LONDON (Bywire News) - Voice.com has announced the early results from its community reporting feature. The tool was designed to be a milestone along their path to a self-governing platform in which users could kick off objectionable content using community polls on posts.
With the tool, a piece of content will have a message saying: “this content was reported as objectionable. What do you think?” Users will be able to vote on whether they agree or disagree.
The voting forms a part of their wider reporting methodology. When a community report is submitted the poll begins. Their T&S team will review the content immediately, normally within a few minutes. If it is illegal it will be immediately removed. Otherwise, the poll will be left open for 24 hours.
If a majority of users feel it was objectionable after that time, their team then takes action by either blurring or removing the content.
So far, according to their results, 38% of polls resulted in a majority community vote determining the content as objectionable leading to follow up action by their trust and safety team. The vast majority of the content that was flagged was for plagiarism, and in one case, spam.
In three exceptionally severe cases, they worked more quickly. These involved two instances of violent or abusive language and one of distressing imagery involving self-harm. In these instances, their T&S team took action between one and six hours, rather than collecting votes over the full 24-hour period.
Community reporting is a vital component of the platform’s efforts to combat malicious or distressing content on their site and contrasts starkly with the rather tame efforts of the social media giants such as Facebook.
Facebook, in particular, has become a haven for extreme content. CEO Mark Zuckerberg did little to improve its image when he claimed a post by Steve Bannon in which he called for the beheading of FBI Director Christopher Wray and Dr Anthony Fauci who heads up the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
According to Zuckerberg, the account had not been deleted because he hadn’t violated enough of the platform’s policies.
"While the offenses here, I think, came close to crossing that line, they clearly did not cross the line," he told CNBC.
Voice has set itself up as a very different approach to social media. It is designed in the very spirit of the blockchain in which the community, rather than corporations, are in control. The result, they hope, will be a place in which the community mobilises to keep the platform clear of objectionable content.
(Written by Tom Cropper, Edited by Klaudia Fior)