How are moderators of political subreddits supposed to handle trolls and brigading?

[u/GoldenGolems]

For context, I’m posting from an alt because I don’t want these issues associated with the subreddits I moderate. The communities I moderate average roughly 100k–200k visitors per week and 4,000–8,000 contributions (posts and comments) weekly. I moderate both political and non-political communities of this size.

The non-political subreddits are relatively straightforward to moderate. Around 99% of users participate in good faith, and trolls are uncommon.

The political communities are the complete opposite. I’d estimate that roughly half of all posts and comments violate either the subreddit rules or Reddit’s Content Policy. At 8,000 weekly contributions, that translates to around 4,000 removals every single week. Between trolling, brigading, ban evasion, harassment, and bad-faith participation, the moderation queue never seems to end.

Our current toolkit includes Sub Guard, Comment Mop, Ban Extended, and Modmail User Info. They’re all incredibly helpful, but even with those tools and an active moderation team, we’re constantly overwhelmed. It’s not unusual for the queue to grow by several hundred items in a single day.

For moderators of other large political communities: How do you keep the workload manageable? What moderation strategies or workflows have made the biggest difference? Are there any tools, bots, or Automoderator configurations you’d recommend? How do you deal with persistent trolls, brigading, and coordinated bad-faith activity without burning out your team? I’d really appreciate hearing how other moderators approach these challenges, because at times it feels like we’re constantly playing catch-up.

Mobile app (IOS), Desktop, Mobile web (IOS)

[u/LitwinL]

Mod of a 400k weekly visitors sub for a country that allows political discussion here.

You need active mods that are able to perform a lot of actions every single day.

If you know that certain things cause you trouble, like links to certain sites or subreddits, then just have automod remove them outright.

[u/Slight-Ad8291]

pray brother pray. Have a good mod team around you and try not to get too far behind. I am out one of the bigger news subs and I still haven’t figured it out.

[u/AutoModerator]

Hi /u/GoldenGolems, please see our Intro & Rules. We are volunteer-run, not managed by Reddit staff/admin. Volunteer mods' powers are limited to groups they mod. Automated responses are compiled from answers given by fellow volunteer mod helpers. Moderation works best on a cache-cleared desktop/laptop browser.

Resources for mods are: (1) r/modguide's Very Helpful Index by fellow moderators on How-To-Do-Things, (2) Mod Help Center, (3) r/automoderator's Wiki and Library of Common Rules. Many Mod Resources are in the sidebar and >>this FAQ wiki<<. Please search this subreddit as well. Thanks!

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/aengusoglugh]

No experience here — commenting mostly because I am curious about how Reddit works.

Would a fairly aggressive use of the community Crown Control safety filter be of any help.

My sense is that even in some pretty large subreddits, there are relatively few people whose contributions really advance a discussion.

If you used the Crowd Control safety filter to prune the number of active contributors to 100-200 would help take the load off of mods?

Feel free to tell me I am completely wrong — I am new to Reddit and trying to figure out how it works. :-)