If content moderation services is something that you are thinking about getting for your business, here are some important trends about content moderation that you should know about.

1. The demand for content moderation is on the rise
With various companies now realizing the importance of building a strong online presence, the need for content moderators has grown. To keep a brand’s name and community protected and free from unwanted content, moderators can handle the task of screening and removing them. In fact, according to a study, there is a huge opportunity for businesses in the content moderation market as it is expected to reach a value of about US$11.8 B by the end of 2027. This is due to the fact that more and more people are gaining access to the internet and to everything that is in it. This gives everyone, even spammers, phishers, and internet trolls to post anything that other people or businesses may find harmful or unnecessary.

2. Content moderation strategies should involve both humans and technology
More and more organizations are discovering better content moderation solutions which involve the power of both humans and technology. Given the need for better human judgement, the task of content moderation will still largely rely on humans, but to improve a moderation team’s efficiency and accuracy in moderating large bulks of user-generated content to protect a brand’s online community. AI tools can also help protect moderators from content that may affect their mental welfare.

3. Content moderators should be multi-skilled
Content moderation involves more than just basic knowledge of a certain brand. This job will require a team of people who are ready to handle work that may become monotonous and filter through hundreds to thousands of content that may sometimes be disturbing. And for companies to optimize their content moderation team, it’s important to hire people that are ready to take on the role. Here are some considerations when looking for content moderators to hire for your team:

• Proficient with language, region-specific slang and local context
• Adherence to global policies
• Ability to accept concepts that may differ from their own beliefs and opinion
• Maturity and ability to review content that may be explicit in nature
• Driven to protect the users’ freedom to express while keeping others in the community safe from harmful content
• Exposed to diverse culture and beliefs
• Ability to follow a brand’s quality guidelines and content regulations

These key trends can help you have a better understanding of how essential content moderation is in the online community. With a better perspective of content moderation and the role it plays on the internet, you might want to look into acquiring a reliable content moderation solution that is suited for your own business.

5 Types of Content Moderation You Should Know About
Before starting your own content moderation strategy, here are five types of content moderation processes that you should be aware of.

1. Pre-moderation
This type of moderation is for brands who would like to make sure that all undesirable, violent, spammy or hurtful user-generated content are filtered so that only relevant comments are published. This gives brands a better control of the content that shows up on their page, but it has a number of downsides to it:

• Eliminates instant gratification on the part of the user
• Can affect the timeliness and relevance of content, specially those that are time-bound
• Will require more manpower to see to it that content gets published as quickly as possible

2. Post-moderation
This moderation type is applicable for forums or social media pages who have active moderators handling all user-generated content. If you want to make the most of the interactions happening among your online community, then post-moderation is the right approach for your brand. Most social media pages use this type of moderation to give their users and followers to express their opinions real-time. But just like pre-moderation, post-moderation has its downsides, too.

• Once the community grows, moderating real-time may consume more time and resources.
• Moderators have to be available real-time, all the time to go through all user-generated content and to avoid any inappropriate content from getting published for a longer period of time.
• If moderation is not available all the time, there is a risk of spammy, unwanted, violent or hurtful content to slip and get published, which may affect some people in the online community.

3. Reactive moderation
Reactive moderation is when a website or platform gives its users the power to flag any content that may be against their community guidelines. This type of moderation can help you maintain your moderation needs, even when the community grows bigger. Reactive moderation is applied to some private Facebook groups, wherein other community members are given the option to report any user-generated content that they deem inappropriate. The only downside with this type of moderation is that you can not solely rely on it. Reactive moderation can only be paired with either post- or pre-moderation and can serve as a safety net, in case any inappropriate content gets past the moderators.

4. Automated moderation
Another type of moderation that you can pair with pre- or post-moderation is automated moderation. This can help you scale your moderation efforts as it will help improve your team’s productivity in terms of reviewing hundreds or even thousands of content. It does have its limitations as automated moderation can not be relied on when it comes to making decisions about flagging sensitive content. For such content, human intervention will still be necessary.

5. Distributed moderation
This type of moderation is not commonly implemented, but is still present across a number of online forums. Distributed moderation is a form of self-moderation, and it requires the participation of all members of a community wherein the members vote or rate content submissions to determine if they should be published or not. Implementing content moderation will take a lot of your manpower, money and resources, and this is why not all brands decide to do it. But if you want to keep your business protected, it is a process that should be practiced. There is always the option to outsource your content moderation, especially if you don’t have the manpower in-house. If you need more information on how you can proceed with an outsourced content moderation service, our team at Assivo can help you learn more about what to expect from this type of business solution.

Implementing content moderation will take a lot of your manpower, money and resources, and this is why not all brands decide to do it. But if you want to keep your business protected, it is a process that should be practiced. There is always the option to outsource your content moderation, especially if you don’t have the manpower in-house. If you need more information on how you can proceed with an outsourced content moderation service, our team at Assivo can help you learn more about what to expect from this type of business solution.