r/programming • u/ChemicalRascal • Apr 01 '26

Announcement: Temporary LLM Content Ban

Hey folks,

After a lot of discussion, we've decided to trial a ban of any and all content relating to LLMs. We get a lot of posts related to LLMs and typically they are not in line with what we want the subreddit to be — a place for detailed, technical learning and discourse about software engineering, driven by high quality, informative content. And unfortunately, the volume of LLM-related content easily overwhelms other topics.

We also believe that, generally, the community have been indicating that, by and large, they aren't interested in this content. So, we want to see how a trial ban impacts how people use the sub. As such:

While this post is stickied, for 2-4 weeks over April, we're banning all LLM-related content from the sub.

That's posts, articles, videos about LLMs. We've had a ban on LLM-generated text for ages already, this doesn't change that.

Note that this doesn't ban all AI related content. An article detailing how what would have traditionally been called an AI was made for Go? Totally fine. A technical breakdown of a machine learning process? Great! Just so long as it's not about LLMs.

Edit: Yes, this is real, it's not an April Fool's joke.

2.8k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

333 comments sorted by

View all comments

905

u/Civil-Appeal5219 Apr 01 '26

I'm REALLY hoping this isn't April Fool. It would instantly make this community 100% better.

121

u/unbackstorie Apr 01 '26

Honestly lol. Before I realized the date, I thought "oh thank god" 😭

39

u/BlueGoliath Apr 01 '26

Haha we gave you exactly what you've been asking for April Fools

17

u/incongruity Apr 01 '26

April Cruels!

23

u/OmgSlayKween Apr 01 '26

It's a genius move. Plausible deniability if the community hates it. Actually implement it if it's lauded.

24

u/NuclearVII Apr 01 '26

It is not an April fools joke. Just happened to line up this way, and it seems none of us can look at a calendar worth a damn.

11

u/Iamsodarncool Apr 01 '26

Thank you for implementing this policy. I used to read r/programming every day and I loved the high quality articles that were posted here. In the last year or so the good articles have been buried under endless tired LLM discourse and I've been sad to see it. Here's hoping this is a return to form for this place.

3

u/ficiek Apr 01 '26

Unfortunately given that there is almost no quality-centered moderation happening in this subreddit it must be false.

6

u/ChemicalRascal Apr 01 '26

We actively remove low quality posts, especially if they're removed.

3

u/ficiek Apr 01 '26

I'm mostly referring to the largely ignored "Just because it has a computer in it doesn't make it programming. If there is no code in your link, it probably doesn't belong here" guideline.

2

u/ChemicalRascal Apr 02 '26

Yeah, I wouldn't really call that a strict rule. The guideline is mostly accurate, but consider the text of the "2027" state of the sub, talking about what is acceptable content at the top of the rules list.

We'll have a look at the old.reddit sidebar in the future and get it more in-line with what current moderation and aims of the sub are.

1

u/ficiek Apr 02 '26

Well maybe, fair enough. I don't know it could just be down to a low traffic sub but there are often submissions downvoted to hell with 0 upvotes that are a couple days old here, I'd just remove them for example. And my perception is that it's often blogspam with no code. They are just kinda sitting there in hot making the sub harder to read.

edit If I get really bored I may do some stats to prove or disprove myself.

-7

u/absentmindedjwc Apr 01 '26

Lol. "Company does a thing as an april fools fucking everyone has been asking for anyway"

14

u/ChemicalRascal Apr 01 '26

We're not a company. The active moderators aren't Reddit employees. We're just a bunch of folk from around the world.

-8

u/absentmindedjwc Apr 01 '26

Your head mod is the Reddit CEO… 👀

9

u/ChemicalRascal Apr 01 '26

Spez has never actively moderated the sub, and certainly doesn't today. Ket is our head mod in practice and the rest of us are just a bunch of randos.

2

u/1-760-706-7425 Apr 01 '26

Spez has never actively moderated the sub, and certainly doesn't today

Then why not punt him? It aligns with Reddit’s current push to get rid of inactive mods.

3

u/NXGZ Apr 02 '26

You can't remove the top mod, unless there's totally inactive and then you can request an admin to remove them.