Insights from 100+ Demo Calls (and how they helped us enhance our Trust & Safety solution)

Over the past five years, ActiveFence has supported many of the world’s largest tech platforms as they solve some of the most complex trust & safety challenges. I know, many readers are wondering who these platforms are: unfortunately, we can’t name most of them – but the ones we can name include Soundcloud, Brave, Deliveroo, The Trevor Project, TingMe, Trudate, and Audiomack, to name a few. Over our long history, we have provided many of our clients with deep intelligence to fight evasive bad online behavior both on and off of their platforms, and to stay ahead of the most sophisticated bad actors.

As we were doing this we realized that platforms have a huge challenge managing the moderation overload – which led us to start building a content moderation platform. Initially used by our in-house team to manage the harmful content detection operation, this tool expanded to offering a prioritized queue, automations, analytics dashboards, and more. All this, before it was ready to market. One year ago, we made our platform – ActiveOS, available to platforms of all sizes – as we sought to enable teams large and small to handle the moderation process more efficiently.

Now, after conducting demos with teams as small as 2 moderators and as large as 250, from industries like gaming, dating, education, and social media, we have learned so much more about their content moderation challenges. Here’s what we learned, and how we incorporated those learnings into our product:

Lesson #1: Trust & safety teams need flexibility

The problem: No two platforms are alike, and with each platform’s unique attributions comes a set of community guidelines, policies, and procedures. A social media platform will have different policies than that of a child-oriented gaming platform, and a dating platform will need different rules than an audio streaming service. For example, though both may require user and age verification, the child-oriented gaming platform may have zero tolerance towards sexualized imagery, while the dating platform will allow certain types of consensual nudity.

And just as the rules are different, so too are the solutions: detection and moderation processes are a direct outcome of the platform’s rules and audience, and will therefore differ from one company to another. This is true for solutions that are built in house, as well as those using a range of different tools – customization is key.

Our solution: Customization became a top concern in building our content moderation platform. ActiveOS clients can create custom policies based on various detectors, set custom risk score thresholds to control tolerance based on abuse area, customize their moderation UI to fit their team’s unique process, and create custom analytics dashboards to track team performance in real-time – all without a single line of code. Moreover, we took an open-platform approach, where users can integrate with third party tools, AI models, case management software, messaging applications, and more. This flexible approach essentially allows one platform to be a precise fit for many unique teams.

Lesson #2 Every trust & safety team, no matter the size, is looking for a solution

The problem: When we first introduced ActiveOS to the market, we targeted a very specific subset of companies – thinking that an out-of-the-box solution would best fit the needs of smaller moderation teams of up to 20 individuals. However, we were soon invited to demo a range of companies, some with more than 100 moderators and others which hadn’t even launched a platform yet. Companies today are not waiting for trouble, they are proactively stopping harm before it arrives, thinking and planning for safety throughout the product lifecycle.

Our solution: We built a robust content moderation platform that can fit Trust & Safety teams of all sizes. From basic features (like moderation queue prioritization) to advanced analytics that empower managers of large moderation teams become more efficient by tracking moderators’ Time To Handle, spotting bottlenecks, and solving them in real time, we built a solution for all.

Lesson #3: Everyone needs solutions that scale

The problem: Companies are generally seeking longer-term solutions that, once properly implemented, will support their growth from small to large platforms. As a result, in addition to flexibility and customization, platforms were all looking for systems that won’t hold them back as they grow their user base and expand into new countries and languages.

Our solution: ActiveOS’s new plans and pricing models support teams that scale: with unique feature sets that support smaller teams, and scale to handle bigger teams, with new, ever-changing needs. Our free content moderation platform is a perfect fit for single-moderator teams, with essential features like queue management, automated workflows, and detection in 7 key abuse areas, along with a package of text and image API calls. On the other hand, our Enterprise content moderation solution powers teams with hundreds of moderators and users across the globe by providing customized AI, unlimited API calls, dedicated customer success service with 24/7 support, and more. Our pricing plans ensure that you get exactly what your team needs to thrive and scale.

Lesson #4: Trust & safety teams prioritize cost saving

The problem: Like all teams, trust & safety teams must focus on efficiency and ROI. But for Trust & safety teams, that ROI is incredibly difficult to prove. Manual moderation is a burdensome, expensive effort that moderation leads constantly seek to optimize. Additionally, once deciding on the need for a content moderation solution – teams often struggle to decide between building or buying that solution, and wrongly assume that in-house solutions must be cheaper.

Our solution: While it may seem cheaper to use internal resources to build moderation tools, teams quickly find that just like other work tools – moderation platforms are complex. These solutions require specialized knowledge in trust & safety, and their development and maintenance may pull dev teams’ focus away from the core business.

Moreover, by implementing a dedicated tool designed for Trust & Safety teams, such as ActiveOS, with built-in efficiency features, teams report a nearly 38%* improvement in operational efficiency, which brings a huge saving into the cost equation. This improvement stems from unique moderation UI (helps moderators to take faster and accurate decisions), real-time analytics (showing where moderation bottlenecks occur), prioritized queues (that empower moderators to tackle to high-risk items first), easy to set automations with codeless workflows (that reduce the number of items moderators view), and additional features.
* Based on aggregated customer data.

Watch our webinar: Increasing Content Moderation ROI in 2023 on demand, and learn the 5 steps Trust & Safety teams can take to increase moderation efficiency.

Lesson #5: Regulation is challenging for everyone

The problem: While once mostly a platform’s choice, trust & safety has become a regulatory requirement in many parts of the world. GDPR, COPA, and The EU’s DSA are just a few regulations that require Trust & Safety teams to bring compliance into their processes. That said, many teams still don’t understand what exactly is required of them in each country they operate, and what the legal implications are.

Our solution: Trust & safety solutions with built-in compliance features not only help teams get a grasp on what they need to do in order to be compliant, they also help them do it. For example, for DSA, ActiveOS’s out-of-the-box solutions support platform transparency, user flagging, appeals, and notices processes, to name a few.

Save your spot at our next webinar: Unlocking DSA Compliance with 3 ActiveOS Features to learn how the right tools can support teams with this challenge.

Conclusion

Many teams mistakenly think that their trust & safety problems are theirs alone.

By engaging with over 100 teams, we have learned that many of them face the same challenges, both in their day-to-day operations and in their strategic needs and decision-making process. When we aggregate these challenges, we can say with confidence that today we completely understand the needs of trust & safety teams, and have built a solution that fits them like a glove – the rest, can be achieved through customization and ruthless adaptation.

We would love to show you the platform in action, if you’re interested, request a demo below.