Reddit has introduced an AI-driven safety filter to identify and filter posts with harassing or objectionable content.
The platform’s “harassment filter” uses a Large Language Model (LLM) trained on moderator actions and removed content, aiming to assist reddit moderators in overseeing their online communities.
Recently, Reddit signed a content licensing deal with a major AI entity, enhancing its AI technology with site and user data.
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Once the harassment filter is activated by a community and its moderators, flagged content will be identified in the mod queue as “potential harassment.” Moderators can then decide to keep or remove the content and provide feedback to Reddit on the accuracy of the detection.
Reddit has rolled out various new features and enhancements in recent months leading up to its stock market debut. Notably, the Modmail Harassment Filter, introduced last year, functions as a spam filter for potentially abusive moderator messages.
How to set up Reddit’s harassment filter
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For desktop, go to the About Community tab on the right sidebar and select Mod Tools. For iOS and Android, click on the Mod Tools button below your community’s banner.
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Go to Moderation. Click on Safety.
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Select the Harassment filter option, and toggle on.
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Choose between the Low or High filter options. Low filtering blocks the least amount of content, but is more accurate in spotting harassment. High filter does a broader sweep of posts, and thus will block more posts. Reddit recommends using the High option if your community encounters a “significant amount of harassing content.”
While Reddit continues to remove posts violating Reddit’s Content Policy automatically, the harassment filter empowers communities to manage objectionable but policy-compliant content that might otherwise go unnoticed.
Topics
Artificial Intelligence
Social Good
Reddit
Chase joined Mashable’s Social Good team in 2020, covering online stories about digital activism, climate justice, accessibility, and media representation. Her work also touches on how these conversations manifest in politics, popular culture, and fandom. Sometimes she’s very funny.
