15 Things That Content Moderation Services Would Never Tell You

While many web services would never tell you, here are some things you should probably know.

It’s not easy for content moderation services in a world that is fond of gratuitous violence, the objectification of women, and the immediacy of social media.

There are things moderators wish you knew about that would probably make dealing with you a lot more pleasant.

You would be better off, too.

For instance, it’s not their job to protect your brand, they just make it a heck of a lot easier for you to do it. In fact, many moderators take pride in developing API endpoints, customization options, and dedicated support just for you.

Clients who really care about their brands love them. As trusted gatekeepers and enforcers, there are certain aspects of content moderation that only skilled developers understand. While many web service providers would never tell you, here are some things you should probably know.

You have no idea what you’re doing.

Online content moderation is part science, and part totally dodging a PR nightmare by the skin of your teeth. It involves legal issues, copyright infringement, brand protection, child safety, social media management, and more programming skills you’re not likely to pick up from watching a few YouTube videos. If you don’t have a degree in case law, early childhood development, public relations, or computer science — you’re probably in over your head.

You don’t have to follow “standard” guidelines.

Just about every moderation service offers some kind of standard guidelines to ensure quality control. You should think of these as factory default setting and should use any customizations to your advantage.

Nobody is really reading your 20 page long User Agreement.

There is no guarantee it protects you from legal action (more about this later). If it makes it easier for you to sleep at night, then by all means…

You’ll pay more for crowdsourced moderation in the long run.

There’s content moderation, and then there’s crowdsourced content moderation. Advocates will point out that the second method is more cost effective than hiring a live moderator. And, they’re right. What they don’t point out is that an hourly employee will never share your passion for protecting your company’s brand or reputation online.

Nobody really likes search and replace lists.

This feature is standard issue with most profanity filters and plugins these days. Basically, it lets users get away with typing “F*ck”, or “go **** yourself”. There is no sense in this. Seriously. Stop creating a demand for this useless feature.

No profanity filter is perfect.

False positives are a big problem with text-based filters. Words like “assimilate” and nicknames such as “Dick” Cheney are notorious for causing problems for moderation services. Artificial intelligence (let alone call-request scripts) are still a long way from rivaling human intelligence. Lower the bar, or integrate live moderators.

Your legal team pretends to act like they can protect you.

Supreme Court rulings on the issue of internet censorship have changed nearly every year since being put in place. Safe Harbor laws are designed to exclude certain individuals, corporations, or circumstances from laws. There’s one that protects ISPs from copyright infringements stemming from user generated content. And it’s why most of you have 20 page long user agreements. Getting a grip on what kind of content is available to minors is not so easy. The recent rise in sexting, cyberbullying, and snap-chat style image and video services pose sticky questions for the courts. The one thing that is certain? Prevention is 100% better than damage control.

You can’t manage user-submissions “in-house”.

Unless your website really sucks or Google has relegated you to page 27 of their search results, all user uploads are of the high-volume nature. On sites that allow UGC, it’s not uncommon to receive thousands of photos (forget comments and video). Each. And. Every. Day.

Plug-and-Play solutions are for experts only.

Yes, there are many good plugins available to developers and programmers who frequent the cloud. And yes, many web services publish code samples and documentation galore. But, no — you are not figuring this out if you just learned html basics last week.

That community management firm you trust with your brand won’t make up for crappy customer service.

Maybe you thought it was a good idea to put your customer service on Facebook while your site was under maintenance. Stock answers and poorly executed troubleshooting are doing you more harm than good. If you have the customer base to withstand that sort of thing, go for it. Otherwise, your investments are better spent on an awesome support team than moderation widgets.

Moderation means infringing on 1st amendment rights — get over it.

This applies more to users than clients, but still warrants a soapbox dialogue. Content moderation serves two basic functions:

1. to protect children
2. to shape how customers think about your company (your “brand” if you did not already know that)

Your No-moderation strategy will work, for a while.

Social media fails are mostly hilarious. But, it’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt...

Then, the outcomes are downright tragic.

You’re not Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter.

Statistics show that as many as 1 million kids are victimized each year on social networking sites. Taking responsibility for protecting children online means preventing inappropriate content from being uploaded in the first place. Just because social networking sites don’t pre-moderate UGC, that doesn’t mean you should follow suit.

Banning comments on your site is totally lazy.

Popular Science does it on certain pieces. Huff-Po does it for anonymous commentors. While this is a sure-fire way to keep any and all offensive content off your site, there are better ways to achieve the same result.

Building your brand on social media is more dangerous than you think.

According to Neilson, Millennials (1977-1995) make up 25% of the population in the US. We invented social media and this is our turf — not yours. Maybe you already knew that , but you probably didn’t know this:

• roughly 70% of us share stuff about you on Facebook
• your brand’s social impact plays a role in what we buy
• we expect you to be authentic, personal and direct