AutoModerator setup guide for new mods (with an example config)
AutoModerator is the unglamorous piece of infrastructure that decides whether a new subreddit feels like a community or a spam bucket. We have written hundreds of AutoMod configs over the last eight years, and the pattern is consistent: the subreddits that last have tuned AutoMod rules from week one, and the subreddits that do not, drown in their own mod queue by month three. This post is the exact setup we give new mods on day one, with working YAML you can copy.
What AutoModerator actually is
AutoModerator is Reddit's built-in rule engine. It reads every post and comment submitted to your subreddit, compares them against rules you define in YAML, and takes automatic actions: remove, filter (send to the modqueue for human review), approve, report, or auto-comment. It runs for free and is the single most important tool a new mod team has. Reddit's own docs are at the Mod Help center. Without a tuned config, a human handles every piece of noise manually. With one, 80 to 95 percent of it never reaches a human at all.
Where AutoMod lives and YAML basics
AutoMod rules live in a wiki page at /r/yoursub/wiki/config/automoderator. You edit the page, save it, and rules are live within seconds. No deploy step. The page is YAML, each rule separated by three dashes (---), four-space indentation, no tabs. Reddit refuses to save malformed YAML, which is the first sanity check you will learn to trust.
Every rule is a set of conditions and an action. The main fields are type (posts, comments, or both), trigger fields like author, title, body, and domain, and action fields action, action_reason, and comment. The action field accepts remove, filter, approve, or report. The author field takes subfields like comment_karma, post_karma, and account_age, with comparison operators passed as strings ("< 10", "> 100", "30 days"). The tilde (~) prefix means "not" and is the single most useful piece of syntax in AutoMod.
Rule 1: Remove posts from low-karma accounts
The single highest-value rule you can ship on day one. It removes submissions from accounts with very low comment karma, which is where the overwhelming majority of spam comes from, and auto-replies with a friendly explanation to prevent the modmail cycle that follows silent removals.
type: submission
author:
comment_karma: "< 10"
action: remove
action_reason: "Low karma account"
comment: |
Hi! Your post was removed automatically because your account has very little karma. Please contribute to other communities first.
Start with a threshold of 10. Loosen if you see false positives, tighten if spam slips through. Our default for new brand subs is 5 to 50 depending on category.
Rule 2: Auto-approve trusted users
Once a subreddit has a regular contributor base, you want their posts to go live immediately. The approve action marks a post as human-approved, which overrides filters further down the chain.
type: any
author: [username1, username2, username3]
action: approve
The type: any line applies the rule to both posts and comments. Maintain the list by hand: when a user has demonstrated consistent, good-faith contribution, add them.
Rule 3: Filter banned keywords in titles
Category-specific spam follows predictable patterns. SaaS subs see "growth hacking" and "guaranteed traffic" pitches. DTC brand subs see affiliate spam. List the terms and let AutoMod filter anything that contains them.
type: submission
title (regex, includes-word): ["spam-keyword-1", "spam-keyword-2"]
action: filter
action_reason: "Banned keyword in title"
Use filter rather than remove for keyword rules because keywords produce false positives. Filtered posts land in the modqueue for human review. The includes-word modifier makes the match word-based, avoiding false hits inside unrelated compound words.
Rule 4: Ban link domains
Link shorteners that hide the final destination, known affiliate networks, and competitor domains all belong on a domain block list.
type: submission
domain: ["bit.ly", "tinyurl.com", "spammy-site.example"]
action: remove
action_reason: "Disallowed domain"
Removing legitimate shorteners can frustrate casual users, so most brand subs ship a short list and add domains as they appear in the queue. The domain match is against the final URL's hostname, not the link text.
Rule 5: Require post flair
If your subreddit uses post flair to organize content by category, you can require every post to have one. AutoMod removes the post and auto-comments an explanation if the submitter skipped the step.
type: submission
~flair_text (includes): ["Discussion", "Question", "News", "Bug"]
action: remove
action_reason: "Missing post flair"
comment: |
Your post was removed because it does not have a required flair. Please resubmit and select a flair from the list: Discussion, Question, News, or Bug.
The tilde is load-bearing. It reads as "when the post flair does not include any of these values, take the action." Without it, the rule would remove every flaired post, which is the kind of error that gets mods panicking at 2am.
Rule 6: Auto-comment a removal reason
Any removal rule can include a comment field that auto-replies with a friendly explanation. This cuts modmail volume dramatically because most removed users just wanted to know what went wrong. Include a comment on every remove action by default.
type: submission
body (regex): "(?i)affiliate|referral code|click here"
action: remove
action_reason: "Promotional content"
comment: |
Your post was removed because it appears to contain promotional or affiliate content. This community does not allow referral codes, affiliate links, or "click here" pitches. If you think this was a mistake, please message the mods.
The (?i) prefix makes the regex case-insensitive; | separates alternatives. Test regex patterns in an external tester before pasting them in.
Rule 7: Flag possible reposts
Reposting is hard to catch with a single rule, but you can flag obvious cases. This rule reports (rather than removes) submissions matching common low-effort patterns, leaving the decision to a human mod.
type: submission
title+body: "['giveaway', 'contest', 'free stuff']"
action: report
action_reason: "Possible repost or low-effort promo"
For real repost detection, combine AutoMod with a third-party bot like RepostSleuthBot. AutoMod on its own is not a duplicate-detection engine.
How to test rules safely
Use action: filter instead of action: remove for any new rule in its first week. Filtering sends posts to the modqueue without removing them, so false positives are visible and recoverable. Once the false-positive rate is acceptable, promote the rule to remove. Write rules incrementally: add one, save, watch it run for a day, then add the next. Shipping ten rules at once is how new mods accidentally remove every post for six hours on a Saturday. A solid reference config to read is NoahLE's public config on GitHub.
Common mistakes we see
- Vague keyword rules that catch real posts. A rule that filters the word "free" will remove half of a community around free-tier SaaS. Pair broad keywords with narrower context using
title+bodyorincludes-word. - Regex errors. A broken regex silently matches nothing or matches everything. Test in an external tester before shipping.
- Conflicting rules. Order matters. Approve rules should live at the top of the file so they run first.
- No comment on removal. Silent removals produce angry modmail. A friendly auto-comment produces almost none.
The brand-sub angle
AutoMod for a branded subreddit is tuned differently than for a general community. A brand sub needs to allow mentions of the brand and product (which would otherwise look like self-promotion) while filtering competitor spam and affiliate schemes. That usually means an approve rule scoped to brand-related terms, combined with aggressive keyword filters for known competitor pitches and affiliate domains. For the wider context, see our 2026 guide to running a branded subreddit and the semi-official subreddit model.
Conclusion
AutoModerator is not glamorous, but it is the difference between a subreddit that runs itself and one that drowns its mods. Ship the low-karma filter, the trusted-user approve list, and a few category-specific keyword rules on day one. Promote from filter to remove once you have watched them for a week. Auto-comment every removal. Done right, AutoMod handles 80 to 95 percent of the daily noise.
How Soar saves you time and money
A tuned AutoModerator config saves a moderator team about 20 hours per week of manual queue work. That is the difference between a community manager handling their job in 10 hours a week and drowning in 30. Most new mod teams discover this the hard way: they ship a bare config, watch the modqueue fill up, burn out, and go looking for a better setup in month three. By then, the community has already been shaped by the noise AutoMod should have caught in week one.
We deploy a category-tuned AutoMod config in week one of every branded subreddit engagement, built from eight years of experience across SaaS, DTC, gaming, and beauty. Rules are pre-tested against known spam patterns, auto-comments are pre-written in a tone that matches the brand, and the trusted-user list is seeded with the brand's own employees. None of it is invented per-client, which is why we ship in week one instead of month three. If you want the config built for you as part of a full launch, our subreddit building and management service includes it by default. The alternative is the typical "we'll fix the false positives later" cycle that costs months of trust-building.