Billions of people have come online in the past decade, gaining unprecedented access to information. The ability to share their ideas and opinions with a wide audience has grown businesses, raised money for charity, and helped bring about political change. At the same time, the UGC economy has also made it easier to find and spread content that could contribute to harm, like terror propaganda, abuse, child nudity exposure, and others. The free access to content sharing online creates tons of \u201cdigital garbage\u201d. Billions of users share text, image, video and audio content online on a daily basis. Some of it is inappropriate, insulting, obscene, or outright illegal. If left unsupervised, user-generated content may cause major harm to brands and vulnerable groups. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe free access to content sharing online creates tons of digital garbage.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Companies of various industries and sizes need content moderation as a shield against online bullies. Content Moderation can be performed by people, by AI-powered visual recognition algorithms or by hybrid moderation solutions combining humans and AI. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n The complexity of content moderation lies in the enormous volume of UGC and its exponential growth as existing platforms scale and new ones appear. Companies lack the processes and tools to handle the relentless pace at which content circulates on the web. Unlike the content volumes which grow exponentially, the content moderation teams do so at a very slow linear pace. Additionally, the content moderation job is excruciating and has detrimental emotional and mental effects on employees, causing people to quit and content moderation companies to close business. <\/span> Billions of visual, text, and audio content pieces uploaded daily online need to be screened and filtered.<\/span> Let\u2019s take a look at the number of photos<\/span>1<\/span><\/sup>, videos and tweets shared on some of the biggest social media platforms:<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Facebook \u2013 300 million photos uploaded daily<\/span> The topic has become a top priority for the largest social platforms amid scandals related to human content moderators<\/a>\u2019 harsh work reality, escalating content-related crises and increased public and political concerns<\/span>2<\/span><\/sup>.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a list of online platform types that need a solution:<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Because of the rise of social media, content moderation has become one of the largest and most secretive operational functions in the industry. An army of moderators all over the world screens through the Internet for violence, pornography, hate speech, and piles of inappropriate or illegal content.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n There are two major problems with moderation done by people. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n The first one is <\/span>ethical<\/b>. Evidence keeps piling up, showing that people exposed daily to disturbing and hurtful content undergo serious psychological harm3<\/sup>. Burnout and desensitization are only on the surface, followed by PTSD, social isolation, and depression, according to Sarah T. Roberts, author of<\/span> <\/span>Behind <\/span><\/i>the Screen <\/span><\/i>book4<\/sup><\/span>.<\/span><\/i> The Verge published an investigation5<\/sup><\/span> into the working conditions at Cognizant in Phoenix, a top content moderation company that later in the <\/span>same year left that business6<\/sup><\/span>. Employees have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n The other problem is related to <\/span>productivity and scale<\/b> but should not and cannot be examined in isolation of the ethical aspect. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cUnlike the content volumes which grow exponentially, the content moderation teams do so at a very slow linear pace.\u201d <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n AI\u2013powered visual recognition algorithms, or AI content moderation, hold the promise of addressing both the ethical and economic side of the problem. The machine algorithm can do the heavy lifting, processing and categorizing a gigantic amount of data in real-time. It can be trained to recognize visuals in any harmful content category such as pornography, weapons & torture instruments, brawls & mass fights, infamous & vulgar symbols, horror & monstrous images, and many more and achieve an extremely high precision rate. <\/span> One area where AI models fall short is the contextual understanding of the content and its distribution channels. A video showing an armed conflict between military and civilians might be broadcasted by a TV channel as an important piece of news. But the same video can be viewed as harmful and removed when shared by a user and accompanied by commentary applauding the violence outside of the context in which the violence is being used<\/span>3<\/span><\/sup><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Combining human judgment with artificial intelligence holds enormous potential for handling the tons of violent, pornographic, exploitative, and illegal content generated online daily. The algorithms, processing the majority of the content, and sending just a small fraction of it to human moderators, can significantly reduce the workload for hundreds of thousands of psychologically harming content moderator positions. Furthermore, it is vastly more productive, easier to scale, and less expensive for companies when most of the data is processed by AI.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n As one of the pioneers in the image recognition space, the Imagga data science and engineering teams have deep expertise in developing AI solutions for visual analysis. <\/span>Learn how <\/span>Imagga technology<\/span><\/a> is leveraging the best of artificial and human intelligence to handle every aspect of the moderation needs of companies of any size and industry.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Sources:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. <\/span>Social Media Statistics 2020: Top Networks By the Numbers: <\/span>https:\/\/dustinstout.com\/social-media-statistics\/<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. <\/span>THE CONTENT MODERATION REPORT: Social platforms are facing a massive content crisis \u2014 here’s why we think regulation is coming and what it will look like: <\/span>https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/content-moderation-report-2019-1<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nWhy is Content Moderation So Hard?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/span>The alternative solution, AI-powered visual recognition algorithms, while capable to process and filter enormous amounts of content with high precision, cannot deliver where cultural or other context is needed. <\/span>
<\/span>Additionally, the margin for error is intolerable. Even if a given platform does a great job filtering 99.99% of the inappropriate content and misses just 0.01%, the missed content (false negative) can do significant damage traumatizing the audience and hurting the company reputation; while the incorrectly blocked unrelated content (false positives) raises issues for censorship.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\nUser Generated Content Statistics<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/span>Instagram \u2013 95 million posts daily<\/span>
<\/span>Twitter \u2013 140 million tweets daily<\/span>
<\/span>Snapchat \u2013 3 billion daily snaps<\/span>
<\/span>Youtube \u2013 300 hours of video are uploaded every minute<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/imagga.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/UGC-Statistics-800x538.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nWho Needs a Content Moderation Solution?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\u0422he reality is that any online platform that operates with UGC is facing the same problem. There will be closer scrutiny on how companies are moderating content as regulators around the globe are paying closer attention to the subject.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\nHuman Content Moderation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
AI Content Moderation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/span>AI-powered visual recognition algorithms are exceptionally strong at spotting weapons in images and videos, detect nudity or partial nudity, detect infamous people, landmarks, and symbols.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\nA Hybrid Solution: Combining the Best of Artificial and Human Intelligence
<\/b><\/h2>\n\n\n\nContent Moderation Infographic<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Content](\"https:\/\/imagga.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Content-Moderation-UGC-Infographic-Imagga-1024x5345.png\")
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