r/ModSupport • u/WombatHat42 • Aug 20 '26
Mod Answered User deleting posts after we remove it?
So idk is this some way to avoid bot detection or something? Cuz it seems weird to me. In the time I’ve been moderating I rarely see a post we remove get deleted let alone everyone by a single user.
This user has a 2 day old account, as soon as their acct was created they started posting in our sub. They’ve posted 8 times, and when our flags put their post in the queue for moderation they just repost(going straight to the queue as well). Just everything about this user makes me think they’re a bad actor(ie bot karma farmer etc). Majority of times when a post is flagged or removed we get a message asking why or being belligerent.
Some of their comment interaction, what little there is, just seems odd to me as well. Though we’ve had some weird users so…
Anyway my spidey senses are tingling on this one but nothing has technically broken any rules outside of one post and it was a minor rule.
9
u/mudbunny Aug 20 '26
If we see someone with a history of mod removals, but they have deleted them all, we default to bad-faith and just ban them.
14
u/Empyrealist Aug 20 '26
Lots of bots will do this to cover their tracks so that their profile doesn't show a litany of removals. Some people too
8
u/Stranger1982 Aug 20 '26
Both are possible, some naive/ new users will absolutely try and post the same thing three or four times before they give up, or they delete the post as soon as they notice it's not appearing in a sub.
You can just filter everything they do to your queue, or ban regardless of any broken rules if you think they smell too funny tbh, they'll explain themselves in mod mail if needed.
1
u/WombatHat42 Aug 20 '26
I’ll try filtering them for a bit. I try not to ban unless we have a reason.
10
u/InGeekiTrust 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 Aug 20 '26
This is actually a really normal occurrence across a lot of my subs, I’m not saying you shouldn’t be wary of this person, but that’s not abnormal in the slightest
10
u/shhhhh_h 💡Top 25% Helper 💡 Aug 20 '26
Omg so many modmails from these types though, always wanting to know why their comment was removed and I’m like babe I can’t see it anymore
3
u/maiyannah Aug 20 '26
We had one of those just the other day. It'd been something I removed they then deleted. Then my head mod answering the modmail was all ???? because she couldnt even see the post they were talking about, because it was deleted.
3
u/WombatHat42 Aug 20 '26
lol that message always cracks me up. I’m like ok you read your post got removed so you can clearly see the WHY that was included and the WHAT to do so why not do that instead of wasting my mods’ time? I end up just copy pasting the reason or what to do lol
4
u/shhhhh_h 💡Top 25% Helper 💡 Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
I feel like they’re trying to get away with it sometimes, like they think if they delete and we can’t read then we’ll overturn the decision? Like I can’t even delete a removal reason anyway…what’s done is done man. But sometimes it’s just a Luddite for real though lol, scared of the internet so deleting everything and they think we have admin powers and can still see.
1
u/metisdesigns Aug 20 '26
It's a lot of bots, some other bad faith actors. It's sad to catch the newbies, but on the rare occasion they respond to the "we can't see it anymore" message and are thoughtful, the seem to either get the message, or were a farmer and move on to communities with more gullible mods.
3
u/metisdesigns Aug 20 '26
Not being abnormal does not make it non-suspicious.
Nearly every karma bot I see does this.
2
u/shhhhh_h 💡Top 25% Helper 💡 Aug 20 '26
People do it to hide from hive protector too, and so much more
3
u/InGeekiTrust 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 Aug 20 '26
Well, in my fashion and plastic surgery sucks tons of people who are totally not suspicious do this
0
u/metisdesigns Aug 20 '26
That's participating in bad faith and removing useful information from the community.
2
u/InGeekiTrust 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 Aug 20 '26
No it’s not a lot of people who have gotten negative or mean comments delete. If everyone hates thier dress they delete. If people think their plastic surgery is ugly they delete. They don’t want more people seeing the bad pic that got a poor response
2
u/metisdesigns Aug 20 '26
So, removing content that could educate others.
2
u/RandomComments0 💡Top 25% Helper 💡 Aug 20 '26
If they are being harassed about it why should they leave it up? What user in their right mind is gonna leave a post up to be middle school teased in order to educate people on plastic surgery or beauty standards when they were just trying to show everyone what they thought was a cool picture. I wouldn’t blame someone for removing in that case.
Removing information like a DIY, technical information, the answer to a question here in modsupport, or a recipe is an information removal that’s more annoying. Either way users removing information is not a singular indicator of bot or nefarious activity. Taken together with other behavior sure, but not just removal.
0
u/metisdesigns Aug 20 '26
Or, hear me out, what if we removed the harassment and punished the bad actors?
1
u/RandomComments0 💡Top 25% Helper 💡 Aug 20 '26
Ideally you’d do that, but I’m also not faulting the user for removing their post. It’s not educational in the slightest.
0
u/metisdesigns Aug 20 '26
The post itself may not have been, but the comments and replies may well have had good information and are now pushed down or not searchable.
Let's say I had a botched nose job and asked about it. A year later you had a nose job and had questions, if I removed my post, you would have less useful information.
The problem is once it's on reddit, it's been scraped. It will show up in search engines. Users have already put it out there. Deleting a constructive post only harms engagement on the sub.
→ More replies (0)1
u/InGeekiTrust 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 Aug 20 '26
Saying you don’t like the outfit isn’t harassment if people are asking your opinion. If they’re asking specifically if the outfit is appropriate for the event, and everybody says no, the user might be despondent about it and really angry. They paid for a dress they’re not going to use. They might want to delete it, but that doesn’t mean that the negative opinion should all be removed. You assume all negative comments are harassment.
The same thing goes for plastic surgery. A person might say is my nose botched? If users answer, yes it is botched, again that’s not harassment. But it might upset that user to keep getting negative comments and to keep thinking about how bad things are.
-1
u/metisdesigns Aug 20 '26
Not at all.
Im saying that if someone provides constructive feedback, that is useful.
You're big on the strawman arguments.
→ More replies (0)2
u/RandomComments0 💡Top 25% Helper 💡 Aug 20 '26
I’m sure that works well for you as a mod too because then you’re not having to remove all the harassment that gets through your filters.
7
u/Petwins Aug 20 '26
I would ban a two day old account which behaves that way.
What is your question really?
5
2
2
u/SampleOfNone 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 Aug 20 '26
I assume bots, install queue pruner saves you the work from having to clear them from your queue.
1
1
u/Dom76210 💡 Top 10% Helper 💡 Aug 20 '26
I actually like it when we've removed something and they delete it afterwards, especially if it was some creepy damn post/comment.
Plus, we tend to copy the rule break into the removal notification/ban as a mod note, so if they think they are hiding what they did to get banned, they get a rude awakening.
1
u/RandomComments0 💡Top 25% Helper 💡 Aug 20 '26
Edit: whoops put this in the wrong spot.
1
u/WombatHat42 Aug 20 '26
Well interestingly the person I posted about got banned cuz they were starting issues and arguing lol
2
u/cripplinganxietylmao Aug 21 '26
Even tho I’m a mod elsewhere I still delete removed content from my account because I don’t like it clogging up my feed and it’s usually for something low tier like the subreddit doesn’t allow any cuss words and I said “damn” or it was like a formatting error
1
u/WombatHat42 Aug 21 '26
Ah see I rarely go on my own profile so never cared lol But ime I rarely see it happen from users so that plus other behavior made us weary of the user in question. The one mod already wanted to kick them haha I just prefer having a broken rule as a reason and have a 3 strike policy before bans are given with some exceptions. The last post they did they got very argumentative and instigatory almost immediately at the slightest flack and just kept doubling down. Then they started abusing the report system. When I made this post, I was unaware that one of my other mods had already removed one of their comments for being disrespectful. So they got a week ban with a mod note telling them to learn to be respectful or post elsewhere and removed all of their other posts. Fully expected some kind of nasty mod mail but so far nothing.
2
u/metisdesigns Aug 20 '26
It's probably the second biggest red flag for not participating in good faith after a hidden comments section.
On one sub we've got some solid anti Karma-farming automod rigs and easily 95% of auto removed posts get deleted by the bot who posted them almost immediately.
The exception is legitimate new users who delete things after they're removed and then appeal, but that's also used by bad actors to remove trolling they were caught on and needs some experience to assess.
1
u/Pashta2FAPhoneDied Aug 20 '26
Maybe the person agreed with you, so deleted it? Or nobody can see it anyway, so they just delete it. It doesn't necessarily mean it's nefarious behavior. However - trust your gut!
2
u/WombatHat42 Aug 20 '26
Alone, I agree. It’s nothing nefarious but add up several hard to describe little things it leans that way. I’m gonna filter them like the one person suggested and see what happens. I’m starting to lean less on the bot aspect though, still maybe a karma farmer but idiot is back in the running lol They’ve been getting some backlash for one of their posts for having their dog in a shopping cart at a target and they’ve been reporting the comments as harassment (I’m assuming it’s the OP reporting). The comments are not harassment though, a tad aggressive maybe but not harassment.
1
u/RandomComments0 💡Top 25% Helper 💡 Aug 20 '26
Bots don’t generally care about that stuff in my experience and won’t report a comment on their posts. Anyone else had a bot do this? Would be interesting to see if that’s a bot behavior now.
1
1
u/Mayor_P Aug 20 '26
Yes bots do it, have been doing it, it's to clear their profile/post history so it looks like more organic
1
u/RandomComments0 💡Top 25% Helper 💡 Aug 20 '26
I meant the bots reporting comments as harassment. Have you seen that?
1
u/Mayor_P Aug 20 '26
Oh, that - that I have not seen.
1
u/RandomComments0 💡Top 25% Helper 💡 Aug 20 '26
Yeah I could have worded that more clearly. Bots totally delete, but I’d never seen one report comments on their posts. I have really specific niche subs so I was asking if it was a thing on different subs since behavior is different in different subs.
Glad to know you haven’t seen a bot report comments on their posts.
1
0
37
u/Federal-Ad5944 Aug 20 '26
Outside of the other behavior, sometimes people simply don't want removed posts on their profile. No one is going to see them anyways, so they're deleted as a form if clean up.
From a user standpoint, no biggie. From a mod standpoint, it can be annoying.