Hey everyone,

We need to have a quick chat about the state of the subreddit and where we are heading moving forward especially now that we're crossing 100K weekly visitors. Which is a milestone in Reddit as it classifies the community as high traffic.

About 19 days ago, we decommissioned our old AiAutoMod. Since then, we have seen a massive spike in toxic, hostile, and flat-out useless comments and posts. It is making the whole sub feel incredibly unhelpful and unwelcoming, which is the exact opposite of what r/AusVisa is supposed to be.

To fix this, we have put together some major changes that are going into effect starting today. And as always if you have suggestions or feedback about our moderation or policies you are welcome to send us a modmail.

Low-Effort Post Titles

We are kindly asking anyone posting to spend an extra 5 seconds coming up with a proper title that describes your issue, and to assign the correct flair. This helps immensely with visibility on search engines, which is where most people look for answers to migration questions.

While we won't make this a bannable rule, we will remove posts that have short and useless titles like "485", "help", "please help", or "urgent help needed". If your post is removed for this, we will ask you to repost it with a proper title.

I put this one first because I think most people who do this won't read all the way to the bottom.

Easing moderation on processing time comments

Posts that ask about processing times or try to seek to crowdsource processing times are still not allowed, but, we will not be actively removing comments who share their processing times. Just remember that processing times can be found on Home Affairs website, they change every month, and thus sharing your current timeline is much better off in the Monthly Mega Thread, the more people that use it, the better.

Our New Screening Bot and Reddit Filters

We have developed a brand-new bot using Reddit's devvit platform (asuvisa-mod) to help us pre-emptively screen and remove negative comments.

Go easy on the swearing and aggressive phrasing, or the bot will catch your comment. The bot does remove comments which clearly break the rules, altough it is set to mostly flag comments for us to review manually.
Along with our bot, Reddit itself is now doing a lot of heavy lifting by preemptively removing comments and posts from brand new accounts or accounts with low karma and low community contributions.
The bot also helps clear the mod queue faster by approving posts/comments that have no reason to be sitting in the mod queue. Reddit often flags/removes comments that simply have no reason to be removed, 80% of our modmails are about comments/posts being removed by Reddit. So the bot should fix this by approving comments/posts faster if they are filtered.

The bot is actively targeting useless, negative comments that provide zero value. For example, simply telling someone "You don't stand a chance" without explaining why or giving them advice on how to improve their profile goes against our #1 rule.

Our Core Mission and Strict "No Toxicity" Policy

This subreddit is dedicated to helping immigrants, regardless of their age, nationality, or background. We do not judge people and we try to be kind and helpful.

Lately, we have seen too many people getting berated for their life choices or visa decisions. If you do not agree with an OP, or you do not want to help them for your own moral or ethical reasons, then just keep scrolling. Keep your opinion to yourself if that is the only thing you have to share.

From today, your comment will be removed if it is any of the following (but not limited to):

Hostile, contemptuous, mocking, derogatory, dismissive, blunt, negative, overly critical, discouraging or stereotyping without providing constructive information or reasoning.

I often see comments which provide a decent amount of accurate information but do so in a mocking, derogatory, or blunt way. These comments will also be removed. You can easily provide realistic feedback while wording it differently so it does not come across like that. People who are purposefully posting comments like these will be permanently banned without any warnings.

Approved Links Only Policy

To maintain the quality and safety of the sub, we will also be removing any comments or posts that link to non-approved websites.

Our main approved websites are:

All .gov.au domains
All official skills assessment authority websites
Long-standing, reputable news websites

This should cover almost all legitimate use cases. If you happen to post a link and your comment is removed, but you think the link is genuinely valuable and should be added to our safe list, please contact us via modmail. Do not try to circumvent this link rule or you will be permanently banned.

Or feel free to just modmail us a list of domains you think should be added, please provide a description of the domain and what it contains as well as what it uses. Recently registered domains will not be considered.

Do Not Engage With Trolls (Report Instead)

If you see a toxic comment, do not reply to it. Simply downvote it and report it. Please be as descriptive as you can in your report text so we can review it quickly.

If you reply to the comment, you are creating more clean-up work for us. Because we usually remove all replies attached to a toxic comment, replying means your comment will also get removed and thus your account might get flagged by Reddit as spam or unwanted. This can negatively impact your account's reputation with Reddit and cause your comments to be automatically filtered across the platform.

Sarcasm Guidelines/Suggestion

You do not have to use a sarcasm mark on your posts. However, if your comment gets reported for being toxic or misleading, and you did not include an ( /s ) tag at the end, we will treat it as a completely serious comment.

Please note that putting an /s at the end of your statement still does not allow it to break any of the rules listed above.

A Final Note on Free Speech and Immigration Views

Our actual rules are staying the same, but how strictly we enforce them is changing drastically. I am a big supporter of free speech and letting people voice their opinions, which is why we used to be a bit more hands-off. However, people have abused this by berating others and posting negative comments or by posting comments questioning someones intentions without providing any real value other than to speculate.

While I support free speech and understand some people's reasoning for having a negative view on immigration, this subreddit is not the venue to share those opinions or to let out those frustrations.

As we are crossing the 100K mark, it is clear that we'll need to expand the mod team at some point. If you are interested in becoming a moderator, you are free to send us a modmail so that I can add you to our list and interview you when the time comes. Please use the title "Mod Application" so it's easy for us to find, and introduce yourself, your reddit experience (in moderation is a pre) and why you think you'd be a good moderator. We will give preference to people who are and have been actively contributing for a while, people who have consistently demonstrated neutral, objective, helpful, and knowledgeable comments in the subreddit, and most importantly, people with positive karma. We are not actively looking to expand the mod team at this exact moment, but I am putting together a shortlist of potential candidates to reach out to when the time is right.

And for the people who've made it all the way through this massive post, thank you for caring enough to read the entire post and thank you for your contributions and help in this subreddit.

Feel free to talk about Gold Migration Lawyers which have ceased trading. If you are a victim you can let people know about your situation. I might update this post with helpful information on what you can do later or when I see helpful comments.

What should you do now?

If you can either represent yourself or hire another migration agent, yes unfortunately you will have to pay the service fee again.

Check your application and check the recent actions, if there was anything that you needed them to do you'll probably have to do it yourself if you can, think about updating documents or answers to requests for information. Alternatively contact Department of Home Affairs to regain access to your application. Or see this comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/AusVisa/comments/1tqx840/comment/oojw83v from u/JoeTheRMA.

If you paid with bank, credit card, paypal you name it, try to file a chargeback, usually if the business doesn't respond they'll rule in your favor, I know some banks/credit card providers might be different but it's probably your only bet to recoup some of the costs.

Legal action could be possible but it's highly unlikely to get you your money back, the company shut down and they have no money and even if the owners can be sued individually I highly doubt they have the net worth to pay back every victim/creditors, it'll be pennies on the dollar if even that.

Report them to Consumer Protection and/or ACCC regarding the predatory fee structure, I mean the retainer of $399 but then also having to pay upfront for the service itself + additional phone calls / emails does not make any sense and admin fees alone can't be $399 since Home Affairs handles this already. Now I can be mistaken but surely it'd be better to have it investigated by people who actually care about consumer rights.

disclaimer: I am not a migration agent nor am I a lawyer so takes this information and do your own research.

EDIT: Also please do not go harass lawyers or employees, they most likely had nothing to do with the decisions of the company. Also in general be respectful and civil.

u/BitSec01

Student Visas Mega Thread

Important Subreddit Update