The ability to report to Reddit that someone may be suicidal or self harming is an amazing feature that sends a DM to the user in crisis from Reddit care, giving them solutions for help. This is a system that has been abused and abused and abused by trolls and bad faith users. Modding a default sub, I end up being reported often for this simply because I removed a post that violated our rules.

While the DM itself doesn’t annoy me, I think it’s great that it exists, I am annoyed at the amount of abuse this feature gets. I’m a huge mental health advocate, I’m trained in ASIST and mental health first aid, I’ve worked in mental health settings for eight years before changing career paths, it’s something I’m passionate about. It’s also something I feel should be taken seriously and not used as a joke/a way to abuse a report feature because you disagree with someone politically.

In feel like there should be a feature in the message that a user receives that states “if you feel this report was made in bad faith, please click here” and have it bring the user to a modmail style report to go to admins. From there, the admins should be allowed to see who sent the initial report, and give them a chance to justify their report, or action will be taken in the form of suspensions. I understand the need for reports to be anonymous in general, but abuse of an important feature like this should be taken seriously and should no longer be allowed to be used as a weapon for these users that have been abusing it.

Let’s discuss other possible ways to nip this out!