Ensuring a safe digital environment has become a top priority for forward-looking companies in the dynamically changing online landscape. 

Trust and Safety (T&S) programs are the essential building blocks of these efforts — both in order to deliver the necessary protection for users and to comply with local and global safety rules and regulations. 

Content moderation is one of the main and most powerful methods within Trust and Safety company policies. It ensures that all user-generated content published and distributed on a digital platform or app has passed a check for its appropriateness and safety. Moderation has become an indispensable tool for businesses of all venues — from social media and gaming to dating and media.   

But content moderation doesn’t come without its challenges, including large volumes of content to be reviewed, balancing between moderation and free expression, and misuse of AI technologies, among others. 

Different moderation methods offer different advantages and disadvantages, and below we take a look at how the various approaches can be used and combined — to achieve a company’s Trust & Safety objectives in the most effective way.

The Content Moderation Challenges that Trust and Safety Teams Face

Trust and Safety teams, whether in-house or external, are entrusted with a challenging task. They have to make the digital channels and platforms of a business safe and trustworthy for its customers by establishing and running highly effective T&S processes — while at the same time delivering on ROI expectations. 

No pressure at all! 

T&S teams have to shape and run a T&S program that identifies and manages risks that can negatively impact users and their experience with a brand. The programs have to be quite comprehensive so that they can ensure a safe and comfortable environment where customers can achieve their goals and feel at ease. This is how people’s trust in the brand can be enhanced — setting the ground for long-lasting relationships with customers. 

Most importantly, T&S policies have to protect users from any kind of abuse while also adhering to safety and privacy rules applicable at local and international levels. And content moderation is the key to achieving both.     

All of this sounds straightforward, but it is certainly not an easy feat. The challenges of getting content moderation right are numerous — and have different contexts and specifics. 

Volume

First, there’s the volume. The amount of user-generated content that has to be sifted through is enormous — and it’s not only text and static images, but also includes more and more videos and live streams.  

Striking a balance between moderation and censorship

Then there’s the delicate balance between removing harmful content, protecting free speech and expression, and avoiding bias while ensuring a great user experience. This complex balancing act involves both ethical and practical considerations that account for legal requirements, cultural specificities, and company goals — all at the same time.  

Regulations

Naturally, legal compliance is a challenge on its own. Safety rules and regulations keep evolving along with new technology, and the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), the UK Online Safety Act, and Australia’s Online Safety Act are some of the prominent examples in this respect. Content moderation efforts have to be fully in tune with the latest regulatory activity — to ensure full protection for users and no liability for companies. 

Generative AI content

Last but not least, there’s generative AI. While AI is powering content moderation, on the other side are deepfake, misinformation and fraud. Voice cloning and deepfake videos are a major threat to a safe online environment, and they create a pervasive sense that nothing can be trusted anymore. As it becomes more and more difficult to spot what’s genuine and what’s fabricated content, content moderation efforts have to keep up.

The Pros and Cons of the Different Content Moderation Approaches

While the present and future of content moderation are tightly linked to technology and automation, there are different approaches — and each of them has its benefits. 

Currently, the most employed approach is hybrid, as it combines the best of manual human moderation and full automation. But let’s go briefly through each of the approaches. 

Manual Moderation 

In the first days of content moderation, it was all up to human moderators to clean up harmful and illegal content. This seems like madness from today’s point of view because people who did the job were exposed to the most horrific content. The growing amounts of user-generated content were unmanageable. The process was harmful, slow, and ineffective. 

Luckily, these days are gone — but human input remains important for the nuanced and balanced content moderation of many online platforms. 

Automated Moderation 

The development of AI created the possibility of automating content moderation, and this has certainly proved to be a big breakthrough in the field. Automation allows for the processing of huge amounts of text and visual data, as well as the real-time moderation of complex content like live streams. Automated moderation is very good at identifying and removing content that is clearly illegal, explicit, or spam.  

Naturally, automation has its downfalls. While precision has dramatically improved since the early days of AI content moderation, social and cultural nuances and contexts can still be challenging. 

Hybrid Moderation 

The hybrid approach puts together the best of both worlds — reaping the power of AI automation that provides scale and efficiency, while adding the precision and subtlety that human moderation allows for. 

The combination provides for a constant balance between the productivity of technology and the social veracity and accuracy that only people can provide. The moderation tools mark content that is not straightforwardly inacceptable — and then it undergoes human review. 

With continuous use, machine learning algorithms get better and better. The input from human moderators helps the AI platform develop a better understanding of more delicate elements in content, as well as their cultural meanings. The amount of content that gets processed also helps the platform learn and improve. 

Buy vs. Build а Content Moderation Solution

Besides the different content moderation approaches, Trust & Safety teams have two main options for AI content moderation that they can choose from. They may decide to develop in-house content moderation tools or to use third-party vendors — also known as the build-or-buy dilemma. 

Each option has its benefits and challenges — and the choice should be tailored to the particular needs of the company and its Trust & Safety team. 

In-House

The path of creating in-house content moderation solutions is seen as giving the highest level of ownership over the tool and ability to craft it according to the specific business needs. However, it is certainly the most labor-intensive one and requires significant internal expertise in the field. 

More specifically, companies have to add to their teams experts in advanced machine learning and AI, AI model training and optimization, and image and video processing. They also have to ensure the necessary infrastructure and resources, which entails computational power and data management. Last but not least, a major factor are the high development costs involved in creating an in-house moderation platform, as well as the lengthy time-to-market of the solution. 

While building an in-house content moderation system might seem like the only way to maintain control and customization within the company, this path poses substantial challenges, especially for companies lacking expertise in image recognition and AI model training. 

The in-house option usually makes the most sense for companies that are involved in digital security, Trust and Safety, and similar fields. 

Third-Party Providers

With the growth and development of content moderation platforms, the option to use third-party vendors has become popular for many companies of all sizes. 

Content moderation platform providers are top specialists in the field, employing the most cutting-edge AI content moderation tools. Since their focus is on building the best possible moderation platforms, they have the know-how and bandwidth to keep up with technological advancements, legal requirements, and usability expectations. 

Using third-party content moderation providers ensures a high level of expertise and efficiency in the moderation process, as well as a guarantee for staying on top of digital and legal threats, but ownership of the moderation tool is not with the business. However, vendors provide solid options for data protection and privacy, as well as a high level of flexibility in terms of customization and features. 

Introducing Imagga’s Robust Content Moderation Solution

Imagga has been developing AI-powered content moderation tools for more than a decade — and the results are impressive. 

Our state-of-the-art platform identifies and automatically removes illegal and harmful content in images, videos, or live streams — including adult content, violence, drugs, hate, and weapons, among others. It boasts eight classification and detection models that target different types of unwanted content. The tool is also equipped to detect AI-generated visuals so that users can be warned about fabricated or fake content and protected from fraud and hate speech. 

Packed with all these capabilities, Imagga’s content moderation platform provides a robust tool for Trust and Safety teams to get their job done in an easier and faster way. 

Rolling out Imagga in your systems is a straightforward process. You can easily deploy the content moderation API and start using it in no time. 

In case you want to make a hybrid mix between automatic AI content moderation and human input for subtleties, you can use our AI Mode hybrid visual content moderation platform. It allows for the seamless coordination and connection between automation that allows large-scale processing and human moderation for precision and nuances. 

Get Started with AI Content Moderation Today

Ready to explore how AI content moderation can boost your Trust and Safety program? Get in touch today to learn how you can seamlessly integrate Imagga’s content moderation solution in your workflow.