Imagine what would happen to your business and what your customers would say about your services if you posted illicit content. Not only would your brand reputation be damaged, but your customers would also be driven away.
In the digital arena, where user-generated content (UGC) is continuously changing the game for business growth strategies, businesses are compelled to employ content moderation to regulate all the information shared about their brand.
Businesses have two main ways of how they can moderate content: they can either do it through artificial intelligence (AI) or through human content moderation.
Let’s find out how these two are different in operations and which strategy is better for your business.
Automated content moderation
Since the production of user-generated content takes place in digital platforms, automated or AI-based content moderation is the most used method.
AI-based content moderation is possible with the use of computer vision, algorithms, natural language processing, and built-in knowledge bases. AI technology screens content for inappropriate information, may it be in text, graphs, photos, videos, or audio.
Overall, AI-based content moderation makes the process of reviewing every piece of content faster—which makes it really important in a pool of exponentially growing amounts of user-generated content.
Human content moderation
Human content moderation, which is also called manual moderation, is the process where humans do the legwork of manual monitoring and screening of user-generated content.
Humans work as a platform’s gatekeepers, acting upon predetermined rules and guidelines. Human content moderators manually screen and remove user-generated content that is illegal, offensive, scam, or anything in violation of the rules.
In relation to the tremendous amount of UGCs, these content also vary in essence. That’s why even though there are automation tools for content moderation, the specifics and subjectivity of one’s content remain obfuscated.
So in order to decipher this subjectivity, you have to employ human moderators that have the ability to judge comprehensive datasets and make content-specific decisions—which can’t be done by automation tools.
Difference between automated and human-regulated content
Allow us to elaborate on the difference between AI and human content moderation:
Accuracy of content
When it comes to analyzing text and speech, there is a range of nuanced variations in material that demands a critical understanding to determine if it’s permissible or not.
Analyzing human speech with varying meanings is an extremely complex concept. The reliability of automation tools to identify content across language categories is limited. Contextual varieties, for example, are not objective.
Needless to say, artificial intelligence is faster in regulating content compared to human content moderation. It has the capacity to accomplish repetitive moderation tasks in shorter periods–an ideal way to categorize a high volume of content.
However, the accuracy of content moderation when it comes to subjective concepts is better maintained by human moderators.
Cost-effectiveness
Since there’s a lot of data that needs moderation, you have to employ a lot of human moderators to get a significant amount of work done. More people means larger staffing, and larger staffing means more payroll costs.
On the other hand, the pricing of AI-based moderation depends on your organizational needs. There are a lot of factors determining AI software costs—from your company’s preference to the type of AI required for certain processes.
Quality of moderation
Apart from the rapidly increasing amount of UGC daily, the overwhelmingly inappropriate subjects observed regularly among them may also take a toll on human staff, which may also compromise the quality of content moderation.
Human moderators are consistently exposed—and highly vulnerable—to content that is beyond the threshold of what is morally acceptable. This may undermine the psychological well-being of a person, no matter how skilled.
In this area, the logical solution would be AI-based content moderation, which can cover a huge chunk of the moderation process. It spares human moderators from seeing and absorbing the most harassing content.
Striking a balance between AI and human content moderation
It’s no secret that there is simply too much UGC for human moderators to work on–not to mention the mental stamina it requires of employees to browse triggering content.
Companies are facing daily challenges to find ways to effectively support them, hence the introduction of AI-based content moderation.
The other side of the coin is that no matter how fast artificial intelligence is, they can’t screen highly complex content that requires a deep human understanding, creativity, and nuance. This is something that only human content moderation can do best.
If companies blend these two, they can produce optimum results for moderating content for better, safer, and more diverse online communities. Both strategies can establish a working structure that allows businesses to achieve the best moderation results in the digital arena.
