What is Chat Moderation & Why it’s Important for Chat App?

Rajeshwari Published On December 17th, 2024 Tech Talks

Users get an inch closer to your brand each time they send or receive a message via your chat app. Every notification, every image, and every audio exchanged through your app builds the user’s relationship with your business stronger and deeper. The more frequent an interaction takes place, the more important it is to consider the app’s content standard and user safety.

If you are thinking about how to add this feature to your chat app development, then the ‘Chat Moderation’ can help retain the sanity of the app.

What is Chat Moderation?

Chat moderation is the practice of managing and supervising online chat discussions, forums, social media, and online communities to ensure that they comply with set standards and guidelines.

Plus, the prime goal of chat moderation is to restrict and address inappropriate content to make the chat space a secure environment for user interactions.

Who is a Chat Moderator?

Chat moderators are usually persons or chat admins who manually moderate in-app messages or content that might disturb the harmony.

What does a Chat Moderator do?

An online moderator usually monitors chat room discussions, forums, public chats, and any online chat space to make it a safe place for conversing.

And as of Feb 01, 2024, chat moderators are paid $30.93 an hour in the USA.

Type Of Content That Requires Moderation

The conversations that take place within your app contain different forms of content. This user-generated content, if offensive or upsetting to other users, may be subjected to moderation. The moderation process varies from one case to another based on the type of content that comes under scrutiny.

Below are the various types of content that can be subjected to reviews

1. Image Moderation 

Images or visual information attract user attention more than any other medium of content and stays in their memory for a long time. Imagine a user coming across an inappropriate image in a chat conversation within your app. This may closely disturb the viewer’s sense of safety and trust in your brand.

But, the solution to avoid such risks is not completely your burden. 

• Developers building chat apps can easily integrate In-app chat APIs with image moderation to control the type of images shared across your instant chat apps.
• A chat moderator will determine if the image is explicitly suggested, banned, or visually disturbing content.

Messages that are regarded as not suitable for the platform can be flagged and removed as per the image moderation policies. These policies can be implemented during the chat service.

2. Messaging Moderation

Text or message moderation refers to the screening and review of text messages that are exchanged during a conversation. Since the content is completely user-generated, the control over each chat thread may be quite complicated.

To resolve this,

• chat moderation should imply that the subject, language as well as sentiment of every message aligns with the brand regulations.
• Explicit text content has to be prevented by reporting or blocking features available for users and moderators. 

3. Voice Moderation

While voice chat is a powerful way to exchange ideas on the app, it is difficult to moderate it.

• Voice chat moderation is prone to privacy issues with practical difficulties in protecting a positive chat atmosphere.
• Since verbal communication cannot be instantly controlled, regulatory actions and warnings may be given to the users who are reported.
• Similarly, automated chat moderation filters and Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven chat moderation makes it difficult to moderate voice chats.

Now that we have learnt the types of content that can be moderated, let us see how to classify moderations:

How do you moderate chat?

Listed below are a few strategies to moderate chats in any online chat space.

1. Automated Moderation

It is the process of using AI-powered algorithms and tools to protect your apps from abusive, illegal, and inappropriate content. During this process, human moderators are refrained from reviewing disturbing content.

2. Manual Moderation

A dedicated human resource carries out manual moderation by reviewing the flagged or reported content and removing it. This is considered as an overwhelming task for any human to scrutinize unhealthy content on a website that can be a bully, fake or illegal information.

Based on the Period of Moderation

1. Pre- Moderation

The process of removing the content before it reaches the recipient is known as pre-moderation.

2. Post-Moderation

Post moderation is the process of screening and removing the content after a user reports or flags a content that disturbs them

Based on Community Guidelines

1. Reactive Moderation

A group of members within a chat community is designated to identify and report any undesirable or offensive content in a chat thread with many active users. The process is known as Reactive Moderation.

2. Distributed Moderation

This type of moderation is rarely used by chat apps. During this process, moderators are assigned to review and approve the content before they get published within a group.

Why is Chat App Moderation Important?

A sense of community is essential for users to interact with your brand’s comfort. However, the free exchange of ideas should not mean the use of hate messages or discussions that are off-topic. Focusing on a healthy chat application development for conversations is a serious responsibility and the effort has its perks.

Below is the list of reasons why messaging app moderation can take your chats to the next level.

1. User Safety and Brand Safety:  Protect your users and your brand from exposure to disturbing content.
2. User Patterns: The type of content in your app reflects the type of users across your app. This helps you better understand your users and ensure focusing on quality leads to your brand.
3. Brand Exposure: The content discussed within your app exhibits how your brand must be perceived by new users. The standards maintained within conversations by a large user community can bring more brand awareness and build trustworthiness.
4. User Retention: Users will stay glued to your chat app if they feel it to be more secure. This sense of safety will bring more users by word-of-mouth. Finally, it elevates your brand value, widening the horizons of your business.
5. Improve Transactions: The more a user trusts your app, the more a chat converts into a transaction. When this happens, your brand starts to see monetary values. 

The Need for a Solid Messaging App Moderation Infrastructure

The point of deciding on ‘Make or Buy’ a chat moderation infrastructure or building a video chat can sometimes be overwhelming. Reinforcing comprehensive security takes a huge amount of energy, resource, effort, and cost.  

Whereas, if you buy a chat functionality that is built by experts, there are hordes of benefits of webchat apps. The chat app development cost can be minimized, apps are more secure and confident, and is inclusive of smart investment and features.

MirrorFly’s Chat Moderation Features

Our expert mobile and web developers have created moderation features for chat apps to protect user privacy and the safety of every conversation thereby leading to increased brand awareness.

Whether it is one-to-one chat or group chats, the moderation feature ensures that any abusive or inappropriate message gets reported instantly. And ban users who are identified as a menace to the app’s integrity.

Here’s a glimpse of how our features get into action:

1. Manual Message Moderation

In this type of messaging moderation. When a user’s message is considered to be inappropriate,  our APIs and SDKs allow chat admins ( or a chat moderator) to manually moderate the messages. Our chat features are built with a steadfast focus on the security of events across your app’s connections, profiles, and chats.

Note: Please refer to the above section to learn who is a chat moderator.

2. User-to-User Blocking

When a user is reported or observed to have polluted the sanity of the app, our APIs give the necessary When a user is reported to have polluted the sanity of the app, our messaging API gives admins to block them. Similarly, a group that is reported for abuse may also be revoked of access to use the app.

3. Ban User

Chat admins can ban users from groups and channels when they are known to harm the security of the chat platform.

We understand that the legacy of a brand stays with the experience it gives to its users. Thus we step in to provide such a sense of security and reliability using our moderation features. Include this feature during your chat app development without a miss. You can explore more features of ours by talking to our experts. 

Using Chat Moderation Features: Get a head start

In summary, when you build a chat app or focus on video chat app development, integrating Chat Moderation APIs can give a safe place for your users to exchange ideas, and discuss topics within the app.

We bid bye with a reminder to ensure a safe community for your users with MirrorFly’s moderation features. Further, if you would like to avail complete ownership of our call and chat features, get our best self-hosted SDK license key by paying only once.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)