Importance of AI for Safe Content Moderation

Social media is growing in leaps and bounds thanks to the rapid advancement in digital technologies. With this growth comes an attendant increase in user-generated content.

More user-generated content means there’s more work for moderators. The question is whether moderators can keep up. This is why using AI for content moderation has become a big topic.

In this article, we take a deep dive into the world of content moderation and how AI can be used in content moderation.

What Is Content Moderation?

Content moderation is the process of reviewing and moderating user-generated content to ensure that it meets certain standards. This process includes flagging abusive or inappropriate language, preventing cyberbullying and hate speech, identifying fake news, blocking malicious links, and removing spam.

AI for content moderation provides a greater ability to support these strategies. It allows moderators to review more content in less time with better results. 

Types of Content Moderation

Content moderation strategies take several forms. We explore the types below.

Pre-Moderation

With pre-moderation, moderators are assigned to check content submissions before they are made public. When you try to post content that gets restricted before publishing, that’s an example of pre-moderation.

Pre-moderation ensures that all posted content meets laid-down content moderation criteria. One downside of pre-moderation is that it sometimes delays critical interaction among community members in real time. 

Post-Moderation

Post-moderation is the process of reviewing content after it has been published. This moderation stage helps to ensure that any harmful or offensive content is removed quickly and efficiently.

It also allows for greater control over what is being posted. In addition, it provides an opportunity to detect new types of abuse or malicious content. 

Reactive Moderation

Reactive moderation operates based on predefined house rules that users are expected to adhere to at all times. Thus, this system relies on members flagging content that goes against these house rules.

We can use reactive moderation as a fail-safe for pre and post-moderation. If anything ever slips through, you can make amends and mop it up with reactive moderation. 

Distributive Moderation

Distributive moderation is a democratized moderation system. It involves community members casting votes to moderate every piece of content. This means the decision to publish or remove content is made collaboratively as opposed to leaving it to a moderator.

Nonetheless, the voting process is typically done under the supervision of a senior moderator. Distributive moderation encourages participation and gives members a voice. 

Using AI for Content Moderation

With improvements in machine learning and artificial intelligence, AI is now easier to use for content moderation. The use of AI-enabled tools is gaining widespread acceptance, and it can also help with content moderation. Here are a few reasons AI can be useful for content moderation.

Speed

Human moderators will find it hard to keep up, considering the large amount of user-generated content out there. AI can analyze large volumes of data faster than humans. Thus, AI moderation tools can quickly analyze content and moderate accordingly.

Automation

Automation is a key benefit of using AI for content moderation. We can now train automated systems to recognize patterns and detect guideline violations, allowing them to quickly identify and remove inappropriate content. This helps protect users from harm while promoting growth in the online space. 

A huge advantage of automated content moderation is its ability to process large amounts of data quickly and accurately. Automation allows companies to review more content faster. This ensures that any malicious or offensive material is removed before it has a chance to cause harm.

Reduced Exposure to Harmful Content

Human moderators have an unenviable task. They sift through tons of content daily and get exposed to content they will ordinarily not see. AI can step in to reduce this exposure. It will identify suspicious content for proper human review. This means content moderators don’t have to peruse all the content users report. Through this process, AI reduces moderators’ exposure to harmful content.

Specific Use Cases of AI in Content Moderation

We consider some specific use cases of artificial intelligence for content moderation below.

Profanity

Profanity is an important issue to consider when moderating content. AI algorithms can be used to detect and filter out profane words, phrases, images, videos, and other forms of media. This helps to keep content appropriate for the intended audience and protect brands from negative associations with inappropriate language. 

AI-based solutions can now understand natural language better than ever before. This ability allows them to accurately identify offensive or harmful words and phrases in text, audio, and video. Algorithms can also be trained on a brand’s specific rules and regulations regarding profanity. This makes it easier to ensure that all content meets its standards.

Adult Content

Sexually explicit content can be automatically moderated with image processing technology. Leaving human moderators to go through hours of video content is a tough ask. This process can be made faster by co-opting AI.

Abusive Content

Abusive content is a growing problem on the internet. It can be difficult for teams to keep up with the challenge of moderating this type of content. AI can help in different ways by providing greater control over abusive content. Abusive online behavior like cyberbullying and cyberaggression can be moderated faster and more efficiently with AI. Top social media platforms like Facebook use artificial intelligence to detect abusive content before anyone reports it. In other cases, the AI flags potentially abusive content for human reviewers to decide.

To Wrap Up

AI for content moderation has been gaining traction. This is because social media platforms have seen an increased need for it due to the growing number of users on their sites. According to research conducted in 2019, there are over 3 billion social media users worldwide. Not only does AI provide the capability to identify potentially harmful material faster, but it can also help create healthier online communities. Companies can use AI for content moderation to ensure they are keeping their users safe while promoting quality discourse.