Using machine learning to detect porn, infrastructure upgrades, UI improvements

Viewly Developers
Viewly
Published in
2 min readMay 1, 2018

Using machine learning to detect porn

Every video uploaded on Viewly Alpha is analyzed with a stochastic process of frame extraction and application of modern machine learning methodologies.

The first iteration of this technology is used first and foremost to detect videos containing graphic nudity and explicit sexual activities. Videos containing such content will not be rejected, however they will carry a “NSFW” label in search results, and won’t get onto the Viewly homepage.

To avoid false positives, the first filtering implementation is highly conservative, requiring 2 detection's on 2 distinct frames with 95%+ confidence each.

Increasing upload limit to 2GB per video

Content creators can now upload video files up to 2GB (previously limited to 1GB). The optimal resolution is 1080p. 4k support will be added when AV1 encoding becomes practically viable.

New Deployment / Infrastructure

We have completely over-hauled our deployment pipeline. All PR’s undergo mandatory, and fully automated unit testing. Further manual testing is done on our new staging deployment.

The node cluster is now managed with Kubernetes, providing higher reliability and scalability.

Using Let’s Encrypt

All connections to Viewly Alpha are TLS encrypted all the way. We are now using Let’s Encrypt certificates for connections between DNS level proxy, load balancers and final Viewly nodes.

Voting Improvements

The stake behind each vote is now fully validated from historic state on the Ethereum blockchain. This makes it impossible to cheat by moving VIEW tokens between wallets.

Further, the voting is now limited to 7 days after the video is published. A full explanation of how voting works will be released when the distribution game is ready.

Design improvements

We have started working on a new channel page design. This design features an improved hero and the grid layout. Creators can now also set a short “bio” or “description”.

New channel layout. Final design is still work-in-progress.

We have also made the error pages and 404 pages friendlier to the end users.

New fatal error view

Try the alpha

https://alpha.view.ly

Ideas and feedback are welcome.

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