upvotes

r/AutoModerator • • 23d ago

Help - AutoMod Trying to Setup a Simple Auto-Approve

2 Upvotes

Hello, I have a regular poster and suddenly all their posts are getting auto-removed by Reddit and we have to manually approve them (started 2 days ago).

I'm trying to setup a simple automod to automatically approve posts, which according to the documentation seems possible ... but when I hit save I get the following error:

"Report, Filter, Remove, and Approve actions aren't available for new automod configurations. To save changes, remove these actions."

It's a private sub, so I'm not worried about spam or bots and just want to either setup a simple all posts are automatically approved or a specific author "name" is always approved. Any help or suggestions?

EDIT:
For example, I found this in the automod library, but when I try and save, I get the error I listed above:

---
author:
name: [username]
action: approve
action_reason: "Whitelisted user"
---