There are various uses of artificial intelligence. But did you know that artificial intelligence can ensure that people behave well on the internet? Most businesses and developers are trying to reduce inappropriate and rude comments online, which has become very common.
Let’s look at how organizations use artificial intelligence in their favor.
Comment Sections = Garbage Sections?
Be it a news article, video, or blog; the comments section is no longer filled with civil or insightful discussions. Instead, one finds hatred, spam ads with malware, and lewdness. Also, these sections are primarily filled with empty promises.
Hence, businesses are taking extreme steps to combat the problem associated with the comments section. Some are removing the entire comments section, while others use strategies like artificial intelligence to spot and eliminate the comments.
Comment Moderation with AI & Automation
Google has a dedicated AI conversation platform by the name Perspective API. In collaboration with OpenWeb, Google has also tested this feature on a real-time basis on news platforms.
Did AI Moderation Work Well?
The Google study analyzed these websites for comments against community standards. Users saw pop-up messages to edit their comments like, “Let’s conduct a civil conversation. Eliminate rude language from your comment.” or “Few members belonging to a certain community may find your language inappropriate. Can you try again?” Some commenters did not see any intervention message as part of the control mechanism.
As per the research, one-third of the commenters retracted their comment and posted fresh remarks. Almost half of them sincerely took the advice and made their comments more acceptable to the community standards. One-fourth of the users could evade the filter to put forth an edited message still. For example, users would write b o o g e r in place of a booger to bypass the artificial intelligence mechanism.
The other responses involved people revising the nasty part of their comment, not understanding the issue clearly, or commenting on the AI instead of the news article. Many users complained about press censorship.
Google conducted a similar study with Coral that showed that in 36% of cases, all the offensive language was edited out and removed. Another experiment conducted by the Southeast Missourian shows that after AI feedback, there was a whopping reduction in toxic comments by 96%.
These AI reminders have proven effective to some extent. Few people continued posting their unedited comments, while others did not post any comments. Mostly, these are people who did not mean any genuine harm.
However, the phenomenon of internet trolling is overestimated. Most people with repressed emotions made these inflammatory comments. Also, a Wikipedia study shows that offensive content is an isolated phenomenon and is usually reactive. Compared to how large the internet is, 400,000 comments collected by Google and OpenWeb remain insignificant.
YouTube has been very active in case of comment moderation. AI technology is trying hard to combat YouTube’s notorious comments section.
Google is not the only social media platform to implement comment filtering. Instagram has machine learning tools to spot and hide offensive content from people who have the comments filtering option ‘on.’
How Serious is the Problem?
The problem is severe indeed.
How often have you observed a blog post without a comment section or seen a disabled comment box on social media channels? Did you feel disgusted to look at the nasty comments and avoid them altogether?
It’s practical for social media platforms like Google to use advanced technology like AI to keep the internet civil. The internet survives through business ads. Every organization wants to bring an engaging experience for users who visit their website. The more time an audience spends on a website, the larger is the opportunity to gain revenue. Hence, the business will ensure that the comments section is free from negativity, spam, hate, and more.
The best way to fight technology is via technology only. As a managed service provider, we make the best use of technology to help you protect your technology.
Feel free to contact us at 623-312-2440 to know how our expertise can benefit your business. Also, drop your comments below and ensure that they are respectful.