Top 5 Content and Image Moderation Strategies

Today, it is crucial for website owners to moderate comments, images, and any content that members or site users upload. Some good examples of this concept are blogs and forums. Website moderators may use different techniques. Since some people may upload nudity, gore, or copyrighted photos to your site, image moderation is especially important. These are some ways that you can moderate images and other content.

Pre-moderation

This idea involves an approval system before a photo gets posted. For example, a user can upload a photo to a queue. You look at it and approve or reject it. In this way, you can prevent an offensive image. However, some users may be upset and may become less engaged if their posts do not appear immediately. Also, pre-moderation takes a lot of manual work.

Post-moderation

Unlike pre-moderation, this option lets content appear as it is uploaded. It gets put in a queue, and you can decide what gets deleted. While this option opens the risk of more offensive content appearing, it may be better in terms of user experience. Since people expect their content to appear instantly, they may be more likely to continue interacting. However, the time investment can be prohibitive with substantial content volumes. Also, there is a liability risk for uploading illegal or copyrighted content. When site moderators choose to publish photos or content manually, the site may be legally responsible for it.

Automated Moderation

This option is a cost-effective way to moderate images and content with tech tools. There are often defined rules and other methods to determine whether posts are approved or rejected. One of the most common means is a word filter. If the words that accompany an image are banned, the entire post may not appear. There are more sophisticated tools launched in recent months. Some tools have multiple capabilities that may help you reduce illegal or inappropriate image uploads. Additionally, some tools block the IP addresses of individuals who repeatedly upload prohibited content.

Reactive Moderation

The more cost-effective solution for companies with rapid growth and limited time to moderate content is reactive moderation. Reactive moderation involves reviewing materialafter it gets reported. The online community members report content that goes against your site's guidelines. However, if inappropriate content goesunreported, it may remain on your website, which creates multiple risks for you.

Distributed Moderation

With distributed moderation, the community decides if content should stay or go. Members typically vote to score content, which helps determine if it will remain on the site. Due to liability issues, most sites do not use this type of setup for public posts.

Although some site owners do not moderate any content, that is a destructive choice. Any online community that lacks word and image moderation can quickly turn into a hostile place, and some content can ruin your brand image.