Question Answered: Automations have trouble recognizing blocked words and phrases when users utilize quotation marks and spoiler text, and automations does not have a built in way to fix this at the present.
Hello,
I help mod a couple eating disorder subreddits, and we make heavy use of the automation feature to block certain words and phrases from being posted to not encourage promoting disordered eating habits including but not limited to throwing up, fasting, OMAD/one meal a day. These features have worked as intended for around...six or seven months? I forget the exact date we began to use this to block comments, titles, and posts with certain words and phrases.
I thought perhaps something changed with how words were recognized when:
- Someone posted "OMAD" with quotation marks in a title, and I thought perhaps they got around the word ban by adding quotations, making automation think this is a different word.
- Someone posted "fasting" without quotation marks in a post body text under a spoiler, and I thought the spoiler was limiting the automation recognizing this word.
- Someone posted "throwing up" without quotation marks in a comment under a spoiler, and I thought the spoiler was limiting the automation recognizing this word.
All of the above issues occured in the past 30ish hours. We trying to get answers on whether or not automations have changed or if our userbase has found ways to get around automations. We are a small mod team, looking to remedy this issue quickly because we understand leaving up such content not only drives away users but leaves up content that could be potentially harmful for our community. We try to take these community violations down as quickly as possible.
All of our automations use the same "if" [banned word] "then" [block from submitting] feature. If it changes how automations work, this blocking includes a pop up to remove banned words from the post, the title, or the comment.