Online dating platforms have to be a safe harbor for people looking for romance and honest human connections — or else they cannot serve their purpose. But the dangers posed by various malicious actors like scammers and catfishers are numerous.
Protection has thus become a high priority for dating sites and apps in their efforts to ensure a safe environment for their users, to shield their brand reputation, and to increase the satisfaction with their products.
Content moderation based on AI is a powerful ally of dating platforms in their battle with harmful content, scams, and fraud. Besides user privacy and safety, content moderation is the key to scalable and immediate filtering, enforcing age restrictions, and protecting human moderators from exposure to harmful content.
In the visual age of our digital world today, especially important is the robust AI-based visual content moderation. It is the only way to perform powerful and accurate real-time monitoring of images, videos and live streams.
Below you can find the seven top ways in which automated AI content moderation helps dating platforms protect their users and create thriving and safe online communities.
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1. Dealing with Inappropriate Content
Harmful, illegal, and offensive content is ubiquitous online — and dating platforms are a primary target for malicious actors that want to distribute such content. It is often included in user profiles, and of course, in private messaging between users.
Having to constantly deal with irrelevant, abusive or explicit content is not optimal for people who turn to a platform to seek companionship and romance. In fact, it is a primary factor in dropping out of an online community — which is exactly the opposite of what dating platforms aim for. Inclusivity and safety are thus of primary concern.
Content moderation solutions based on AI tackle the big issue of inappropriate and harmful content with growing efficiency, accuracy and speed. Powered by constantly evolving machine learning algorithms, these solutions automatically filter out the content that is categorically not fit for the platform. They also flag content that is dubious — which then gets reviewed by human moderators to balance out protection and freedom of expression.
2. Scam and Fraud Prevention
Looking for love — and getting scammed instead. This is a classic scenario that many people either experience or are afraid of, and for a good reason. Dating platform users need, more than ever, reassurance that they are communicating online with real people with honest intentions.
With the help of AI content moderation, platforms are now able to provide this reassurance and protection. Checking the authenticity of user profiles can be automated with scanning of profile photos and analysis of profile information and patterns of behavior that point to scam and fraud.
Content moderation also provides effective monitoring for catfishing and bot activities. It allows platforms to minimize unwanted promotions, spam messaging, ads, money requests, and harmful links sharing, among other inappropriate content.
The AI-powered verification of profile authenticity has become an essential way to provide a safe and trustworthy environment where people can relax and focus on meaningful exchanges with potential soulmates.
3. User Privacy and Safety First
Ensuring a protected online environment is, clearly, of paramount importance for dating platforms — and user privacy and safety are central. In their private communications, people may be tempted to or lured into sharing sensitive private data, such as addresses, phone numbers, bank details, and more.
In such cases, dating platforms can use content moderation to identify and block the sharing of private data in order to shield users from harm and make sure their privacy and personal information is protected.
Other ways to ensure user safety is monitoring for stalking and abusive activities by other users. People can report such behavior, but with content moderation, dating platforms can also be a step ahead and have an overview on user activity that might be harmful for the rest of the online community. In addition, content moderation can provide personalized options, so users can set stricter filters for protection if they want to.
4. Safeguarding Minors
Enforcing age restrictions is a must for dating platforms, since they are targeted at individuals that are not minors. But checking the age of each and every user — especially when minors may try to conceal their age — can be a daunting task.
Content moderation comes in handy in this situation as well. Visual moderation helps analyze the images shared by users to assess their actual age and crosscheck it with the information they are sharing. In case the visual materials show a minor, the platform will be able to apply the age restrictions effectively.
The protection of minors is also active in in-app communication, where content moderation provides monitoring for harmful content sharing, abuse, and other potential dangers for younger users who have illegally gained access to the platform.
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5. Protecting Human Moderators
With the focus on protecting users through content moderation, it’s important not to lose sight of other actors that need protection — in this case, human moderators. Most digital platforms still employ people to check content, especially in more tricky situations when automated content moderation needs human input for precision.
But AI-powered content moderation, nonetheless, has taken an immense burden off of human moderators. In the early days of moderation, it was all up to the people who had to manually go through every piece of user-generated content. The psychological harm that this can lead to is massive, including desensitizing, depression, and more.
Automated content moderation thus is central to protecting human moderators who, at the end of the day, have to make some tough decisions. However, they are no longer exposed to the most horrific content — because it is automatically removed by effective machine-learning algorithms.
Plus, when AI content moderation gets the heavy lifting done, people on the job can focus on tackling the truly complicated cases where human judgment is needed, rather than sifting through unimaginable amounts of harmful and explicit content.
6. Scalable Real-Time Monitoring
Scale and speed of content moderation might seem like factors that only concern the efficiency that businesses seek. But in this case, they are essential for dating platform users too — because they need real-time protection mechanisms that can handle huge amounts of data.
AI-powered content moderation solutions have developed significantly in the last decade. They are now able to process immensely large volumes of textual and visual information and to identify and remove unwanted and illegal content.
What’s more, only automated content moderation can provide the necessary speed of action to prevent the spreading of inappropriate content and dating users’ exposure to it — and 24/7 availability of protection. Visual content moderation powered by AI can analyze and filter out harmful content in real time, at any time, from images, videos, and, most impressively, live streams.
With the growing use of content moderation, machine learning algorithms get better and better. Their accuracy and ability to recognize nuances and different contexts improve — making it an indispensable element in the protection of dating platforms.
7. Positive User Experience
What makes for a positive user experience on a dating platform? It’s the feeling of being in a safe space, backed up by solid community standards and Trust and Safety protocols. It also entails that the dating app or site is consistent and predictable in its policies and actions.
The factors that contribute to people enjoying a dating platform are numerous, and of course, they include how much luck they have in striking meaningful conversations with matching partners. But besides the streak of luck, the focus is on this feeling of safety and of being cared for.
Protection from harmful content, fraud, spam, stalking, predatory behavior, minor abuse, as well as ensuring inclusivity, respect and safeguarding of dignity — all of these factors contribute to the positive experience of a person who has become a member of a dating platform in order to seek love and companionship.
This, in turn, helps solidify the brand reputation of a dating site or app, making it more popular and preferred by people — which in turn, grows the pool of potential candidates for matchmaking.
Imagga’s State-of-the-Art Content Moderation Solution
Imagga is a trusted partner for a wide array of digital businesses that want to provide a high level of protection for their online users through cutting-edge content moderation.
Our solution helps dating platforms, among others, follow their Trust and Safety regulations with state-of-the-art content moderation. Imagga’s platform monitors and automatically gets rid of harmful, illegal, and fraudulent content that can affect dating users — including images, videos, and live streams. It prevents exposure to content containing violence, drugs, hate crimes, not safe for work, weapons, and more.
Imagga has a dedicated adult image content moderation solution that comes in especially handy for dating platforms. The NSFW categorizer ranks content in three categories: NSFW, underware, and safe. We also boast custom model training that allows for tailoring models to your specific needs.
Integrating Imagga’s content moderation tools in your systems is seamless and quick. The deployment of our API is a clear process that allows you to provide effective user protection.
Try Out AI Content Moderation Today
Get started with AI content moderation and discover its numerous benefits for ensuring safety and privacy on your dating platform.
Get in touch with us to find out how you can easily integrate Imagga’s content moderation platform and offer safe dating experiences to users.