Social Media Moderation for Safer Internet Day

Today marks a landmark event in the online safety calendar, Safer Internet Day; a day that promotes the safe, responsible and positive use of digital technology for children and young people. 

This year’s theme is ‘Want to talk about it? Making space for conversations about life online’ and hopes to answer the following questions:

1. What issues really matter to children and young people?
2. What changes do they want to see?
3. How can we all work together to advocate for them moving forward?

In honour of this occasion, we are going to explore social media moderation, its importance in the online realm and what platforms are doing to enforce and maintain the safety of their users. 

Social media moderation 101

Social media moderation refers to the management and review of user-generated content (UGC) and activity on online social platforms. 

Essentially, what this means is that social media platforms have an obligation to decide how to moderate their content in order to protect individual users and their interests. 

While most of us are taught “haters gonna hate”, this unbothered attitude will serve no purpose in the socialsphere. Hateful comments and other harmful activities can have a serious impact on individuals and brand reputations, to the point where users will walk away from a platform altogether feeling as though their interests and wellbeing have not been protected. 

This heavily contributes to the reasons why social media moderation is so important. 

A healthy community will always be the wealth of every user. Through a set of enforced guidelines, the abusive use of racism, violence, discrimination, profanity, prejudices, stereotypes and other factors that can lead to a user’s mental and emotional breakdown, can be prevented. Therefore, social media moderation is the solution to beating a very toxic side of the internet. 

Find out more about community management on social media. 

Common problems encountered on each platform

Instagram 

According to the Royal Society for Public Health, Instagram is one of the worst platforms for mental health issues. 

Among the problems that put Instagram and its users at a disadvantage include:

1. Prone to online bullying
2. Unfiltered sexually suggestive content
3. Misleading articles
4. Causes high level of anxiety, depression and loneliness
5. Lack of sleep (insomnia)
6. FOMO “Fear of Missing Out”
7. Uncensored violence
8. Profanity

Twitter

Twitter, in particular, is among those most prone to abusive UGC due to its unlimited opinions one can upload. The lack of focus behind the scenes on moderating accounts on Twitter is what leads to trolls and fake profiles worming their way into the Twitterverse. 

Commonly encountered issues include:

1. Abusive and discriminative language
2. Manipulation through bots and human-coordination
3. Misinformation campaigns
4. Increasingly divisive echo chambers
5. Cyberbullying
6. Profanity and vulgar words
7. Inappropriate images, videos, and memes

Twitch

Much like Twitter, Twitch seems to be a place where trolls and fake profiles like to accumulate to spread harmful words about other users with no remorse. 

The platform’s most common problems seem to be:

1. Caste, colour and immigration status hate
2. Sexual harassment 
3. Sending unsolicited links
4. Racism (particular towards black and indigenous people)
5. Personal attacks
6. Promotion of physical harm
7. Malicious brigading 

TikTok 

Not shy to controversies surrounding its social media moderation practices, TikTok’s algorithm works hard to encounter the following common issues:

1. Adult content
2. Bullying/harassment
3. Copyright infringement

For more information on the TikTok algorithm and how it moderates UGC on the platform, click here.

How can social media platforms tackle this?

Pre-moderation: this prevents content that does not meet the social media platform’s guidelines from being spread any further on the internet. The post will undergo a reviewing process which will determine whether it is safe to be published or not. 

Post moderation: The opposite of pre-moderation, this allows moderators to comb through an already published post and filter anything out that does not comply with the guidelines. Oftentimes, systems are put in place to filter out these comments.

Reactive moderation: Usually taking place in comment sections and forums, this is where other users will report harmful or inappropriate content themselves. This is definitely a more involved form of social media moderation, as the input and judgement of other users becomes a crucial factor in reviewing and monitoring what other community members share. 

User-only moderation: This is all down to the determination of other users. If a post has been reported or seen as appropriate a certain number of times, it will be taken down automatically. The great thing about it is its zero cost, meaning brands and platforms can use this moderation type to save more on resources for content moderation. 

FAQ’s

Why is social media moderation important?

It ensures that the toxicity of the internet is beat and gives users a pleasant experience online.

How does social media moderation work?

There are four types of moderation:

1. Pre-moderation
2. Post moderation
3. Reactive moderation
4. User-only moderation

What is social media moderation?

This is the management and review of user-generated content (UGC) and other activities online.

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