Why is moderation so crucial for platforms? How does it influence customer behaviour and loyalty? What do recent studies claim on the connection between safety in digital space and business growth? And how do we handle this?

Keep community chats safe without censorship. See how Watchers uses layered AI and human moderation to reduce toxicity, block spam and protect your brand.

Safety vs Censorship: Watchers’ Community Moderation

Last month, we boosted opportunities for engagement, which you can get with our social platform at times, with two significant features.

Integrated in-app live streaming, AI bots and many other engaging tools for the content platforms...Learn more about Watchers SaaS product updates!

Live streaming and AI bots: share exciting new features we launched in October

<h2>Live Streaming Tools</h2>Even a month ago, you could use video in our chat only by redirecting video streams from other platforms; now, you can provide a live stream directly into chats, directing RTMP stream through OBS. Their video stream will be transmitted to the chat on your platform. You won’t lose your audience on Twitch, Discord, or Facebook Video because everything they need will be gathered on your platform exclusively.However, redirecting video streams is also possible if you got used to having such events on Kick or Facebook; you can easily embed this video into your in-app chats and gather maximum engagement there.<h2>Easy AI bots integration</h2>Do you have an AI bot, or are you developing one right now? You can add them to your community chats! It’s the best way to keep users busy and engaged and provide all the information they need. You can add any bots you wish via API and activate them at any time.&nbsp;<h2>Small adjustments</h2>There are many more options for a period of a ban: there are seven options now!The user counter works more precisely than ever.If users share their bet with a violent comment, the moderation system hides only the text, but the bet stays in a chat.Nickname block list: You can add words and phrases you would like to restrict users from adding to nicknames. Users will be able to text these words in messages but not in their names.Masking crypto wallet numbers: We used to mask only regular bank accounts and phone numbers, now crypto wallets.

AI moderation for images, changelog, and marvellous iGaming stickers: what we added to the product last month.

Watchers' integrated chats now include AI moderation capabilities for checking images sent by users. Users can communicate in a habitual and convenient way without unpleasant content. That increases engagement and revenue on all type of platforms

AI moderation for images, changelog, and marvellous iGaming stickers: what we added to the product last month

<h2>Features</h2><h3>Live streaming recording</h3>If you provide audio streams on your platform and your users share their screens with some visual materials, voice can be recorded and re-used to attract more users and even for your promotion on social media or other platforms to attract more people to use your service.<h3>AI moderation of images</h3>We provide users with the opportunity to send pictures and allow them to communicate in a completely trusted and healthy space with AI moderation tools. You can activate the AI moderation tool, which will block all inappropriate messages with images automatically. Alternatively, you can activate manual pre-moderation and check all messages before they get into the chat.However, manual moderation is available for both options: if you find the image AI allowed for sending inappropriate, you can hide it afterwards.<h3>Changelog</h3>We introduce changelog on our admin panel! Partners can subscribe to all updates through the admin panel and track platform updates and modifications via emails.<h2>Improvements</h2><h3>Text Input for Bet/Win Sharing&nbsp;</h3>Users can add some additional text while sharing their bets or winnings.<h3>Chat Disable Management&nbsp;</h3>Any partner can pause or turn off a chat on their side directly on the admin panel and add an announcement for users as to why the chat is unavailable and when it will be open again.<h3>Toggle for threads and automatic banning&nbsp;</h3>You can turn threads functionality on and off anytime, as well as the opportunity to ban users automatically based on other users’ claims. You can activate and deactivate these features at any moment.<h3>Several new languages</h3>We’ve added Korean and Japanese pre-moderation tools and localised the chat interface.<h3>Custom settings for stickers and a new exciting sticker set</h3>Partners can add as many sticker packs as they wish, activate several at a time, and assign an emoji to each sticker. When users type this emoji into a chat, the assigned sticker will be proposed for sending despite an emoji.<img src="https://watchersweb-prod.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/af2dd38c-5ca4-4ec8-8736-4465e5846733.png">We’ve also added a default sticker pack for iGaming, which a marvellous Brazilian illustrator created especially for us.

FIFA Pro and Matrix Threat provided the last report on how they protected female athletes from online abuse during the Women’s World Cup. This report showed many significant conclusions and one big gap.

AI moderation tools work differently for integrated chat solutions and traditional social media. Which experience is more successful? 

The ways AI tools protect social media users and sports fans… If they really do that

Sports organisations' approaches to protecting athletes with or without participation of social media platformsTwo years ago, FIFA and FIFA Pro presented the AI tool to protect players on social media after the European final between the UK and Italian national teams, which was full of&nbsp;abuse issues. This&nbsp;tool works as an integrated solution that athletes or clubs can turn on and link to&nbsp;their accounts on the leading social media platforms. All comments and posts with tags to this account that can be perceived as abusive or hateful will be hidden and reported, and the information on&nbsp;the author’s account will be gathered to de-anonymise them.FIFA uses this tool during significant international events. After two years, it’s possible to compare results and the level of&nbsp;discrimination during male and female football tournaments and make common conclusions on what is happening in sports communities on social media and how the social media platforms react to the reported issues.<figure class="image"><img style="aspect-ratio:2416/1606;" src="https://cdn.eu.watchers.io/cfeef98d-a832-44af-917e-4fac77aa665a.png" width="2416" height="1606"></figure>©FIFAAccording to the last reports after the Women’s World Cup 2023 and its compartments with&nbsp;World Cup 2022, the level of&nbsp;discrimination, abuse and hate speech is higher for female tournaments than male ones.<blockquote>“0.14% of posts and comments captured for analysis during the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023 by the monitoring system were confirmed to be abusive (7k out of&nbsp;5.1m). 0.10% of&nbsp;captured posts and comments during FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 were confirmed to&nbsp;be abusive (19k out of&nbsp;20m).“</blockquote>Also, the types of hate speech have changed. If during the World Cup Qatar, the most popular hateful comments were linked to racism, the most popular types of abusive comments during the Women's tournament are sexism and homophobia. The report even shows separate graphs for different countries, so we can see that haters worldwide find their own reasons to hate. All of&nbsp;this information is useful and significant, and this system can help athletes and other sports representatives avoid direct hate speech. However, we should remember that there is much more hate on social media outside&nbsp;official accounts, and authors of such comments do not so often tag the persons they address. So, while protecting just athletes’ and teams’ accounts, we don’t protect users, fans, families and friends of these athletes, as well as the unofficial accounts of these people.This latest report highlights a crucial point: X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram could ignore half of the reports until moderators intervened directly.&nbsp;<blockquote>“X has by far the highest volume of dentified, targeted discriminatory, abusive or threatening content, with initial takedown rates of&nbsp;39%. Where there was additional escalation to X after failure to act on immediate automated reporting, a takedown rate of over 95% was recorded—highlighting the value of&nbsp;direct platform engagement. The ability to escalate was not made available by all platforms.”</blockquote>Abusive comments on social media are a pervasive issue for various sports organisations. To tackle this problem, the French Tennis Federation (FFT) offered free access to the Bodyguard AI social media monitoring software during the Roland Garros tennis Grand Slam tournament. Similar to the FIFA tool, participants in the tournament could use this tool to moderate comments in real time. It also analysed responses in less than 200 milliseconds.<h2>What can you do to protect your audience?</h2>While AI-powered moderation tools are impressive, we must acknowledge that they only treat the symptoms of online harassment, not the underlying problem. Organisations have taken steps towards a solution by launching investigations and penalising those responsible for cyberbullying. Still, this approach is impractical for regular users who simply want to follow sports media accounts or engage with other fans.So, problems that are not solved:<ol><li data-list="bullet">If it is not a team's or player's official account, protection doesn’t work.</li><li data-list="bullet">Regular users are not protected.</li><li data-list="bullet">Social media platforms themselves do not participate in the process of protection.</li></ol>Because we provide public community chats, we see the importance of fast and furious moderation tools for all participants. We are developing tools that can detect all abusive and hateful comments and messages, regardless of who or for whom they were intended. We have three ML models, each more suitable for different cases. These tools can recognise various languages and check every message based on the particular language dictionary.Also, Watchers AI tools can be set to a specific topic of messages, because chats about horror movies and sports betting should be moderated differently. Our models aim to determine the optimal approach for each type of chat. Partners can also set the model's strictness level, depending on the particular platform’s policy or the average age of the users.So, abuse issues can be addressed in separate social media spaces, but what about the gigantic social media platforms? Will the number of such cases be increasing from tournament to tournament, from day to day? Will see.***<a style="background-color:transparent;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://watchers.io/form">Connect with</a> us to discuss real-time AI-powered moderation that protects your users and viewers, and builds a trusted and healthy space for them in live public and private chats.

Events, releases, and partnerships we've gotten have this year.

iGB L!VE, MWC in Barcelona, IBS in Amsterdam and Web Summits in Lisbon and Valencia, ML modes for precise moderation, and tools for seamless tech support... See what else Watchers team visited and made last year.

2023: What have we done

<div style="font-size:14px;line-height:1;" id="toc">On this page&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#product-updates">Product updates</a>&nbsp;<a href="#new-partners">New partners</a>&nbsp;<a href="#expos">Conferences, expos, and pitches</a>&nbsp;<hr><h2 id="product-updates">Product updates</h2><h3>The developed admin panel for ruling the whole chat service</h3>Everything that partners want to do, they can achieve through the admin panel, from moderation to customisation and localisation. It is helpful because the partner controls the whole system, and everything is based in one place. Also, partners can try different settings on their own side and decide what works better.<h3>AI bot</h3>Everyone will remember 2023 as a year when AI became habitual. We have gotten used to asking about everything, so from the beginning, it was essential for us to use this technology for meaningful conversations that matter. So, we integrated an AI bot to chat. Now, we are continuously developing a bot to make it more thoughtful as a participant in conversations on different topics and a good adviser for users.<h3>ML model for moderation</h3>We’ve created an AI model for moderation that can moderate users’ messages in real-time and keep a healthy and trusted space for any platform and chat, even without actual moderators.<h3>Improved UX</h3>Our big goal is to help grow partners' metrics and boost business, but it's impossible when your end users are unhappy. So, we do everything to improve user experience and make chats developed, convenient, and just nice for use. We are constantly developing the look and feel of chats that make users return there and discuss their favourite things.<h3>Audio communication tools</h3>Audio streaming is an additional feature, but it still should be perfect. So, since this year, we have provided a tool for audio recording, an opportunity for users to set sound while joining, users can add events to the calendar if it's planned and many other things that make the process of providing and joining the stream better.<h3>Tech support</h3>We continually work on seamlessly transferring users' messages about technical issues to your support team. It helps solve users' problems faster and grow their loyalty. They just think that if they have something wrong, your team will fix it immediately.<h2 id="new-partners">New Partners</h2>This year, we've started partnerships with nine companies. Still, it means even more platforms with our integration because there are operators among our partners who provide services for different end products.Since this year, we have been working with many new locations—we've started to expand our geo to several African and LatAm countries, of course, continuing to work with the European Union and CIS.&nbsp;We expanded the areas and domains of platforms we integrated to: we started the partnership with the fantasy game app and an invite-only sports betting exchange platform. Of course, we will move further and develop our product for new domains because qualitative communication is significant for different people with various interests.Of course, we continued to develop our existing partnerships with sports, video and trading platforms and saw significant growth in numbers.&nbsp;<h2 id="expos">Events, conferences, and pitches</h2>Networking is a king, just like content, so we were glad to participate in different events this year, such as <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://igamingbusiness.com/events/igb-live/">iGB L!VE</a>, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.mwcbarcelona.com/">MWC</a> in Barcelona, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://show.ibc.org/">IBC</a> in Amsterdam and <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://websummit.com/women-in-tech/">Web Summit</a> in Lisbon and Valencia.<figure class="image" style="margin-bottom:1vw;"><img style="aspect-ratio:1000/562;" src="https://cdn.eu.watchers.io/38d6fdfc-20ca-43d8-ac7d-11f743326a3b.png" alt="Yana Barden at SBC Barcelona" width="1000" height="562"><figcaption>Yana Barden at SBC Barcelona</figcaption></figure>Also, it was not just about networking but technological development because some of these events have benefits and give participants new opportunities.&nbsp;Below are more details about three of the most exciting.<h3><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.vestbee.com/aim-high-ai-bootcamp-for-female-founders">AI Bootcamp for Female Founders, powered by AWS Startup Loft Accelerator</a></h3>Watchers was among 17 great startups whose co-founders estimate the power of AI and seek solutions and help that artificial intelligence can give. Also, we participated in the first-ever AWS Women's Demo Week in London, where startups from around the globe were gathered.<h3><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://labs.uk.barclays/what-we-offer/our-programmes/female-founder-accelerator/">Barclays Eagle Labs Female Founder</a></h3>We joined an accelerator that helps female founders' companies grow and become successful across the UK. We were networking, pitching, connecting to investors and potential partners, and presenting our solution on the Female Founder Accelerator Demo Day, which AccelerateHER provided.<h3><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://sigma.world/">SIGMA</a></h3>The last edition of the SiGMA Europe conference, a significant iGaming event, gathered more than 25 thousand top industry professionals in Malta. We not only attended but also joined the Pitch Startup competition as a finalist.<hr>Next year promises to be even more exciting. The following event we will join is ICE London. See you there!</div>

How the accelerator powered by AWS Startup Loft Accelerator finished.

Watchers’ CEO Yana Barden participated in the final event of the AI Bootcamp for Female Founders and presented our solution among 17 inspiring startups.

AI Sports Assistant: the feature we presented on the final AI Bootcamp for Female Founders

Last Tuesday, Watchers’ CEO Yana Barden participated in the final event of the AI Bootcamp for Female Founders and presented our solution among 17 inspiring startups.In the final demo, we presented our new feature based on AI. If we used AI earlier to provide health space for final users, providing a moderation system based on AI tools, we now create content with the help of this technology. Our AI Sports Assistant is a marvellous source of knowledge for all sports fans. These tools can be added to our integrated chats and be a useful interlocutor for all users. They can conveniently get checked clear information about athletes, teams, and sports in general and always have this assistant for smart and immersed conversations.We are in the first steps of developing the tool, but we know it can be a crucial and killer feature for our partners and get levelled up for the platforms.

Blog with tag: AI