Native Mod Tools

Native mod tools are the first-party moderation features Reddit builds into its own website and official mobile apps, as opposed to the third-party apps, bots and browser extensions, such as the Moderator Toolbox, that volunteers historically relied on. The phrase became significant in 2023, when Reddit's decision to charge for high-volume API access threatened the third-party ecosystem and the company promised an expanded set of native tools to fill the gap.

Rolled out in stages through the summer of 2023, the native tooling added features such as mobile access to the moderation log, additional and filterable mod queues for removed, reported and edited content, mod notes, and accessibility improvements. The announcement came roughly two weeks after thousands of communities went dark, and moderators were widely reported to be sceptical that the native tools matched the capability of the apps and bots being lost. Reddit's longer-term answer was its Developer Platform and migration efforts to rebuild lost functionality on-platform, making native mod tools a central thread in the post-blackout relationship between Reddit and its moderators.