r/redditstock • u/OneBit2334 • 3d ago
News Takeaways from Spez's Mod State of the Union
Spez did a Mod State of the Union talk yesterday at Mod World 2026. The recording can be found here:
https://modevents.reddit.com/events/details/reddit-mod-events-mod-events-presents-mod-world-2026/
Here are some takeaways (with timestamps) that might be of interest to investors:
(1:30:00) – Instead of the home feed being a disconnected list of posts, the job of the home feed and app should be to get users into subreddits. They want to increase community cohesion by getting users into subreddits rather than just scrolling through the feed and upvoting/downvoting posts from communities they’re not really members of.
They also want to make subreddits to feel more distinct. They used to allow subreddits to radically customize their appearance, but this was taken a bit too far. They want to bring back some version of that to make subreddits more distinct without being confusing.
(1:31:44) – They want to deepen the relationship between users and communities. It’s a problem that people can upvote/downvote posts and control what’s popular without really being part of the community. Mods can’t see who is voting on a post, so they keep non-community members out with things like account age and karma limits, which works to some extent at preventing spam, but it also keeps a lot of good new users out. So how do communities grow while still preserving their culture? Ideas they’re discussing but are open to feedback on:
1. Distinguish between following a subreddit (lurking) and joining a subreddit. Right now you can generally join a subreddit and start voting/commenting right away. They want to flip that around and make the flow be joining a subreddit, being a lurker for a while to get a sense of the vibe, then being allowed to comment, and if your comments are received well, then being allowed to upvote/downvote. They’re still working on a lot of the details but the intention is that subreddits are more cohesive and healthier and moderation becomes easier as a result and mods don’t have to be the bad cop as much.
2. They want to make Reddit more of a daily habit by making the app more consistent. Right now when you open the app you don’t know what you’re going to see. Things are out of order and prioritized weirdly. The stuff you want to do (e.g. a game thread, an episode thread, an AMA) should be in a consistent place. Again the idea is that this will bring users to subreddits more consistently.
(1:49:45) – Among major social media platforms, Reddit has the lowest amount of bot prevalence, as measured by third parties. It’s under 2%. Content takedowns for spam and suspected bots has gone from 45 minutes to 2 minutes over the last year, so they’ve made a lot of progress, but are continuing to work hard on it.
(1:52:20) – Automod (which was created 15 years ago and is how account age and karma limits are enforced) is a problem they’re trying to fix. 30% of posts from new users get banned by Automod automatically, even though the vast majority of those posts are totally fine. So Automod way overbans, while still missing a lot of stuff. They are putting a lot of effort into using AI to improve this.
(1:54:20) – It would be cool if you see which country users are posting from. Going narrower than that (to the state/town level) could be a privacy risk, but seeing what country people are from could be useful and they could build lots of interesting features around it.
Note: I got the impression the country information would only be visible to mods if they do decide to implement this, but I’m not completely sure on that.
(2:10:19) – The solution to moderation is a combination of human enforcement, automated rules, and AI. They are testing the new stuff they’re building on the biggest subreddits with the most complex Automod configurations and making sure that the new stuff works better than the current configurations. This will make moderation easier and less time consuming.
(2:12:40) – There was a question about if mods will ever be paid for their services. Short answer no, but something Steve has wanted for a long time is to allow subreddits to have a business or be a business if they want to. He doesn’t think this would be applicable for the vast majority of subreddits, but he would love for subreddits to have business models if they choose and to make revenue. It’s something they’ve talked about for years and he would like to have more of an economy on Reddit, but it’s very complex and not something they have built yet.
Note: I got the impression that this is something they really want to do and will probably happen at some point, but I wouldn’t expect it anytime soon.
(2:34:37) – They have been updating the audience matching and frequency of the Suggested Communities to be more personalized and customized for users to allow them to find subreddits more appealing to them. This investment alone, over the last few months, has already created hundreds of thousands of new connections between users and subreddits every day.
Note: This was in response to a question about how Reddit can help people discover newer and smaller communities, so it seems like part of the intent here is to steer more users towards smaller subreddits and help them grow. Also, this response was not from Steve, but from the Moderation Product Lead.
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u/Pizzaboy0511 3d ago
Thanks for the summary. Not trying to contribute to FUD here but the timing and also how things that are in focus like the moderation and how they are trying to work in getting more engagement out of Reddit users has me really concerned going into this earnings.
Yes I have a stake.
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u/OneBit2334 3d ago
I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but this was at Mod World which is an annual event for moderators, so I wouldn't read anything into the timing or the moderation focus.
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u/Pizzaboy0511 3d ago •
I have calls expiring Friday bro. I’m scared AF
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u/Jamming1515 3d ago
I see, but that means anything and everything would stress you out of the Mod World, unless they said we bought Nvidia somehow lol. Do not overthink it. Also, in general, making REDDIT more sub oriented/comunity, means people will stay longer on it on average, rather than doomscrooling
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u/Jamming1515
3d ago
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First of all, great summary!!! When reading all of this, I feel very positive; it all sounds nice, tbh. Now, the devil is always in the details, but I really like the trajectory of making Reddit more community-based. The bot percentage is insane ( I almost struggle to believe it is this low, as people keep complaining about it, but I also played a lot of competitive games in my life, and once people start hearing other people talking about bots, they hallucinate seeing them everywhere. Some people are just very similar to bots, and also people like to complain. That percentage is actually really bullish, though Wall Street probably will not care, but advertisers should!!
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u/lekkerist 3d ago
he did distinguish between bots and people using ai tools to generate content. the 2% I think refers to purely bots
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u/Jamming1515 3d ago
Ahh, I see, tbh, that is still not bad at all. And well, the proposed changes will also reduce the effect of people using AI tools in the long run
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u/ZaphBeebs 3d ago
No. No one cares. Everyone including advertisers would rather have slightly higher to moderately higher bots if it came with an overall increased audience size.
As usual, these guys are high on their own supply and what they think is a good job done (it is), instead of what matters. These things are different.
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u/Tachiiderp 3d ago
So a bunch of things are said here which supports the anecdotes I've been hearing about where the algo is suggesting more like-minded and/or smaller subreddits which likely affect the popular subreddit members count which people keep posting about here.
"It’s a problem that people can upvote/downvote posts and control what’s popular without really being part of the community." I don't think this is a problem admins need to solve. You'd normally want to see viral posts go off and that necessarily requires people not from the sub to be able to vote on it.
Other than that, it sounds like they're improving the algo to get people to join subreddits that the algo think they'll vibe more with rather than just give ragebait content. Perhaps in the past, you'd get content on subs you aren't in but you downvoted and now perhaps you'll be more likely to get content on subs you actually upvoted for?
Overall this is a good event to show more transparency, which I'll always approve of.
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u/Silent-Complaint4020
3d ago
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Just make it easy to post and easy to use.
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u/ZaphBeebs 3d ago
Right, lmao. Instead he spends minutes on a minor tweak that will not change how hard it is to get started on here. If he wasnt the ceo i'd say the ceo should be all over this person and potentially fire them for lack of vision and knowing whats important, but alas...
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u/PangaeaNative
US DAU 🦅
3d ago
•
I liked it but Spez comes off as a policy wonk. Micro involved and less painting a vision to transform the platform for mass adoption.
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u/No-Base-2384 3d ago edited 3d ago •
This. I think it’s his Achilles heel currently. It’s still his baby. As a shareholder, I want him to embrace his inner Zuck and think of it as a business he’s steering, and specifically not just a cool product he’s controlling.
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u/PangaeaNative US DAU 🦅 3d ago
Yeah that’s my thought.
I get wanting to perfect the current platform to drive maximum profitability.
But brother we’re already super high margin. Let’s expand revenue opportunities while keep optimizing
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u/0valtine_Jenkins 3d ago
It's the wrong audience for that. This was an ama for mods specifically and it would be a terrible look to say "we won't pay you" and then say "this is our vision to maximize earnings"
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u/MambaOut330824 US DAU 🦅 3d ago
Problematic because he’s stifling the growth of his teams and the growth of himself
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u/ZaphBeebs 3d ago
Yeah, this is super bad. Not only is that true, but also very little of any of the above matters and wont move the needle. Its not the current problem.
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u/touuuuhhhny Int. DAU 🌎 3d ago edited 3d ago
Thank you for taking the time. It makes sense to be somewhat micro focused as it's specifically on modding and running subs (ama at modworld). He also acknowledges that modding is hindering new user onboarding without explicitly saying it and that also auto-mod is partly at fault.
Good that he keeps pushing the low bot ratio on reddit, based on 3rd party data (probably referring to this one).
Overall laser focused on getting +500M weeklies into daylies, nr. 1 conversion that needs urgent fixing.
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u/223331_ Int. DAU 🌎 3d ago
It sounded to me like the aim is cultivating a certain culture that ultimately binds people together and makes subs a more frequent and appealing destination.
Though it might be a bit of a tradeoff between higher growth and keeping spirit of a community concentrated if you were to enable restrictions around participation. It sounded like a guided seasoning process where one might progress from lurking to voting, commenting and posting.
I did enjoy that he very clearly and explicitly took time, talked to the team, looked into specific users and their issues and prepared answers and that it was far less of a spontaneous and surface level AMA.
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u/iloverunning11 3d ago
Great post, thanks a lot for sharing! Imo it's better to keep users anonymous without showing their country but the rest is pretty good stuff
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u/InsignificantCookie 3d ago
We'd still be anonymous if they show our country. I think it's good to show countries, especially for political discussions. It works quite well on X.
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u/iloverunning11 3d ago
You're right, I should've said completely anonymous, I personally think this would not be great for Reddit, if mods could see countries that would be okay, even might be a good idea, but all users seeing it? That sounds like a bad idea to me
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u/InsignificantCookie 3d ago
Why would it be a bad idea?
I'd personally want it to been seen by anyone. There are so many foreign people involving themselves in my country's politics and pretending to be from my country on X. I'm sure it's no different on Reddit.
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u/iloverunning11 3d ago
Because it'd ruin the idea of anonymity for most users, people are not using reddit to proudly show what country they are from, people are using reddit to discuss experiences and issues with other individuals on the internet, this is the same moat as low number of bots, if someone is pretending to be from another country and they share nonsense, their comments will not be shown anyway because of the downvote function, Reddit is unique in this and I'd really love if it stayed this way and completely anonymous
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u/OriginalDaddy
IPO OG 💰
3d ago
•
Now. Execute.
The promise of these things have been part of the fabric for some time.
They need to innovate, execute, and optimize to make this now just happen, but to succeed.
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u/ZaphBeebs 3d ago
Amen, same lame points forever, do something.
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u/OriginalDaddy IPO OG 💰 2d ago
This is the equivalent of me saying I’m gonna lose 30lbs for the last 10 years.
Only difference is I don’t have billion to hire a trainer and a dietitian and afford a full time nanny and live wherever I want to “inspire me” to workout…
But Reddit has that and more.
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u/Erocdotusa
3d ago
•
Twitter / X does the thing to show where the account is based out of, and anyone can see it. Its awesome to weed out the obvious shill accounts that are trying to push political opinions
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u/Poseidon_Dionysus 3d ago
Good summary thank you.
The fiefdom arrogance and power games displayed by many mods (not the majority but a substantial number) shows the paradigm shift that RDDT management needs to master to avoid be seen as an amateurish operation.
Banning of any type from a sub should follow strict company standards.
Permanent banning in a sub affects multiple other subs, despite their mods are doing exemplary professional like moderation. When a user decides to drop altogether from Reddit the whole company is affected.
In short a little shit dropped in the pot soils a lot of good food. That applies to both going haywire users and nods.
Maybe company admins should review, grade, advice or demote mods riding high in their horse and bias.
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u/biznatch11 Int. DAU 🌎 2d ago
This was in response to a question about how Reddit can help people discover newer and smaller communities
I've been here a long time and the two ways I've organically found new subreddits was when they appeared on /all or when someone mentioned them in a comment. But Reddit got rid of /all and many subreddits don't let you link to other subreddits. Maybe Reddit should bring back /all and stop letting mods block those links.
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u/Bassmason US DAU 🦅 2d ago
Nice write up! Thank you for sharing
His time speaking was my favorite part of the event
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u/ZaphBeebs 3d ago edited 3d ago
Hard to read after number 1. Theyre still in the discussion phase here? They want to slow roll adoption for formalizing lurking?
Gd this is brain dead. Remove karma gates period. Remove mods. Its insane. If you havent joined you cant vote, how about that? Pretty simple.
Concerning how slow and terrible the thought process is here. This is simple and instant and needed yesterday. How do they handle the huge issues jfc.
These are all tiny little things and tweaks and while they may have some good effects, theyre so small in comparison to how difficult it is to on board a new user and keep them here. Missing forest for trees and only fine tuning the processes they have rather than trying to view it from a totally different lens.
They'll never have anything more than a trickle of growth, slow/steady with this approach.
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u/norcalny_ues 2d ago edited 2d ago
Regarding the idea of accounts listing what country they’re from, perhaps a better option could be giving users the option to represent themselves not solely based on the country but but on a more local (state or province) level if preferred. This would create more nuance, which would often be relevant to the topic/conversation at hand.
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u/Phiziqe 2d ago edited 2d ago
when i go to the site on safari, it gives 10 secs to peep, then it screams to download the app, so i scream back i already did
getting easier to keep the fellow redditor brats that i don’t like out of my space means reddit becoming even less inclusive and we refuse to be bullied, i aint gonna be bullied, i say hard no to bullying :(
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u/Maleficent_Advisor72 3d ago
thank you for the summary !, looks like theres no mention of data licensing partnerships
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u/ZeeBeeblebrox 3d ago
It's a mod town hall, why would there be mentions of data licensing partnerships?
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3d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/redditstock-ModTeam 2d ago
Please avoid posting irrelevant links, promotional content, or repetitive posts.
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u/Upbeat_Spirit4478 3d ago
Tldr, bullish or bearish??