In the last two decades, digital media has expanded extensively, permitting users from all over the world to interact and upload content digitally. Digital media, especially social media, is now ubiquitous and integral to people’s lives. Like the two sides of a coin, this is both a bane and a boon to society at large. The ease with which online platforms are used by adults, teens, and kids, puts them at high risk for causing potential damage through inappropriate and sometimes even malicious content, which could harm people, brands, and communities.
Sometimes social media turns online arguments ending up in real violence; The deadly protests at the U.S. Capitol in January showed how social media can influence real-world behavior and incite violence. Adolescents, who spend more time on social media than any other age group, are especially at high risk. There are studies that show how and why social media triggers and accelerates offline violence. In 2018, dozens of young people aged 12-19 who were interviewed, acknowledged that social media platforms are rarely neutral. Thus timely and effective moderation of online content is of utmost necessity in current times
As the scale and rate of generation of online content grow exponentially, manual moderation is unable to keep pace, identify and remove harmful content in an effective and timely manner. Today’s AI-based technologies have automated many tasks that humans once did; the same applies to content moderation as well. Automated content moderation allows for rapid and accurate identification of inappropriate content. Here’s a look at how artificial intelligence has transformed content moderation – can machines do a better job than humans in processing digital content?
How can AI assist in content moderation?
Artificial intelligence is bringing a level of accuracy and precision to digital content moderation that cannot be matched by humans. Utilizing machine learning algorithms to learn from existing data helps content moderation teams or moderators review user-generated content decisions.
Some of the benefits of AI-assisted content moderation include:
- Enhanced Scalability And Speed : Automation promises speed and it delivers on it. Managing the millions of pieces of content that appear online every second seems impossible without technology. It can, however, be viewed in real-time using its assistance. Algorithms speed up and enhance the moderation process. Content that is deemed illegal or harmful can be removed in time Dubious content is automatically flagged and forwarded to humans for review. AI-driven automation, thus makes the whole process of content moderation faster, more convenient, and more accurate.
- Automated content filtering : A large volume of user-generated data makes manual moderation and content filtering a challenge that calls for scalable solutions. AI content filtering systems evaluate web content quality through machine learning algorithms, ensuring that only the highest quality content is displayed. . The algorithm assesses the quality of a piece of content based on criteria such as length, number of keywords, and technical depth. In order to filter content, content patterns are identified, such as objects within images or text strings that indicate undesirable content, that should be restricted or screened out.
Typically, content filters specify character strings that, when matched, indicate undesirable content. Content filtering products include:
- Web page screening and filtering.
- Filtering emails for spam and other objectionable content. Screening executable files is a way to prevent threat actors from installing malicious software via executable files.
- Improves Online Visibility : According to statistics, 25% of search results for some of the largest brands are derived from links to user-generated content. This content is crucial, but you must also ensure your brand’s reputation isn’t damaged. Automated content moderation allows users to post as much content as they want while ensuring the content is moderated. A quality traffic generator may attract quality traffic to your website if it is not offensive or against your company’s brand.
- On-the-go adjustments: Manual moderation requires adjustments to novel situations. AI-powered moderation helps improve flexibility by allowing easy adjustments to content screening thresholds and project moderation rules. Automatic platforms can be tweaked in various ways to accommodate current moderation needs. Furthermore, when the automatic review is coupled with human moderation, the process becomes truly flexible. Project batch sizes and priority levels can be changed across systems in order to simplify and speed up the accommodation process for moderators.
- Live Content Moderation : Real-time user-generated content data must be moderated to ensure a safe user experience. AI-driven automated content moderation systems can detect, flag, and remove inappropriate content in real time before they appear live. Amazon web services (AWS) can be used to maintain a live stream clear of offensive content.
The future of content moderation
It is often debated whether AI-driven moderators can fully replace humans. Even if this may not be completely true, in the future, AI content moderators will become increasingly important as the scale of online content grows exponentially. Using various automated approaches, AI can relieve human moderators of repetitive and unpleasant tasks at different stages of content moderation. This will protect moderators to some extent, from offensive content, improve user safety and streamline overall operations. With the help of AI, content can be much better tailored and personalized to meet users’ needs enabling the right content to reach the right people at the right time.
Content moderation helps protect users from harmful content and creates a healthy, online environment. Considering all the benefits and challenges of different types of content moderation, we have to find the most effective method to identify harmful content and block it to protect our community and our brand.
References:
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/06/14/the-growing-role-of-ai-in-content-moderation/?sh=2beef06f4a17
- https://labelyourdata.com/articles/ai-content-moderation#:~:text=AI%20content%20moderation%20is%20about,%2C%20bias%2C%20or%20hate%20speech.
- https://www.truppglobal.com/blog/ai-in-online-content-moderation
- https://imagga.com/blog/automated-content-moderation/
- https://dataloop.ai/blog/content-moderation-machine-learning/
- https://today.uconn.edu/2021/04/how-social-media-turns-online-arguments-between-tteenss-into-real-world-violence-2/
Edited By : Naga Vydyanathan