r/RedditSafety • u/outersunset • Oct 16 '24
Reddit Transparency Report: Jan-Jun 2024
Hello, redditors!
Today we published our Transparency Report for the first half of 2024, which shares data and insights about our content moderation and legal requests from January through June 2024.
Reddit’s biannual Transparency Reports provide insights and metrics about content moderation on Reddit, including content that was removed as a result of automated tooling and accounts that were suspended. It also includes legal requests we received from governments, law enforcement agencies, and third parties around the world to remove content or disclose user data.
Some key highlights include:
- ~5.3B pieces of content were shared on Reddit (incl. posts, comments, PMs & chats)
- Mods and admins removed just over 3% of the total content created (1.6% by mods and 1.5% by admins)
- Over 71% of the content removed by mods was done through automated tooling, such as Automod.
- As usual, spam accounted for the majority of admin removals (66.5%), with the remainder being for various Content Policy violations (31.7%) and other reasons, such as non-spam content manipulation (1.8%)
- There were notable increases in legal requests from government and law enforcement agencies to remove content (+32%) and in non-emergency legal requests for account information (+23%; this is the highest volume of information requests that Reddit has ever received in a single reporting period) compared to the second half of 2023
- We carefully scrutinize every request to ensure it is legally valid and narrowly tailored, and include the data on how we’ve responded in the report
- Importantly, we caught and rejected a number of fraudulent legal requests purporting to come from legitimate government and law enforcement agencies; we subsequently reported these bogus requests to the appropriate authorities.
You can read more insights in the full document: Transparency Report: January to June 2024. You can also see all of our past reports and more information on our policies and procedures in our Transparency Center.
Please let us know in the comments section if you have any questions or are interested in learning more about other data or insights.
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u/CR29-22-2805 Oct 16 '24
The number of Moderator Code of Conduct investigations has over doubled in the past year; the Jan–Jun 2023 report indicates 372 investigations, while this year's report indicates 762.
Do the admins have theories about this increase? Could it be due to increased visibility and awareness of the Moderator Code of Conduct and its report form?
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u/Chtorrr Oct 16 '24
Hey there. This is due to launch of the official Code of Conduct report form on the reddit help contact page (it has it’s own tile now!) and increased overall awareness from things like announcements and new Help Center Articles.
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u/Watchful1 Oct 16 '24
The success rate of these appeals and consequently the reversal of the sanction issued averages around 20.8%.
This seems very high. So admins removed content or banned people, and when they appealed, 20% of the time the admins reversed their decision. Are you working on any improvements here? It seems like you should strive to not remove/ban in these cases.
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u/Simon_Drake Oct 16 '24
I was given a week ban from all of Reddit for "Threatening behaviour". I had said that according to the fanbase Elon Musk had magic powers to fly into space without the need for a rocket or a space suit. I guess technically suggesting someone go into space without a space suit would be putting their life at risk, but only if he genuinely has magic powers to fly into space without a rocket.
The ban was overturned. Maybe the ban was automated somehow and the appeal was manual? Or the admin that banned me didn't like me sassing Elon Musk?
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u/KahRiss Nov 06 '24
They have been complicit in suppression and election interference and it still was to no avail.
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u/Drunken_Economist Nov 11 '24
I think that section should have made it more clear that "sanctions" includes user warnings (which don't come with a temp/permaban). They finally added the ability to appeal a warning only around the start of this year.
Chart 28 shows that the vast majority of successful appeals come after an account is sanctioned for Hateful Content, Violent Content, Harassment, or NCIM.
It lines up pretty neatly with Chart 22, which shows that those same four categories also are the ones that account for the vast majority of warnings (instead of bans) as those rules have an enforcement plan of "give the user a warning for their first violation".
The missing context of the narrative could be fixed in the future by adding a table showing
Appeal success rate by sanction type
(ie split up by warn / 3d ban / 7d ban / permaban).
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u/Sephardson Oct 16 '24
In the first half of 2024, Reddit received 85,449 access requests, amounting to a 168.3% increase compared to the second half of last year. This surge in access requests was primarily driven by requests related to a decentralized autonomous organization that targeted the collection of Reddit user data.
Is this decentralized autonomous organization submitting user requests on behalf of or with the consent of the targeted users, or is this a case of compromised accounts?
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u/outersunset Oct 16 '24
Thanks for asking! No, requests were not coming from a decentralized autonomous organization. Access requests have to come from individual account holders, not from third parties. More information is available in this Help Center article.
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u/Sephardson Oct 16 '24 edited Oct 16 '24
How does reddit know that these requests were driven by this organization?
Is this a case of people wanting to give their data to the org, or trying to avoid it?
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u/Simon_Drake Oct 16 '24
Something I'd like more transparency over is the rejection of requests at RedditRequest. If you request a subreddit and get rejected there's never any explanation given, just a list of possible reasons.
Imagine being arrested for no clear reason and told "Well we arrest people for lots of things, sometimes murder, sometimes burglary, sometimes arson. Maybe you're being arrested for arson? Who knows!"
That's not very helpful.
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u/AkaashMaharaj Oct 16 '24
I was surprised to see that most items of content on Reddit are neither posts (4.6%) nor comments (31.0%), but instead, group chats (55.2%).
I have a sense that most Mods spend most of their time on posts and chats, and that most manual moderation tools are tailored for such content.
These statistics suggest a need for a rebalance: that Mods may need to dedicate more moderation time, and the platform may need to dedicate more tool-building effort, on chats.
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u/Mondai_May Oct 17 '24
i'm curious about the nature of these chats. are only chats with more than 2 people counted here?
if not, does it count as a group chat when someone just messages someone else even if the other did not respond or accept it? and if that's so, maybe scammers and spammers that mass-message are factoring into this statistic? as well as the automated message some subreddits send when you first post. but if none of these count and it only counts messages between 3 or more people, i am a bit surprised it's so high.
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u/MableXeno Oct 30 '24
This is interesting to me because I don't use chats really at all. I think I even turned mine off (so ppl can't contact me thru chat) b/c of just...too many attempts from strangers who have no reason to reach out to me.
I think I participated in one very small community group chat...but the community has lapsed into silence as it got even smaller.
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u/HS007 Oct 17 '24
Mods and admins removed just over 3% of the total content created (1.6% by mods and 1.5% by admins)
How do you classify something that was removed by both? Have seen many cases where a post I have removed also shows a [removed by reddit] later indicating that the admins also acted on it. Which bucket would it fall under here?
Asking because I honestly expected mod removed content to be higher and not on par with admin removed stuff.
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u/The_Critical_Cynic Oct 19 '24
There were notable increases in legal requests from government and law enforcement agencies to remove content (+32%) and in non-emergency legal requests for account information (+23%; this is the highest volume of information requests that Reddit has ever received in a single reporting period) compared to the second half of 2023
We carefully scrutinize every request to ensure it is legally valid and narrowly tailored, and include the data on how we’ve responded in the report
Importantly, we caught and rejected a number of fraudulent legal requests purporting to come from legitimate government and law enforcement agencies; we subsequently reported these bogus requests to the appropriate authorities.
Are you able to disclose if the majority of those were related to the current political cycle in the U.S.?
3
u/Bardfinn Oct 16 '24
-1.0% H/H ban rate on hate subreddit shuttering rate
There's the "dead cat" bounce. /r/AgainstHateSubreddits Mission Accomplished Banner
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u/fluffywhitething Oct 17 '24
Haven't seen much from our end either. Have some similar metrics running on discord for some of my subs for antisemitism.
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u/the9trances Oct 16 '24
Content manipulation is a term we use to combine things like spam, community interference, etc.
Does community interference specifically refer to communities that brigade other subreddits?
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u/Bardfinn Oct 16 '24
Yeah, Community Interference is the term they use for the phenomenon colloquially known as brigading.
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u/the9trances Oct 16 '24
So subreddits like /r/bestof and /r/SubredditDrama who constantly and routinely perform "community interference" are exempt from the rules?
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u/Bardfinn Oct 16 '24
They interpret CI according to the effect it has.
Most people and communities welcome the participation of r/BestOf. SRD, they may or may not welcome the participation of.
The question comes down to,
Does SubredditX referencing SubredditY have an effect of participation that breaks SubredditY’s rules, boundaries, standards — and/or Sitewide Rules.
Do SubredditX’s audience and/or operators continue to reference, despite knowing that such action violates SubredditY’s rules, boundaries, standards, and/or Sitewide Rules.
In general, “This is cool / awesome / super / great” isn’t CI. In general, several instances of “These People …” is a red flag that CI is occurring.
There’s a lot of stuff that happens on Reddit that draws legitimate, good faith commentary on it, in and out of a given community. There’s also people still using this site after having been kicked off it over a hundred times, in a spiteful crusade to harass specific groups or individuals.
There’s a spectrum of such speech and actions, and there’s not yet a clear, bright line between “that sucks” and speech acts that have the effect of reasonably causing someone or some group to cease using the service - but it’s clearer and brighter now than it was a decade ago.
1
u/Skullbone211 Oct 17 '24
For some reason I can't reply to your other comment, but yes, admin approved brigading subs like /r/bestof, /r/subredditdrama, /r/AgainstHateSubreddits, etc. are clearly exempt from the rules, as they frequently brigade with 0 consequences
6
u/GonWithTheNen Oct 17 '24
admin approved brigading subs…
Can't speak for any of those subs except for /r/SubredditDrama, but the SRD mods have been permanently banning anyone that brigaded other subs for years before reddit even had an official report form.
The good news is that the SRD mods still gladly drop the banhammer on brigaders - but they can't take action unless those of us who spot the offenders report them.
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u/sneakpeekbot Oct 17 '24
Here's a sneak peek of /r/SubredditDrama using the top posts of the year!
#1: Asmongold tells 30,000 live viewers that middle eastern culture is inferior and that they deserve to be genocided. Also says their culture is antithetical to western culture and our way of life so we should see them as enemies.
#2: Jill Stein, Green Party US presidential candidate, does an AMA on the politics subreddit. It doesn't go well.
#3: DrDisrespect admits to knowingly texting a minor. His subreddit is split on whether this means that he's 'guilty'
I'm a bot, beep boop | Downvote to remove | Contact | Info | Opt-out | GitHub
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u/the9trances Oct 17 '24
Those subreddits provide direct, uncensored links to comments and posts. It is absolutely unfeasible that those massive communities aren't clicking through and then up or downvoting as they see fit, based entirely on the whim of the community that links.
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u/GonWithTheNen Oct 18 '24
clicking through and then up or downvoting as they see fit
There's good news for that, too: Those up/downvotes from non-subscribers have no effect due to reddit's Crowd Control features— and most large subs have this feature turned on.
So, even if someone suddenly joins a sub (that uses Crowd Control) and they start voting on posts/comments, they'll see their vote taking effect but all of their votes will be moot and will not affect the ratings of the posts or comments in any way. 👍
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u/smushkan Oct 17 '24
Do the 'author deletion' stats include instances where posts and comments have been 'removed' by anonymizing services that replace comments with nonsense rather than removing them outright?
1
u/fractokf Oct 18 '24
You lot recently just banned one of the biggest Chinese dissidents community in r/real_china_irl
Doing Tencent and CCP's bidding aren't you??
1
u/throwaway921029 Oct 19 '24
Hello,
Does Reddit not prohibit animal abuse content such as bestiality (and photorealistic depictions of such)?
I ask because r/hentaibeast is still up, I reported one post numerous times however it’s still there.
1
u/konkoy1978 Oct 23 '24
Hello, thanks for doing a great job. One thing I am curious about is the CSAM reports that go to NCMEC. I see that Reddit sent 221k reports to them. Reddit removed content in response to 305k minor sexualization reports. My question is, are these two different things or is that 221k part of the 305k ? Thank You
1
u/whicky1978 Oct 23 '24 edited Oct 23 '24
Has the federal government asked you to remove content recently?
1
u/Polodude Oct 28 '24
How can I message an ADMIN (not a mod) directly about a user using the system to harass others? The click thru , select this then that, to report a user does not allow the addition of a comment.
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u/ScarletLilith Nov 27 '24
You seem to like to talk about your free speech protections, but you took down a PKK image because a repressive regime asked you to. I guess free speech only goes so far.
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u/Connutsgoat 16h ago
Hey reddit admins, are you making this inclusive for Europeans also? (this is made for DSA right?)
The funny thing is, as soon as we Europeans say anything that isnt "polical approved by USAs gatekeepers" then we get banned etc! This cant be right, and i will request full transparrency between mods and admin from different Americans hate subs, that reddit keep letting go on and on!
0
u/SeValentine Oct 16 '24
I'm curious to know please if the stats on removal legal requests DMCA in behalf media in any shape of form shared in the platform goes into a different % because I have noticed certain communities been banned for Copyright violations while there's a handful of reasons from the mod side while also from reddit side on taking too severe measures before giving a 1st or 2nd DMCA content removal before the sub have a chance to resort to measures in order to prevent the community to get the ban prematurely. The agencies are not government and instead are individual content creators/entities
This is been a thing I been curious to know in deep while also sorting out to the proper contact channels for seeking guidance & clarification for make the effort to appeal to such decisions or ways to get a workaround for the community to be unbanned.
0
u/Chaseshaw Oct 17 '24
Reddit is INCORRECTLY removing posts from our sub
https://www.reddit.com/r/WorldofTanks/comments/1g5o9t6/removed_by_reddit/
we are a sub dedicated to a video game where you drive around and shoot ww2 tanks. things like attack angle, ammunition, and killing your enemy come up A LOT over the natural course of discussion and reddit is flagging them as against policy, presumably for violence.
please advise. we would like the aggressiveness of the reddit ai content filter turned DOWN for us please.
0
u/WhoWhatWhere45 Oct 29 '24
What do you have to say about the report from the Federalist about the Harris Campaign coordinated effort to manipulate the content posted to Reddit?
-9
Oct 16 '24
It never improves.
5
u/baltinerdist Oct 16 '24
This report is literally proof that it improves. You want these numbers to be going up. The volume of content posted to reddit increases month over month, but if you didn't see these "stuff removed" numbers also going up, that would mean you are being delivered more spam, more abuse, more crap. The higher that number goes, the more stuff is eliminated before the servers ever serve it up to you.
3
u/Bardfinn Oct 16 '24
And also, the percentage of Stuff Removed as compared to Absolute Stuff continues to go down. Which is good.
2
u/lesserweevils Oct 17 '24
To be honest, I'm not sure that's good. The amount of removals may have decreased but that's not the same as less spam. Users may be catching/reporting less, tools like BotDefense have shut down, spammers may have improved their tactics, and so on.
2
u/Bardfinn Oct 17 '24
I'm not sure that's good.
I know exactly where you’re coming from. Every improvement Reddit has made to the sitewide rules / content policy / acceptable use policy / sitewide enforcement / moderator code of conduct, I’ve been completely skeptical of.
There’s an adage, “Trust, but verify”. I didn’t. I distrusted until verified.
The vast majority of spam — unsolicited content, unsolicited commercial communications, inauthentic engagement — has long been automatically detected and actioned by Reddit’s own algorithms, using signals only Reddit’s own systems have access to.
Only a few years ago, we were still relying on volunteer moderators to do a significant amount of spam detection. BotDefense was one of their tools. Ten years ago, it was almost all volunteer moderators efforts, across subreddits. Now the teams I work with usually only encounter spam as already-flagged, removed content.
It never should have been up to the volunteer moderators, and it might swing back to being a necessity that volunteer mods step up to handle an unbalance in the cold war shifting towards spammers - but as of this past 18 months, there are people whose whole reason for being a Reddit moderator - fighting spam - who’ve found that they suddenly have a great deal of free time, and have re-evaluated their priorities accordingly. They’re not human cogs any longer. And that’s wonderful.
2
u/lesserweevils Oct 17 '24
My experience as a random Redditor (not a mod) is that there were plenty of organized spam rings, say 300 accounts, that engaged in blatant vote manipulation and other rule-breaking across multiple subs. The mods of smaller subs are not equipped to deal with these things. Apparently, some actions would screw up their sub's filters. So I'd either report the accounts to Reddit, which meant the accounts might continue to function for months or years, or to BotDefense which took action much sooner.
I hope Reddit continues to improve its automated detection. However, this sort of thing likely continues. I am one of those people who re-evaluated their priorities last year. But not because I couldn't find spam.
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u/dt7cv Oct 17 '24
they don't like the numbers because it means their unpopular opinion is left unstated
1
u/Oh-dang-its-me-again Oct 23 '24
Funny coming from a guy who deletes posts and bans people who say or mention things that THEY don’t agree with. If you wanna talk like you do here you wouldn’t be in power of deleting posts you don’t agree with dork…. But like they say. You can’t fix…. You can’t fix… well what’s the point? You won’t get it anyway 😏
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u/ThoseThingsAreWeird Oct 16 '24
Do you have a breakdown of the type of spam you're seeing?
Potentially related, have you seen an uptick in AI generated posts / comments being removed?