In an age where digital platforms are central to public discourse, content moderation is imperative for filtering harmful content and fostering an inclusive community.

Content moderation has become an obligatory service to hire for all companies with a digital presence. In today’s digital world, being present in online channels is almost a needed companion for marketing strategies. So, it's normal to see nearly every company, no matter the industry, has social media profiles, they are on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, and many more. 

Customer acquisition strategies have evolved, and as with everything, it comes with its pros and cons. One of the biggest advantages is that you can directly interact with your customers through social media support, community forums, comments on events, etc. Direct communication with your customers makes them feel part of your community, which at the same time reinforces their loyalty. Their loyalty makes them want to interact with your posts, or even feel the need to contribute with content themselves through user-generated content.

Loyal customers can transform into brand advocates, opening a great marketing opportunity where your customers create content. Having user-generated content creates the need to regulate said content, as you can’t risk your reputation by allowing inappropriate content.
So, in this blog we will explore content moderation strategies that will help you navigate the complexities of online interactions, ensuring your digital space remains positive, credible, and profitable while creating a safe environment for your customers.

Content moderation involves monitoring and managing user-generated content to ensure adherence to platform policies. This includes reviewing text, images, and videos to prevent harmful content from tarnishing a brand’s reputation and user experience. Social media platforms must navigate this landscape while balancing their growth ambitions against the need to maintain a safe online environment.

Company’s main goal should be to create a safe digital environment for their customers to increase their trust. Trust and safety can be built upon regulated interactions and by transforming your social media into a community, making your customers feel part of a group. 

But, what is the meaning of a content moderation strategy? It refers to the act of implementing policies and regulatory actions for the content that your users will be publishing on your social communication channels. There are going to be different strategies depending on your needs, whether it is that you need moderation for social media content, community moderation for forums, or moderation for AI-generated content. 

To implement a great moderation strategy, you must first evaluate what are your needs and prioritize based on them. Also, your strategies must reflect your company’s values, and in order to ensure that, your company should be vocal about them.

Up to now, you already grasp the fundamental significance of a content moderation strategy and what this is all about, but just in case you do get confused: what are the advantages of content moderation strategies? Let us find out the benefits of content moderation that your business will get when you outsource these services. There are numerous, but the most sought-after ones are the following:

Accurate content policies and guidelines

An effective content moderation plan must start with a consistent set of clearly articulated policies that hang together and spell out clearly what the company considers to be acceptable and what is not acceptable. Having clear rules will avoid confusion and disagreements between your users and moderators, and enforcement will be even-handed and consistent. If you have no written policies, then your moderation agents can make ill-informed or erroneous decisions, and this will cause frustration.

You have to revise these guidelines from time to time based on the evolving online trends and your users' behavior. This will make your platform efficient and useful in remaining safe and engaging. Strong policies also ward off legal risks by ensuring compliance for your platform is in accordance with the laws and industry practices.

Enhances customer experience

User experience is one of the highest reasons for success of any business, and content moderation has a very significant role to play in it. By facilitating the ability to screen out spam, hate speech, misinformation, harmful content, and other disruptive content, moderation allows users to engage in meaningful and safe interactions without danger of exposure to inappropriate user-generated content.

A safe and respectful atmosphere will have your users staying longer on the site, participating in discussions, and interacting with you and other users. If your users feel secure from unwanted interactions, they will be more willing to be receptive to contributing valuable content themselves, which will make your community active and lively.

Helps maintain a great reputation

A business's online reputation is established based on the kind of material it posts and the user-generated content it permits. A business that fails to police malicious or fake content is vulnerable to public backlash, media criticism, and even litigation, which provide crippling effects to its reputation. Having an internal or outsourced team with a solid moderation strategy in place prevents such crises by proactively seeking out and taking action against problem content before it has a chance to inflict harm on your brand. With the online world in which users can readily share poor experiences on social media, keeping high moderation levels is key to long-term credibility.

A properly moderated site assures users, along with business partners, that your brand cares about quality control and ethical standards.

Builds customer trust 

Trust and safety are the foundations of any online platform or community. When your users see what a platform does to moderate content, they feel more secure to engage with its content and users. By consistently enforcing your policies and guidelines, you will demonstrate fairness and integrity that will make your users trust the credibility of the platform more. It is especially important to companies that primarily rely on user-generated content, online shopping, or social relationships. If the users perceive their complaints to be heard and undesirable content to be dealt with speedily, then they are most likely to stick around and tell others about it.

Conversely, if you fail to act on their reports, or by permitting abusive content, they will abandon your community and will advise others to stay away from your site.

Protects users from inappropriate content

Unmoderated sites can become incubators for harmful content such as hate speech, obscenity, scams, and cyberbullying. Short of being guided by the right policies, users, particularly children and vulnerable populations, are vulnerable to being subjected to harmful experiences. Proper content moderation makes sure that such content is screened out before it becomes malicious.

Aside from the removal of offending content, moderation also seeks to create an environment of respect and inclusivity, which makes the site a safer place for everyone. This protection is beneficial to users but also to the reputation of the site overall as a responsible and ethical online community.

You need to leverage these and other advantages of content moderation to make a well-informed decision for your company. Evaluate all the benefits of content moderation services and which one of those applies to your specific situation and needs, based on that you will make the best decision.

We have discussed the meaning of content moderation and its benefits, but, how can you ensure content moderation works? In order to create a successful content moderation strategy, you need to include these key components in it:

1. Developing comprehensive guidelines:

It is crucial to have clear, specific norms tailored to your platform’s unique environment and user base. The guidelines should cover content types and potential issues. Remember that all companies have different goals and a platform’s moderation strategy is closely tied to consumer behavior. This McKinsey report emphasizes the importance of engaging consumers directly to maintain strong relationships and adapt to changing preferences, suggesting the need for clear guidelines that evolve with consumer behavior​. Remember that you need to be vocal about your guidelines and make them public in order for your customers to know how to follow them correctly.

2. Leveraging technological and human Support:

Advanced moderation technologies, including AI, significantly scale moderation efforts. Wharton’s research indicates that a platform’s revenue model significantly influences its moderation policies, implying that technology should be used in a way that aligns with the platform’s business strategy. But technology is not enough to ensure a great moderation strategy, you need to have humans overseeing and training your AI systems in order for them to perform at your desired level.

Your human agents will take advantage of AI assistants by having them automate tasks, take care of repetitive tasks, having them provide real-time feedback, insights, and reports, which will enhance productivity. A great moderation strategy consists of having the combined efforts of humans and technology working together to moderate a company’s content.

3. Ensuring transparency and accountability:

To build user trust, establish transparent moderation processes, and inform users about policies. Be sure to disclose content rules, enforce techniques, and appeal procedures. Brookings Institution further explains how transparency can improve moderation and algorithmic performance, and is essential for social media companies.

To foster transparency, your website must have its community guidelines as an available resource for anyone to read, this way you ensure a correct application of actions toward those cases when user-generated content does not follow them. A great way to do this is by letting your community know where to find them, and by being vocal on cases where you need to take action.

4. Learn how to leverage reactive and proactive moderation:

A well-structured content moderation strategy clearly defines those cases when moderators must engage in reactive and proactive actions, based on their goals. If their goal is to prevent harmful content from being published, they can use software or AI tools to help them avoid said content from being published. If their goal is to cleanse their user-generated content that does not follow guidelines, they can take reactive actions with the content that has already been published.

It doesn’t matter the goal your company has, what’s important is to know how to deal with the content. As we mentioned, some tools can be used to filter out content or to prevent inappropriate images, text, or videos from being published. Both moderation approaches have advantages and disadvantages, let’s review some of them:

Benefits and disadvantages of having a reactive moderation strategy:

Advantages: 

Low cost compared to other moderation types – This will require a lower investment since the content will only be reviewed if your users report it.

Scalable strategy – This works well for those platforms that post a lot of user-generated content and the volume will depend on the amount of reported content

It encourages community participation – When you start eliminating the content your community reported, they will feel empowered to report more cases, encouraging them to collaborate with your team.

Allows freedom of speech – Reactive moderation allows your users to freely express themselves, but at the risk that inappropriate comments may be posted on your platform. 

Adapting to current trends – Your moderators can become aware of current trends by evaluating what is posted on your platform.

Disadvantages of this strategy:

High response times – You are putting your team’s ability to quickly respond at risk by letting your users publish whatever they want to.

Higher risk of harm – Your platform’s integrity and reputation will be at risk by allowing people to post anything they feel entitled to, which can lead to your users being exposed to harmful content.

Biased reports – There can be people who can report any content that they consider inappropriate or that they don’t agree with, which can lead to false positives sometimes.

Inconsistent moderation – Depending on the amount of volume your team is facing, there might be some cases in which certain content is not taken down.

Workload increases during crisis – Dealing with a lot of reports can overwhelm your team, causing them to panic if handling a content crisis.

Pros and cons of a proactive moderation strategy:

Advantages:

Prevents harmful content from being published – When you are able to filter or evaluate content before it is published, then you are preventing your audience from being exposed to harmful content.

Your company’s reputation increases – If you are able to maintain a well-moderated platform, you will prevent content crisis and you will have a positive image within your current and potential users.

You create a safe and pleasant user experience – Safety needs to be your #1 priority when it comes to your users, moderating content before it is published allows you to do it.

Complies with regulatory laws – Many industries and countries have strict content regulations. Proactive moderation will help you ensure to stay compliant with those regulations and laws.

This reduces user complaints and the need to report – By filtering harmful content, your users will not have the necessity to report, and this will prevent them from complaining about what is being published on your platform. 

Disadvantages:

Higher costs than a reactive strategy – Proactive moderation needs certain tools and a certain level of expertise to use them and analytic skills to filter out and discard content before it is published.

Over-moderation risks – By being too strict or not having the right tools or people, your platform may over-moderate and prevent legitimate content from being published.

Challenges related to scalability – Platforms that publish a lot of user-generated content will need to have a big team in order to handle the increased amount of content.

Risk of bias moderation – Without proper training and the right tools, some moderators may be biased with certain topics or opinions, leading to the elimination of legitimate content.

False positives – Your team may unwillingly eliminate legitimate content.

5. Leverage content liberties and restrictions:

A solid moderation policy can balance content limits that are needed with freedom of expression. If you allow for healthy controversy and diversity of opinion then it is important to limit content that can harm users. That means setting boundaries of acceptable content, that is aligned with your platform mission and users. Using freedoms and restrictions with content correctly, does allow a free but respectful environment where users communicate freely and do not have the expectation that they will encounter damaging content.

6. Have in mind legal considerations for content:

Content moderation services need to be compliant with content legal requirements, this includes regional and global regulations. Data protection laws, intellectual property laws, and legal prohibitions related to harmful content, including hate speech, child exploitation, violent content, etc. If you fail to comply with these regulations, your company will be faced with financial penalties, damaged reputation, and lawsuits.

A well-thought-out moderation strategy should include a legal perspective to ensure your content policies are aligned with any evolving legal obligations. Furthermore, platforms must have clear protocols in place about legal takedown requests or complaints and any concerns regarding user privacy with their data.

7. Regularly update policies and guidelines:

User behavior and content on the internet is ever-changing, and your moderation policy can be, too. What was acceptable or unacceptable a year ago, may not be acceptable or unacceptable today. Reviewing and updating your content policy regularly ensures your moderation strategy is still equipped to handle the new threats of the internet, such as deepfakes, misinformation, and changing strategies of hate speech. You can also involve legal experts, user feedback, and data in the review and update of your policy, so you minimize any potential negative impacts from enforcement.

8. Conduct regular training sessions:

Your moderators, whether they are humans using AI or not, just humans, or AI tools, are going to benefit from continuous training, making them more effective at their jobs. Content moderation is not a static role overtime, this is a changing role that is constantly evolving. Why is this? Because there are always new trends, new challenges, and new ways in which people can hide harmful messages or content. By providing annual training sessions, you are helping your moderation team stay up-to-date with trends, social and legal considerations, and best practices on how to deal with sensitive situations. Training reduces the likelihood of bias in moderators' decision-making and increases the likelihood of consistency in the decision-making process across platforms. For AI-based moderation, continuous training and adjustment of the systems will ensure accuracy and adaptability to changing content.

As the need for moderation started rising, new ways to implement strategies have been developed. AI has been the latest inclusion for content moderation, so let’s review some of the new strategies that you need to consider:

Generative AI content. Generative AI came to transform how content is created, making it easier than ever for users to generate text, images, videos, and deepfakes. While this has enhanced creativity in some people, it has also been a new moderation challenge to consider. AI-generated content can be used to spread misinformation, create convincing fake identities, or generate harmful material at scale. Moderation strategies now need to detect and manage AI-generated content effectively, distinguishing between harmless AI-assisted creativity and maliciously deceptive content. 

Use of AI in content moderation. To keep up with the increased volume of user-generated content, platforms started using AI tools. These tools can automatically detect hate speech, nudity, spam, etc. This allows faster content review, so AI-driven moderation includes natural language processing for text analysis, image recognition for filtering visual content, and machine learning algorithms that improve over time. You need to take into consideration that AI is imperfect, these tools can misinterpret context, struggle with subtly hidden harmful content, and sometimes it can report false positives. For these reasons, you need to leverage both human and AI efforts on your moderation team.

Ethics for the use of AI. There are several ethical considerations that have become a priority. Why is this happening? Because AI models are inheriting biases from training data, leading to inconsistent enforcement. Being transparent with your use of AI is way more important today for decision-making, ensuring that your users will understand why some content is being removed. Additionally, platforms need to balance automation with humans supervising, so they can prevent these AI tools from making unchecked, potentially harmful decisions. Ethical AI moderation involves refining models to reduce bias, allowing appeals for content decisions, and maintaining accountability in how AI-driven moderation is implemented.

Optimizing trust and safety strategies in your business is crucial for social media platforms to balance growth with maintaining a safe and respectful online environment.

By aligning moderation practices with consumer preferences, leveraging technologies, and enhancing transparency and accountability, platforms can effectively navigate the complex terrain of digital content management.

At Horatio, our experts are ready to assist you in all your content moderation needs. Contact us to take your content moderation to the next level.