Combating Trolls: Our Policy on Offensive and Hateful Language
As anyone who’s spent time online can testify, the internet has the potential to be a very unkind and volatile space. In too many circumstances, unfettered freedom is abused by a lowly subset of keyboard warriors known as trolls; these unabashedly offensive users spend their time spewing toxic nonsense into the collective consciousness of the internet, and deserve no attention. The very last thing that the internet (and by extension, the world) needs is another place for ignorant and vitriolic speech. That’s why we’re so committed to combating trolls here at GawkBox.
As such, we are rolling out a more robust check on certain words that our less reputable users like to use to signup for GawkBox. This check, in conjunction with email verification, will systematically remove these prowling trolls who’ve become fond of annoying our devoted users.
A look behind the curtain — how did you do it?
To build an effective troll elimination system, our engineers used something called a “regular expression” in computer science terms, or regex for short. A regex algorithm is a common utility for locating certain works and expression. To quote a commonly-used definition:
— [Regular expressions are] a sequence of characters that define a search pattern. Usually this pattern is then used by string searching algorithms for “find” or “find and replace” operations on strings. —
Basically, we’re hunting for certain words found in our Nasty Words List. We’re preforming this action on the front-end of GawkBox (what users see) and the back-end (Our databases and logs) to provide two walls of protection.
Still, no system can effectively find every variation of every offensive word or phrase, and we know that some users will go to great lengths to offend and annoy. Please report any username abuse to our support team at GawkBox.zendesk.com. GawkBox is devoted to helping you bring live streaming to life, as well as grow a supportive and healthy community. Help us oust the trolls!
That’s all for now.
— GawkBox Engineering Team
