What are Content Moderators?

Content Moderators are needed in Online communities and digital platforms. They act as gatekeepers and ensure a healthy, safe and respectful environment for everyone

Nowadays, user-generated content whether it is in text chat or forums or inside communities is ubiquitous. This brings about issues like harassment, foul language, harmful content and misinformation

Content Moderators are individuals or teams or A.I that moderate content to maintain the Online Platforms integrity

What is Content Moderation

It is the process of monitoring, filtering, foul language, harmful content and misinformation to protect chat platforms, forums, service or online communities.

The main motive of content moderation is to create a safe, inclusive and respectful environment for all participants and to ensure company or platforms policies are followed

Types of Content Moderation

Pre-Moderation: This type of Moderation, all the chat and text first goes to the moderator and then only upon approval the text message enters the chat. This type of moderation is also called as Pre-Moderated chat in Chat API and SDK platforms like DeadSimpleChat
Post-Moderation: Here messages first appear in chat room then there are moderators that are also logged in the chat and if they find something offensive they delete the message or ban the user. This type of moderation is also available in DeadSimpleChat
Reactive Moderation: Here some users complain of harassment or foul language and on the basis on the user's complain the moderators invesetigate and if they find something they take action like banning a user or deleting the message. This type of moderation is also called as reactive moderation

Where Content Moderation is useful?

SaaS Applications: Many SaaS applications are user facing and has user communication. Whether it is user to user communication, group chats or user to agent communication. All forms of communication require moderation.

Social Platforms and Community Chat: Social communities where there are groups of people interacting with each other. Whether these groups are large in size or small.

Every Social Platform requires a Chat for communication and where there is chat there is a need for moderation

Moderation is an requirement for healty communities

Education Platforms or Edtech: Education platforms where students are learning and teachers are teaching, requires moderation.

Conversation should not shift from the topic on hand.

All sorts of profanity and bad words should never be allowed on education platforms

Online Gaming Platforms: Online Gaming platforms where players play in real time and conduct chat.

There are Gaming Competitions on the platforms as well. Players also chat among themselves as a group. Thus there is a need for moderation in the Online gaming Platforms

Virtual Events: Virtual events and Live Streaming events where there is video and chat besides the video for audience engagement

Here people come and talk about the event that is going on and the chat also provides a tool for engagement where moderators can engage the audience to participate in the event

Here also the chat Moderation is very important

Finance: Finance chat where traders talk and chat about events and trading techniques are quite important and happening all the time.

Marketplace: There is also the marketplace where buyer and sellers come and chat. Buyers and sellers might come together to discuss deals and negotiate on price and product etc.

Sometime these things can get heated and you do not want the chat to e escalate further

Or if a buyer is talking rudely to an agent of the company and you do not want the conversation to continue and things to escalate

Thus Moderation is required in the buyer seller chat and marketplace

DeadSimpleChat is an Chat API and SDK with built in A.I based moderation for text and Media that automatically deletes bad words and messages, ability to create custom bad words and much more.

Plus tools and features that enable and help human moderators. Like ability to delete messages, ban users, privately give warning etc

Roles and Responsibilities of Human Content Moderators

Tasks assigned

Deleting offensive content: Human moderators have to see and evalute the offensive content and if they find it to be really offensive then they delete the content
User Engagement: Moderators working in community or live stream chat spaces have an additional responsibility to conduct user engagement exercise. Thus keeping the users engaged through out hte event
Community Management: Moderators have a responsibility to conduct community management. That is to see that the audience is on topic about the community and the event and people are not talking about something else during the event. this is along with all other responsabilities that the moderators already have
Company Policy enforcement: Moderators also have to enforce company policy. If the mention of competitors are banned then you do not want audience members comapring your product to different competitors.
Data Reporting: Moderators also has to report the data on how the chat is going on. Is the audience engaged or are the buyers satisfied with the product.
Escalation: If there is something which is out of bounds for the moderator to handle then moderator has the responsability to eslacate the situation to upper management or his supervisors
Crisis Management: If there is a crisis for example the website is not working or the video is not functioning then the moderators have a responsibility to manage the crises

Issues Faced

Ethical issues: Something things people see some under ethical grey areas and it becomes difficult for moderators to decide, whether to delete the chat to let it remain
Burnout: Seeing bad words and bad content all the time takes a toll on the moderators and after a hard days work many moderators feel burned out about the state of affairs as they are projected to constant barrage of bad content that is happening on the platform
Scalability: In large platforms or groups it becomes difficult to moderate with human moderators. You require a large number of moderators with taining and decipiline to moderate large platfroms. Here A.I powered tools and features can complement or replace Human moderators in chats

Training Required

Understanding Policy requirement: Human Moderators need to understand the company policy and thus how to follow the company policy. What type of conversations are allowed on the platform and how to properly deal with users that are not behaving properly
Communication Skills: Moderators need to be good communicators explaining what behaviour is acceptable and how should the users be talking to each other on the platform
Critical thinking: Critical thinking is also very important. What type of content is acceptable. There is many grey areas between what is acceptable content and what is not and content moderators should be able to navigate through this
Psychological resilience: Seeing a barrage of bad on content on the internet takes a toll on the Psychology of the moderators. Thus the moderators need to be Psychologically resiliant when dealing with bad content on the platform

Automation in Content Moderation with A.I and Machine learning

A.I Content Moderation

Auto Flagging technology: A.I has beed trained to identify and flag inappropriate content like bad words and harassment specially technologies like natural language processing and image and video moderation have been a game changer
Natural Language processing: Natural language processing where A.I can process and understand what a human is saying and what is the meaning of the sentences and words have been a game changer in identifying complex issues like online harressment on the platform. A.I can thus flag and ban unacceptable language
Real-time moderation: A.I can be watchful in real time and can process thousands of messages at the same time. Something that is very difficult to achieve with human moderators and thus A.I based moderation has been a game changer in this field
Continuous improvement: A.I can also learn from more and more data that is given to the A.I. Training the A.I with more data imporves the efficiency and ability to the A.I to more accurate flag and moderate content on the platform
Multi Media Moderation with A.I: A.I can also process images for profanity and can also process video and decide if this video is appropriate for the platform

A.I Based chat moderation is available with DeadSimpleChat API and SDK. Easily integrate chat with A.I based moderation and also help Human moderators with moderation tools and A.I

Integration with Chat API and SDK DeadSimpleChat

DeadSimpleChat is an Chat API and SDK provider that you can integrate into your platform. It comes with Customization, Moderation, it is reliable and scalable upto 10 Million concurrent users

Ease of Integration: Chat API and SDK allow for smooth integration of moderation technology into your platform. Think of this as a plug and play solution to add chat and moderation to your platform, website or app
Features: There are advanced features with A.I based moderation and Human based moderation also available with DeadSimpleChat. Banning bad words, ability to create custom bad words, ban/ unban users, manually delete messages, A.I based moderation, automatic profanity filter, Pre moderated chat ( Where messages first need to be allowed then they appear in the chat), ability to create multiple moderators, assign moderators to all the chats or to specific chats, export chat messages.
Customization: Customization chat is also available with DeadSimpleChat. Customize if you want to create moderators or assign them to specific chat rooms. Customize the UI with custom colors fonts, language translation, or create custom UI from the ground up.
Scalability: Moderation Scalability is also available with DeadSimpleChat. The Moderation scales to all 10 Million online participants.
Consistency: A benefit of using A.I based content moderation is that this ensures consistancy in moderation of content. One Human moderator might find some content offensive another one might not consider it offensive. To imporve consistance with Human moderators a lot of training is required
Real Time Monitoring and Analysis: A.I based moderation tools provide real time monitoring and analysis. If you website or app is live 24X7 you might need multiple Human moderators to moderate the chat
User Experience: Great content moderation improves user experience for all the users that are on the platfrom. This helps create an inclusive and welcoming community for both the platform and the users as well.

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Conclusion

In this article we learned what are content moderators and content moderation in SaaS context

We learned what is content Moderation. Where content Moderation is useful. Roles and responsibilities of human content moderators, Automation in content moderation with A.I and Machine learning and integration with Chat API and SDK

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