Moderating User Generated Content
I want to build a site that has a community aspect to it (remember WordPress back in the day used to have comment sections?), but it seems like people have given up on having users contribute content. Unless you have an army of mods and admins (like Reddit)…
I want to build a site that has a community aspect to it (remember WordPress back in the day used to have comment sections?), but it seems like people have given up on having users contribute content. Unless you have an army of mods and admins (like Reddit) or advanced algorithms to filter out spam and toxicity (like Facebook or YouTube), it seems impossible. I've seen some enterprise content moderation (like Hive), but is there anything for small sites where a $30/month API can filter out content I don't want?
Collected discussion
Actually you can build your own LLM based automated content moderation system that is robust and reliable and costs cents on the dollar of Hive.
r/wordpress literally everyone says just turn comments off. For a small site they say it will just be filled with spam and trolls, unless you want to spend all day moderating.
I considered that, but I thought someone must have done it already and made it a service.
That's in the context of WordPress, and even specifically for people who need someone to tell them what to do. You're on a site right now with user generated content.
I’d agree if this were my personal project but It’s for work and the second I turn on any community features there will be instant traffic (our YouTube channels have 12M followers).
I still don't see the problem. Does it not require an account to contribute? What type of content is this? Why would it not be possible to create some basic regex to catch spam, even after-the-fact and delete it?
Well yes you mentioned Hive as an example but don’t want to spend that kind of money and I don’t blame you because if you build your own it can cost $1 / month if that depending on content volume.
Yeah I’ve started working on something using the free OpenAI moderation API I linked here earlier. But I’m testing to see if I can get more nuanced responses from a standard model too. Hey why not make it into a product if others can use it too
Just for you informations, I test a lot of AI model. I'm pretty happy with deepseek v4 flash, the pricing is pretty good and the model is good too ;) For OpenAI, you don't need the best model, you can use one of the cheapest easily.
"seems like people have given up on having users contribute content" What is this view based on? This is just untrue.
This looks like a great starting point and is free https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/guides/moderation#classify-standalone-inputs
Why not building it, use it and then trying to sell it ? It can create you an income even if it's a small one. You need this tool so why not build it and test it a lot. The product will be good because you're not developing something you'll not use. This is the difference with bad product.
Also it's not only about bots spamming, there's also responsibility to maintain and moderate and legal consequences for failing to do so.
keeping tabs on this post. I'm working on something that's also UGC. need to figure out how to filter out the weird stuff
You could just start off super simple and just rely on the community to report or flag content and in your admin dashboard it would show any flagged content where you could remove or ban users. Depending on how big it gets, that could become a lot, but at first when you are just building up, it should be manageable.
You're worrying about an issue before it's even an issue. You need traffic and users before you even need to worry about moderation. Then, as you start to get bot spam, you can start to implement rules that are adapted to the spam you get. You're overthinking the whole problem before it's a problem.