What is content moderation? Content Moderation is the act of reviewing user generated content in the form of text, photos, and or video. Content Moderators check the content against a pre-determined set of guidelines and rules. Content Moderation is important to stop inappropriate or non-permissible posts.
This is the complete guide to content moderation. In this guide, you’ll learn:
- Part 1 The basics and benefits of user-generated content
- Part 2 The risks of UGC and how content moderation solutions can help
- Part 3 Content moderation methods: Human-based, AI-based, and more
- Part 4 How to choose a moderation partner
Ready to discover how content moderation can help your organization reap the benefits of user-generated content while avoiding the risks? Let’s dive in.
Part 1: What are the Benefits of User-Generated Content?
User-generated content (UGC): Any content that has been created by end users, often to promote a brand’s products or services online.
UGC can include content that may be shared on online platforms such as websites, social media accounts, and other marketing channels, including:
- Images
- Text
- Video
- Audio
UGC may also take the form of blog posts, social media comments, forum posts, podcasts, reviews, and testimonials. UGC is not created by the brand that is being promoted, which can actually be to your advantage as a business.
Today’s consumers are in the position to ask “Why should I trust your brand?” Authentic content created by users allows you to answer “Because other users just like you trust our brand,” without ever creating a banner ad or advertising on a billboard.
There are several benefits to implementing UGC in your marketing campaigns that are worth noting:
1. Brand exposure to new audiences.
Generally, millennials demonstrate trust in influencers, brand ambassadors, and followers that are relatable and consistently create authentic pieces content. When these influencers create and share content that features your products and/or services, this puts your brand in front of a traditionally hard-to-reach audience, giving you free exposure. Additionally, this decreases your expenses, as your brand will be able to reduce the amount of time and money spent on creating marketing content in house and promoting it via targeted paid media.
2. Engagement among existing followers.
To better grow your audience and turn leads into sales, make retaining the customers and followers that your brand already has as much of a priority as attracting new customers. There are several ways that UGC increases engagement with your existing audience, and the following land at the top of the list:
- UGC keeps followers engaged with your brand, creating brand enthusiasts in the process.
- When you share UGC with your own audience, it facilitates trust in your brand’s offerings and boosts your brand’s credibility.
- When followers see their own thoughtfully created, unique content featured by your brand on a major social media platform visited by large audiences, that shared UGC makes them feel appreciated, special, and excited to spread the word about your brand.
- Considering that 70 percent of consumers trust online consumer opinions, sharing customer testimonials about your service or product in the form of UGC acts as social proof that helps followers with their buying decisions.
3. Improved search engine rankings.
Original, dynamic UGC has the power to be relatable to consumers while also improving search engine rankings.
Here’s how the latter works:
Generally, the more content you have on a web page, the more power it can have in the eyes of search engines. When some of that content is user generated, the variety of words and phrases increases, as the UGC creators use their own wording. Often, this is wording that your company may not have considered using, or legally be allowed to use. The result is a page with an array of rich keywords for search engines to see, and a substantially more well-rounded website overall. Additionally, if that UGC includes photos and/ or videos, then this enhanced level of mixed media can further improve your webpage’s rank.
By deploying UGC, your brand managers can improve brand exposure and development, engage new and existing audiences, provide word-of-mouth endorsement, improve search engine rankings, and give your brand the edge it needs to compete in today’s market.
Part 2: What are the Risks of UGC and How Can Content Moderation Help?
There are risks associated with publishing content created by your organization’s community members – A fact that savvy brands do not overlook.
User-Generated Risks Include:
- Unmoderated content published in real time exposes your brand to offensive content
- Unmonitored two-way interactions get offensive
- UGC posts get out of control, taking your brand down with it
Risk 1) Unmoderated Content Published in Real Time Exposes Your Brand to Offensive Content
Publishing user-generated posts and video content in real time means that the information is going live immediately instead of being curated by a moderation team before-hand. By allowing unmoderated content to be published in real time, offensive content can be easily uploaded, damaging your brand.
Anytime you work with UGC in real time, you run the risk of broadcasting highly visible content that could be offensive, even if a user intended it to be funny. Or, a user could share content that simply doesn’t align well with your company’s values.
For instance, a celebrity sponsored by your high-end jewelry brand may have a live interview broadcast from a nightclub on your brand’s website. The celeb, a bit intoxicated, may misinterpret a seemingly acceptable chat question and respond with a barrage of profanity and threats. At the very least, such incidents are embarrassing. In the worst case, you may have upset and lost some of your brand’s followers.
UGC may very well give your brand an edge as a marketing tool, but that content could do more harm than good. Fortunately, you can mitigate the risk of these occurrences with UGC moderation.
Work with a company that has a combination of trained professionals on staff and artificial intelligence (AI) moderating UGC in real time. Both are required, since humans are able to distinguish the nuances of language, photos, and videos that AI may fail to analyze correctly.
Risk 2) Unmonitored Two-Way Interactions Get Offensive
Brands that offer services or apps featuring two-way interactions must be especially vigilant about preventing hate speech, nudity, drug use, violence, or other inappropriate material from being shared. Dating websites and apps are most at risk, but even “gig economy” brands like grocery delivery services or ride sharing digital platforms should have content moderation processes in place.
Anytime a customer, client, contractor, or employee can send a photo that might be offensive, content moderation is necessary. No matter who the user is, it’s important to recognize that two-way interactions are beneficial, but also come with increased risk of offensive or harmful communications. Here are some examples:
- Dating Apps
Dating app moderation can be as simple as setting photo standards, such as permitting only a full human face, and never a meme or a photo with two people in it. Or, it can be as complex as navigating specific terms of nudity that you set, such as allowing partial nudity in profile pics or in two-way interactions. - Delivery Services
Content moderation in a grocery delivery service, for example, may involve stopping a “hangry” customer whose food order was canceled from sending the personal shopper an inappropriate photo or offensive message. It’s just as important that your customers be protected, so all UGC sent by subcontractors should be checked before it reaches them. For example, allowing a shopper to verify with a customer that “this is the item you wanted” with a photo of that item can quickly become a viral social event if the shopper decides to be “creative” with the photo he or she takes. - Back of House Customer Service Platforms
Moderating customer communications is intended to protect employees from antagonistic customers and customers from disgruntled employees. This may involve preventing customer service reps from generating bills with questionable content or reacting offensively, or protecting reps from being berated by customers in live chat. Using a block list downloaded from the web, however, won’t be sufficient prevention. To thoroughly protect your brand and prevent customer billing debacles (such as the changing of a customer’s name to “A-hole Brown” on a bill) look for proficient, accurate profanity filtering technologies that feature custom block & allow lists, the ability to scan text embedded in images, support for multiple languages, and other safety measures so that your customers, staff, and brand are thoroughly protected. - Transportation and Gig Helper Apps
In-app chat moderation must be a priority in the case of communications between a mobile subcontracted workforce and users, such as a ride service hailing company or outsourced task app. Volatile messages between a subcontracted staffer and a user may damage your credibility and your bottom line. To mitigate these risks, look for an experienced content moderation partner that offers efficient profanity filtering technologies featuring moderation of in-app chat among employees/ subcontractors and customers.
How can you protect your brand against two-way interaction risks?
Answer: Make sure that employees, customers, subcontractors, and users cannot send a photo, video or message without moderation. Offensive messages cannot be stopped without pre-moderation, so seek the professional content moderation services of a company that can provide the necessary checks and balances.
Risk 3) UGC Posts Prove Brand Damaging
Through UGC campaigns, companies are using photos, tweets, and videos submitted by consumers to produce engagement and interest in a way that is cost effective. But your brand could take a hit if you let unacceptable material onto your social media platforms. Before launching UGC campaigns, your business must institute a well-constructed policy that is enforced by a team of professionals.
How can you prevent inappropriate UGC from landing on your company’s platform?
Answer: Implement profanity filters, image moderation, and video moderation, using both live teams and AI, to filter UGC. Moderating content is critical to making UGC work seamlessly for your company or clients. Stringent moderation can ensure UGC messaging remains relatively controlled, on brand, and beneficial to your bottom line.
Part 3: What are Some Content Moderation Methods?
You can and should capitalize on UGC, but in order to make it a worthwhile investment, UGC must be accompanied by moderation. Sounds simple, until you realize that there are various forms available to choose from.
The type of content moderation that is appropriate for you can depend on client requirements, business needs, industry standards, and your online community. Before settling on the form your business will implement, examine the various ways to conduct moderation, and take all demands into consideration, as well as goals for your brand’s online presence.
The 4 most common ways to conduct content moderation rely on either human moderators, AI, or both, and include:
AI-Based Moderation? |
Hybrid Content Moderation? |
||
|---|---|---|---|
| In-House Content Moderation | Crowdsourced Moderation | AI-Based Content Moderation | Expert Partner Outsourcing |
| Human content moderators ensure that your brand is always seen in the best possible light by spending hour after hour scanning content. | Crowdsourcing moderation to a network of people in the form of an open call.Crowdsourced moderators are usually anonymous and typically not specialists. | AI algorithms tackle the immense task of locating and removing millions of posts containing nudity, hate speech, weapons, drugs, or offensive gestures. | AI can be used to remove any overtly objectionable content such as pornography or hate symbols. And a human team can review the content for more nuanced and brand-specific criteria. |
| Pros: With a content moderator in-house, you have more control over your content moderation operation. Moderators work alongside you to update content guidelines based on immediate needs. | Pros: Real-time, high speed moderation at low prices. | Pros: AI can moderate content faster and at lower cost than human reviewers. AI can be taught to detect certain words and patterns of content, as well as learn to recognize profanity and other harmful content. | Pros: Accuracy and expertise. Successful prevention of blatantly offensive, brand damaging content and assurance that the featured images, text, and videos support your brand’s mission. As you grow, moderation can scale up and down with ease. |
| Cons: It’s costly to have full-time 24×7 moderators on staff. It’s also time consuming, as moderators will require rigorous training and supervision. | Cons: Moderators are not familiar with your distinct brand criteria. There is no guarantee that crowdsourced moderators will be unbiased. False positives, false negatives, privacy violations, and image theft have been known to occur. | Cons: AI cannot understand context, resulting in occasional flagging of harmless content or, even more concerning, failing to catch inappropriate content. False positives and false negatives have been known to occur. AI trained on millions of examples may still make mistakes that a human would not. | Cons: Far more accurate for brand and mission-critical needs, but can be more expensive than crowdsourced solutions or AI-only moderation. |
There are several moderation variations, depending on whether moderation is AI-based or human-based, and how one or both are conducting moderation. Let’s examine the most common variations of moderation and each one’s ability to maintain security and brand credibility:
What is Human-Based Moderation?
Pre-Moderation
Pre-moderation is intended to ensure that your online community is not exposed to harmful content, safeguarding your brand against legal ramifications in the process. Text, images, video, and all other content are scrutinized by moderators trained to review UGC submitted by your audience before allowing it to become viewable. Pre-moderation is well suited for any company seeking to maintain their online reputation while growing their brand.
Pre-scanning UGC does not allow for real-time posting, which is why some businesses shy away from this approach. Delaying content from going live can frustrate online community members who are accustomed to seeing their posts instantly.
At WebPurify, we address this concern by offering AI-based pre-moderation. AI rejects anything with a high probability of containing harmful content before it can go live, allowing anything with a low probability to post immediately. Any “on the bubble” content can be held back for post-moderation by a live content moderation team within a few minutes.
Post-Moderation
Post-moderation displays user-generated content on your app or website immediately, while replicating it in a queue so a content moderator may review the content after it goes live, so as not to slow down the user experience. Dating apps, some social sites, and other social media platforms will often use post-moderation in response to users’ demand for immediate posting.
Relying on a post-moderation approach comes with significant risk. For instance, dating platforms see tens of thousands of images come through daily. By allowing these images to go live on a site before screening them, companies are taking a significant risk, and their resources are often left playing catch-up as they attempt to take down offensive posts before it upsets users. Even if content is taken down, it is often too late, as users have already taken a screenshot of the experience and shared it.
Fortunately, an expert partner can help mitigate the risk for companies that elect to use post-moderation. WebPurify works with online platforms whose users live stream their videos in real time (which cannot be delayed by pre-moderation). With a combination of our live teams and technology, we address any issues within minutes of these broadcasts starting.
Reactive Moderation
Reactive moderation relies on the community to flag concerning online content, which is then surfaced to your well-trained internal support team or moderation partner. This form of moderation is often used as a safety net in conjunction with pre- and post-moderation to catch any untoward content that slipped through the cracks.
When used as the primary method of moderation, reactive moderation gives members the responsibility of flagging content on the community platform or website that they deem offensive, typically through the use of a reporting button. When a community member clicks on the button, an alert is filed with the website’s moderation team or administrators, flagging the UGC that must be reviewed. The content in question will then be removed if it is determined to be in violation of the site’s regulations.
Since reactive moderation depends on community members, this method comes with the risk of making offensive content visible on a brand’s website, albeit briefly, and many organizations are not willing to take this risk and compromise their brand image.
Distributed Moderation
Distributed moderation is best described as a “jury of your peers” approach where a brand charges their users with the task of content moderation. In distributed moderation, a rating system enables online community members to vote based on an average score.
This score is determined by several community members, and the voting process decides whether or not content submitted by fellow users adheres to the online community’s values and aligns with posting regulations. Generally, voting is complemented by supervision from the community’s senior moderators.
Distributed moderation is often used by smaller businesses that are drawn to the member-forced moderation method because of their limited budget. Unfortunately, some community members will be turned off by the lack of company supervision. And when it comes to mission critical content, relying solely on the community to enforce the rules is an approach that can too easily lead to the posting of brand-damaging content. Distributed moderation is recommended only in combination with other moderation methods, if at all.
What is AI-Based Automated Moderation?
Automated Moderation
Run by specially designed technical tools, automated moderation is responsible for filtering offensive language and other violations in multimedia content by implementing complex artificial intelligence solutions. An automatic and faster way of identifying offensive posts, AI moderation can also help to block the IP addresses of users that are classified as abusive.
Automated technology, however, is limited by its inability to distinguish the nuances of photos, videos, and text in the absence of human review. For this reason, the most effective moderation solution is one that pairs AI-based moderation with live moderation so acceptable content is not filtered out and harmful types of content are detected.
What is “Hybrid Approach” Content Moderation?
A Perfect Partnership of AI and Human Content Moderation Services
The risks of using AI alone were brought to light during the Covid pandemic when many large social media companies were forced to send their live teams home, solely relying on AI. The pandemic completely changed how businesses used to work. AI became a necessity and so companies started using various methods and tools like management software, moderation programs, business phone systems, etc.
While AI provides data that your organization can use to make content moderation decisions, it has distinct limits. AI may catch images that are harmless or fail to catch everything it’s programmed to. On the other hand, it could take months for teams of professional moderators to go through millions of images that AI could process and rank in minutes, or even seconds.
A hybrid approach to moderation, combining human review and AI efforts, is necessary to effectively monitor user-generated type of content. At WebPurify, we’ve been using a hybrid system of AI and live human moderation to scrub UGC for hundreds of brands for over a decade.
AI can be used to detect and reject any overtly objectionable content (such as hate symbols or offensive gestures) before it can go live, and allow any content with a low probability of being inappropriate to post immediately. Any borderline posts can be held back for a human team to review for more nuanced and brand-specific criteria a few minutes later. This allows your company to prevent blatantly offensive, brand-damaging content and ensure that the images, text, and videos that are featured support your brand’s mission.
A Word on Mental Health
If you choose to hire an in-house moderation team, it’s imperative that you prioritize the moderation team’s mental health, as well as their overall working conditions. If you choose to work with a professional moderation agency, be sure they have a comprehensive mental health program in place for those who will be moderating your platform’s content.
Part 4: Choosing a Moderation Partner
If you’re undecided as to whether or not you will handle moderation yourself or work with a partner, consider the pros and cons of both approaches.
| Self Moderation | Partnership with Moderation Agency |
|---|---|
Pros:
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Pros:
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Cons:
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Cons:
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If you don’t take the time to properly evaluate prospective options, the public consequences can be irreparable. When choosing a moderation partner, confirm that the company you are working with does not crowdsource under any circumstances and the team moderating your platforms and apps is working in a controlled, professional atmosphere.
If a moderation company cannot guarantee that it will never store or share any of your data, then they aren’t the moderation partner to trust with your brand. To ensure that the partner you choose to moderate your UGC is qualified to fill this integral role, refer to this questionnaire as a framework: Questionnaire for Selecting a UGC Moderation Partner