What is the Importance of Content Moderation?

The digital world is constantly changing and adapting and one of the most powerful drivers of that change is user-generated content. But, unfortunately, most people would rather trust the opinion shared by a group than take the time to get information from the source and process their own opinion.

In this article, we’ll explain more about content moderation, but if you need help with the moderation of content on your site, check out: https://viafoura.com/content-moderation/.

Every day, there are incredible amounts of videos, text, and images being shared online, and brands need to pay attention to the content being put out on their platforms. This is critical for ensuring that your site is safe and trustworthy for your audience.

Content Moderation Explained

Content moderation is the screening of content posted by users on a platform to prevent inappropriate content from being released. This process involves applying pre-set guidelines for monitoring content. If the content doesn’t fit within the guidelines, it’s flagged and removed. There are a variety of reasons for this include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Violence
• Offensiveness
• Nudity
• Copyright infringement
• Extremism
• Hate speech

The point of content moderation is to make sure that the platform remains safe and upholds the Trust and Safety program of the brand. Content moderation is used on various sites, including dating websites/apps, forums, marketplaces, social media, etc.

Is Content Moderation Important?

There is so much content being created every moment that platforms that rely on user-generated content struggle to stay on top of moderating inappropriate or offensive images, videos, and text

The only way to keep your website aligned with your standards and protect your reputation and your clients is with content moderation. This will help you ensure that your platform achieves the purpose it was created for instead of allowing violence, explicit content, and spam.

5 Types of Content Moderation

Several factors are involved with determining the best way to handle content moderation, such as the focus of your business, the type of user-generated content you allow, and your user base. There are 5 main types of content moderation that you can use for your brand.

Automated Moderation

Today’s content moderation relies on technology to speed up the process and make it safer and easier. For example, AI-powered algorithms can analyze the text and visuals in a fraction of the time needed for a human moderator to do it. Plus, since it’s AI, it doesn’t have to deal with the psychological trauma that comes from processing content that is inappropriate.

Regarding text, an automated moderation process screens for keywords that have been determined to be problematic. Some advanced systems can spot conversational patterns and analyze relationships as well

Regarding visuals, some solutions provide image recognition as a viable option to monitor images and live streams. In addition, these solutions have options for setting guidelines for visual content and banning anything that is not within those guidelines or hiding sensitive content so that those who want to see it have that option and those who don’t have anything to worry about.

Of course, even though automated moderation has become more precise and effective, nothing can beat a human reviewing the content, especially in more complex situations.

Pre-Moderation

This is the most complicated form of content moderation in which every piece of content is reviewed before it is put on your platform. If a user makes a post, it is sent to a queue to be reviewed. It remains in that queue until a content moderator reviews it and either approves it (and it is published) or denies it (and it is trashed).

Though this is the best way to avoid harmful content being placed on your site, it’s prolonged and tedious. As a result, most platforms are no longer using this method unless they require a high level of security- such as those for children.

Post-Moderation

This is the typical form of content screening. The site users can post what they want, but the posts are still placed in a queue for moderation. When items are flagged, they are removed to protect other users.

Most platforms do whatever they can to shorten the review times so that inappropriate content isn’t live for very long. Though this is not as secure as pre-moderation, it’s still considered a viable option for businesses today.

Reactive Moderation

This type of moderation relies on users to mark and report any content that they find inappropriate or goes against the standards of your platform. For some businesses, this is a viable solution.

This method can be used alone or in conjunction with post-moderation. When the two are used together, it allows users to flag inappropriate content even after it’s been approved by your moderators, providing you with a safety net.

If you choose only to use reactive moderation, there are risks involved. While having an automated platform sounds great, it also means that inappropriate content may remain online longer than it needs to. This could end up causing damage to your brand’s reputation.

Distributed Moderation

The final type of moderation depends on your online community to review the content and remove it as needed. Content producers can use a rating system to help users determine and mark whether a particular piece of content aligns with your platform’s guidelines.

Since this method can cause a variety of challenges for brands in regard to legal compliance and reputation, it is rarely used.

Conclusion

In today’s world of user-generated content, it is necessary more than ever to incorporate some form of content management into your platform. Of course, in order to make it work, you must first set clear guidelines on what is defined as inappropriate. This way, your content moderators know what they should mark for removal and what can be left on your site. Your reputation is on the line, so you want to ensure that you do all you can to protect yourself and your users from content that could hurt.