Online Community Modeling and Moderation

Today, over 5 billion people interact with each other in online communities, ranging from social networking sites to web forums, from video game chats to website comment sections. In most cases these communities eanble participants to connect and communicate with each other in healthy ways – sharing, learning, and befriending each other. Unfortunately, some of these interactions become harmful, and devolve into virulent fights, trolling, cyberbullying, and worse. The most common methods for dealing with harmful messages are through human moderators, keyword filters, and user reports, but these methods all have inherent limitations. In this talk, we will explore how new AI tools, such as community modeling and predictive moderation, can be developed to keep online communities safe and healthy.