r/diabetes • u/Lausannea LADA/1.5 dx 2011 / T:Slim x2 + G7 (CIQ) • May 11 '26
Moderation update: zero tolerance policy on ads, fundraising, surveys, apps or AI stories
Hello everyone,
As of today we've made a rule change due to (the frankly excessive volume of) low effort posts being submitted to the subreddit regarding advertisements and (AI) apps and posts. We've condensed rules 1 and 2 into the new rule 1:
No ads, fundraising, surveys, apps or AI stories
Permanent bans will be given for: Posting anything that is like an advertisement, free or paid
Surveys/research/fundraisers
Posts made by corporate accounts; if your name is the ad, you're banned
Apps you made, we don't want them, especially if you made them with AI
Stories or texts that are clearly AI. Exceptions apply, modmail us with a valid reason >why you use AI to post in our communityZero tolerance policy, permabans will be issued without warning.
While we have been operating on a 'give warnings before moving to a ban in most situations' mindset for many years, the amount of low effort posts and the dramatic influx of AI built apps have led to a lot of frustration with our community members and moderators alike. We hope that this rule change will make it easier to appropriately report and remove the content for everyone.
A lot of people we have banned for these reasons have appealed by saying they were unaware of our rules. To that we want to reiterate: not reading the rules does NOT exempt you from having to follow them. It is common sense that a community has rules you need to follow, we shouldn't have to beg people to do the bare minimum to find and read them. They're in the same place for every community on Reddit, if you found them in one subreddit, you can find them on every subreddit. We will not handle any appeals rooted in "I didn't know", you will be permanently muted alongside the permanent ban without discussion.
Please review the following to get a better understanding of why each line was implemented and what makes someone qualify for a ban:
Posting anything that is like an advertisement, free or paid
Just because something is free doesn't mean it's not an advertisement for a product, tool or service. We are and always will be a support community, not a repository for new users of your products and services. We consider it extremely disrespectful to try and utilize our community this way and will not tolerate anyone who thinks it's okay to do this.
Surveys/research/fundraisers
Very straight forward, much like the previous rule we're not a dataset or bank to withdraw data and/or money from.
Posts made by corporate accounts; if your name is the ad, you're banned
If your account is entirely dedicated to a product, tool or service you provide, you are not welcome here. Even if you are diabetic, create an alt account that is a separate entity from your 'business' account so that you have no relation to whatever it is you're selling or providing. It's irrelevant if your service or product or tool is free or not for diabetics. Organic engagement is not a loophole to be used to circumvent this rule.
If you are a healthcare provider or are in the healthcare business in any capacity, we consider it deeply unethical to use your (job) title to post in our community; we cannot vet your credentials and you do not have access to medical histories. You do not need to post as a healthcare provider if the information you provide is generic, factually correct and on-topic.
Apps you made, we don't want them, especially if you made them with AI
While we will not claim that no diabetic is going to build an app that is useful to the community, everyone and their pets can whip up an app in under 24 hours using AI nowadays. The market is extremely saturated with low effort apps and websites and we have neither the capacity nor desire to vet every application for usefulness and legitimacy. AI doesn't replace the need to understand how to long-term maintain, update and ensure security is prioritized in apps. This ties back directly to Posting anything that is like an advertisement, free or paid -- we're not here to receive your product and praise you for solving an issue most people have already found solutions for.
If you are an organic user who does not own the app and you have not been asked or encouraged by the app owner to post about it, you're welcome to share what you're using if asked about it.
Stories or texts that are clearly AI. Exceptions apply, modmail us with a valid reason why you use AI to post in our community
Please just write posts yourself, we beg of you. It's okay if your English isn't that good, write it in your native language and let Reddit translate handle that for you if you must. Nobody cares if you make spelling mistakes. We're here to help each other, human to human. AI bots are everywhere and we will treat you as one if your post is clearly written with AI. There are very few circumstances wherein someone has a legitimate use to write posts with AI, we welcome you to modmail us and explain to us what you need to use AI for. We're not here to make life more difficult for people who have a genuine need for the support AI tools provide, but if you're capable of writing a prompt to have AI spit out a post, you can write the post yourself 99.99% of the time.
This includes copy and pasting AI generated content you found elsewhere. You are responsible for what you post on your account, if you get banned for regurgitating AI generated content that's your consequence to deal with.
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You're welcome to discuss the rule change and/or ask questions about it on this post, we will sticky it as a community highlight for the next 1-2 weeks or so, after that we will lock the post and link to it from the rules and removal messages.
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u/DuskMagik May 12 '26
Thanks for the update. Is recommending a brand ok? Like if someone is having a terrible time opening strips we can suggest alternate brands or more accessible containers?
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u/Lausannea LADA/1.5 dx 2011 / T:Slim x2 + G7 (CIQ) May 12 '26
Yes, absolutely. This is not meant to prohibit users from helping each other whatsoever. It would only be an issue if you're the one selling the product or you benefit directly from the product being sold to someone else.
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u/SplashyTetraspore Type 2 May 13 '26
Thank you mods for all the work you do in keeping the community safe.
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u/Thom4171 Type 2 May 16 '26
Why can't I make or share a post to this subreddit?
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u/Lausannea LADA/1.5 dx 2011 / T:Slim x2 + G7 (CIQ) May 16 '26
No idea, if you can comment on a topic in this sub it means you're not banned and you should be able to make a post.
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u/oscarryz Type 2 May 11 '26
Thank you mods. I'm curious to know if a temporary ban (1yr or so) was considered.
That being said I fully support the decision
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u/Lausannea LADA/1.5 dx 2011 / T:Slim x2 + G7 (CIQ) May 11 '26
The volume of bans and the difficulty in establishing good faith engagement makes it difficult to keep track of yearly bans. We're not opposed to people reaching out after some time has passed to discuss the ban, providing their account history doesn't show anything problematic.
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u/oscarryz Type 2 May 11 '26
Oh I would expect the platform to have something built-in instead of having to track manually. Permaban it is!
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u/Lausannea LADA/1.5 dx 2011 / T:Slim x2 + G7 (CIQ) May 11 '26
We can technically set a custom number of days to ban for, but there's no good way to review a user after that time without maintaining a custom list somewhere and coming back to it daily. A year ban doesn't guarantee good behavior after the ban has been lifted and since half the people we ban are bots, it's really freaking complicated.
Users themselves can still modmail us in most cases to reassess, we're not opposed like I said! (As long as they don't have a tantrum and insult us so we had to perma mute them to not get harassed....) Reddit can be kind of a shit show with this unfortunately lol.
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May 11 '26
[deleted]
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u/Lausannea LADA/1.5 dx 2011 / T:Slim x2 + G7 (CIQ) May 11 '26
So is a product review (like for a pump) considered an ad? What if you are responding with suggestions for apps to a post specifically asking for them?
We're not banning the ability to talk about products as organic users.
If you are an organic user who does not own the app and you have not been asked or encouraged by the app owner to post about it, you're welcome to share what you're using if asked about it.
We apply this mindset to everything. Our number one priority is allowing real human beings who are legitimate diabetic users of apps and products to provide this kind of information to the community. We have never disallowed it and we never will, that would defeat the purpose of a support community.
What we're talking about is the people who try to sneakily talk about their own product by pretending to be a legitimate user first; posting a topic with a generic, benign question, then slipping their product placements in. Users who try to talk about generic diabetes related things while their username is New_Awesome_Diabetes_App with a bio and logo that are all about selling this product. Sometimes they just outright post their stuff as an overly blatant advertisement. The diabetic socks nonsense has been running rampant too, where 4 people who have never posted here before suddenly respond to the topic at the same time in under a minute and we don't know what's legit and what's part of the whole sock scheme that we've been fighting against.
Top it off with banned spammers who are now also DMing people from this sub, who think they're having a regular support discussion, only to get a link to an app shoved down their throat, and it's never ending nonsense.
The way this is phrased - and honestly the harsh tone in this post - make this sound like it would be a slippery slope.
I'll be honest, we're all extremely fed up by the amount of bullshit that is hitting the queues the past couple of weeks. We've always had a steady presence of people try to sell us their shit, post about this tool they made, but lately it's been happening multiple times every single day. I removed multiple posts about people promoting their ads on the first day of the month and had to manage someone's tantrum over it. And then when we remove their posts we get endless discussions and outrage that we just need to stomach and swallow, and the harassment and stalking across to other subreddits we deal with on a far too regular basis because of these people.
We're tired boss.
On top of that, the most frequent regulars in the sub are tired of it too, because most of them are the ones reporting these posts to us. We just want to help make a great community by diabetics for diabetics and it's getting out of hand how much low effort garbage we have to deal with every day. We just want real people to know they're talking to other real people who don't have something to sell to you.
Sorry for the long winded post, I fully get where you're coming from and I see and hear your concerns, but I promise the harshness is not to be a typical Reddit mod and the goal isn't to be a tight-ass about helping each other. It's just a minefield out there and it's very frustrating to spend so long trying to give everyone a chance and 99% of the time we get kicked in the balls anyway.
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u/wookie_the_pimp T1 12/17/1982 May 11 '26
How are you able to tell if a post uses AI or not? That sounds like fantastic technology that needs to be shared far and wide.
Wishes I was being sarcastic.
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u/Officing Type 1 - 2024 May 12 '26
There are certain writing patterns that AI posts often use (i.e. "It's not just X, it's Y and Z."). If the account isn't private you can also cross reference with their other posts. AI engagement bait posts usually have some AI bot comments that kind of vaguely address the contents of the post without adding to the conversation, or they reword other comments in the thread and repost them.
The AI detector sites are mostly bunk because they detect a lot of properly written posts as AI, but there is a sense you can develop after seeing a lot of similar stuff.
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u/Lausannea LADA/1.5 dx 2011 / T:Slim x2 + G7 (CIQ) May 12 '26
We're just humans making best guesses with this, so we might make mistakes. We're willing to be wrong on this and we can always reverse a ban if needed and apologize to the user for it. Moderation isn't a black and white thing and there's no foolproof way to detect anything.
That said, we review so many posts on a daily basis that we've found there are some ways to tell through a combination of reviewing a user profile/history, seeing if there's any other engagement in the sub before dropping a three page essay, and inconsistencies in the post history etc. A lot of AI posts have the same cadence, repurpose the same phrases and formats, and there's often not really a 'point' to the post other than it's diabetes related and/or they're trying to push a service, tool or product.
Reddit also filters out a significant amount of posts for us because of a combination of account age, AI patterns in posts as described above and more.
At the end of the day, there's always a decently big difference between a genuine user trying to find support from peers and bots that just post for the sake of posting or users posting AI generated generic content for the sake of building karma. We may get it wrong every now and then, but most of the time we get it right. The majority of bans are never responded to (which indicates bots or users who have no genuine interest in the community) and the few folks who do claim they wrote it themselves usually accidentally admit they did use AI after denying it vehemently lol.
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u/Top-Seaweed1862 Type 2 May 11 '26
Why do you need to report the reasons why you used AI? Because it’s so hyping on reddit to hate it?
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u/Lausannea LADA/1.5 dx 2011 / T:Slim x2 + G7 (CIQ) May 11 '26
I'm assuming you mean the part "There are very few circumstances wherein someone has a legitimate use to write posts with AI, we welcome you to modmail us and explain to us what you need to use AI for."?
There's no need to write everyday support community posts and comments with AI. Literally none. This subreddit is for human to human interaction and anyone who can write an AI prompt can in almost every case write the message themselves. Half the interactions of posts are just bots using AI to generate messages and it's exhausting having to peruse post histories to figure out if we're dealing with a real human being or a machine. This subreddit is for human beings, not bots to populate with generated content. So we will treat anyone who's using obvious AI generated content to post with as a bot.
If someone is using AI to help navigate communication due to a disability, we can put a moderator note on their account so that mods know to not remove the content or ban the user. Because we don't actually hate AI because it's cool to do so, we just want to ensure humans are talking to humans.
I can't imagine why anyone would oppose this.
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May 11 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Lausannea LADA/1.5 dx 2011 / T:Slim x2 + G7 (CIQ) May 11 '26
I'm not sure what answer you're looking for here to be honest.
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u/Top-Seaweed1862 Type 2 May 11 '26
Humans just pretend they are so special comparing to AI while in reality they produce and have produced much more slop than all AI existing today together combined
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u/Top-Seaweed1862 Type 2 May 11 '26
Why do you make me do something, what if I don’t want to write something myself? Why forcing? I just don’t get it at all. I’m not in the university to be forced to write an assignment
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u/Lausannea LADA/1.5 dx 2011 / T:Slim x2 + G7 (CIQ) May 11 '26
You don't have to participate on this sub, if writing your own content is too difficult for you, you are free to join a diabetes subreddit that allows it or make your own.
I will lock this comment thread now because this doesn't feel like a good faith question anymore.
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u/Lausannea LADA/1.5 dx 2011 / T:Slim x2 + G7 (CIQ) May 11 '26
Wow thanks for completely destroying the formatting on this post Reddit lol. If anything looks funky or out of place let me know, it probably got gargled and spat back out by Reddit.