Outsourced content moderation protects brands and customers by filtering out harmful, false, or violent content. Outsourcing allows brands to rapidly scale and handle high volumes of content via expert moderators.
Read Time: 10 minutes
Table of Contents
Introduction
The digital age has opened minds to more knowledge and, unfortunately, content risks than ever before. False and violent content harms individuals, turning them away from community spaces and reducing their engagement with an organization, even if it wasn’t the perpetrator of the offending content. But with great community collaboration risks come great moderator responsibilities.
Brands in tune with customer behavior are discovering that how they moderate content is a branding decision that can successfully align their values with customers’, increasing engagement as they optimize user-generated content (UCG) across platforms.
Discover the ins and outs of internal and outsourced content moderation in this article to more effectively communicate with your audiences and create spaces customers will want to return to.
Key takeaways
- Strong content moderation protects brand reputation and user trust, filtering out harmful, false, or violent content to create safer and more engaging spaces that reflect a brand’s values and enhance customer loyalty.
- Outsourcing content moderation offers scalability, expertise, ROI, 24/7 multilingual support, policy expertise, scaled workloads, reduced burnout, and cost-effective quality moderation.
- Choosing the right moderation partner is critical. A capable vendor should offer platform-specific experience, advanced tools, and culturally aware moderators.
Why brand reputation depends on strong content moderation
How customers feel about your brand depends on more than just your product or service. Reviews, social media pages, and community forums offer them the specialized, real-world knowledge customers seek before committing to a purchase.
While brands shouldn’t hide any possibly negative review of their services, content moderation protects brands and customers by removing false, hateful, harmful, toxic, or violent content from community spaces, ensuring customers feel welcomed, respected, and safe as they engage in processes.
Strong content moderation sets the tone customers want in a platform.
- 63% of adults in the United States support the removal of hateful content from social media platforms
- 80% of stakeholders will invest in brands based on beliefs and values
- 58% of stakeholders will buy or advocate for brands based on their beliefs and values
Inefficient and inaccurate content moderation can unfairly punish users for harmless content or introduce harm. Learn from these brand-damaging incidents as what not to do in content moderation.
- Pink Sisters Australia and NZ: Facebook incorrectly labeled breast cancer survivors’ posts as indecent, suspending accounts, distressing members, and distracting from the purpose of the group.
- Elsagate: Youtube videos featuring popular children’s characters escaped moderation controls, exposing children to disturbing and sexual content.
- COVID-19 misinformation: Facebook and YouTube laid off content moderators at the beginning of the pandemic, relying on automated moderation that removed massive amounts of removed posts about COVID-19, including some videos that did not violate policies.
In-house vs. outsourced content moderation: Risk and ROI
Moderating content is no simple job. Especially as communities grow, reviewing content becomes a herculean task demanding high levels of investment, expertise, and resilience as moderators enforce guidelines and terms of agreement.
Deciding whether to delegate content moderation to in-house or outsourced teams requires a full understanding of the job, the capabilities of each type of team, and the risks and returns of investment on each option.
Why in-house teams often fall short
In-house content moderation puts intense strain on employees who already have daily responsibilities and tasks, limiting their abilities to fulfill the job in key ways.
- Limited hours reduce the ability to promptly catch and remove harmful content, negatively affecting users and increasing damage.
- Lack of multilingual capacity reduces the amount of content you can monitor, opening your diverse community up to risks you can’t control.
- High burnout of the industry overwhelms inexperienced team members, increasing attrition and requiring high investment in resources hiring and training new employees.
While internal employees are familiar with your business and common communication points of your audience, adding content moderation to their job description is an unsustainable approach that puts users more at risk than it does safeguard them.
ROI and flexibility of outsourced teams
Outsourcing content moderation delegates the work to third-party experts, eliminating the above risks. Help your business scale support and achieve long-term return on investment through outsourced content moderation.
- On-demand scale: Advanced content moderation technology tracks content and trends, empowering you to more accurately predict and prepare your workforce to handle demand surges.
- Trained moderators: Your content moderation partner connects you with experts ready to moderate your content in the languages, hours, and skills you require and with the tools they require to manage or reduce burnout.
- Predictable pricing: Reduce the costs you’d spend building an internal content moderation team by outsourcing the work and customizing your strategies according to your budget and needs.
Outsourcing puts customers and business success first, prioritizing customer and brand safety.
Strategic benefits of outsourced content moderation
More than just a cost-saving measure, outsourcing is growing to become a force in revolutionizing business operations. Leverage the powers of outsourced content moderation by partnering with a BPO provider who can help you capture these vital benefits of outsourced content moderation.
24/7 global coverage
In content moderation, timeliness is key. Promptly removing harmful content reduces the amount of people who could’ve seen it, reducing escalation risks and improving user satisfaction. Work with your BPO provider to provide the expanded hours of coverage you require for proactive content moderation services.
Outsourcing content moderation globally also ensures various audiences receive equal attention in the appropriate language. Always-on support expertly manages workloads to review flagged content efficiently while minimizing burnout.
Multilingual and cultural sensitivity
Dedicated support enables you to accurately scale content moderation. Vet for skilled workers of the language and cultural backgrounds relevant to your audience to increase your moderation accuracy. Prevent the misinterpretation of slang and other regional contextual words and phrases to provide your users with the space they need to thrive and efficiently engage with your brand.
Enhance your content moderation services with multilingual support to help your audiences feel safe and understood.
Policy expertise and scalability
Outsourced content moderators have the experience and skills to strictly adhere to complex platform policies, industry regulations, and community guidelines. They can learn brand-specific terms of agreement to follow, seamlessly transitioning to enriching your content moderation strategy. They can also apply nuance to unclear situations, improving the quality of content in your online spaces.
Count on a content moderator to remove all types of harmful content:
- Hate speech
- Misinformation and false or misleading content
- Violent speech or graphics
- Spam and scams
- Trolling and disruptive content
- Copyright violations
Industry use cases: Where brand safety is business-critical
Content moderation applies to any space hosting UGC, but certain platforms and spaces require higher levels of attention than others. Learn how to apply your BPO’s content moderation services accurately and where they count the most.
Social media and forums
Often what comes to mind when people think of content moderation, social media, discussion boards, community groups, and forums are built around community involvement and can foster relationships between customers and businesses. As such, harmful content can spread like wildfire, negatively impacting your brand and requiring either higher levels of damage control or more aggressive measures to proactively review and take action on harmful content.
These three types of social media moderation help experts and leaders navigate the challenges specific to online forums:
- Pre-moderation: Reviewing and approving content—primarily brand-managed social media pages, comment sections, and forums—before it goes live.
- Post-moderation: Moderators review content after publication, relying on real-time engagement and quick content sharing.
- Automated moderation: Artificial intelligence programs and Machine Learning algorithms scan and filter potentially harmful content, quickly processing data and minimizing human burnout.
Use a combination of these strategies to provide a continuous comprehensive review of your social media engagement.
eCommerce marketplaces
User activity is a valuable source of enrichment and feedback regarding your products and services, but they also need careful moderation. False product reviews and inappropriate seller content and images will turn potential customers away when it counts the most.
To moderate your eCommerce marketplace user-generated content, implement these guidelines:
- Review USG before or promptly after posting. Examine product listings, reviews, messages, and profiles to identify potentially inappropriate content.
- Set quality standards. Filter out scams, counterfeit products, hateful speech, and other relevant standards specific to your brand. Clearly define what is allowed and what isn’t.
- Blend automation with human moderation. Automate flags of clear-cut violations and route uncertain content to human moderators. Provide detailed feedback to reduce errors.
Healthcare and finance
Compliance-heavy industries such as healthcare and finance require the utmost accuracy and privacy. Content moderation BPOs should follow strict measures to enhance compliance and ensure accuracy. Consider these steps for efficient moderation as you look for a content moderation outsourcing partner for your healthcare or finance business.
- Ensure content is up to date, compliant, and patient-friendly.
- Follow all rules and regulations.
- Securely manage public versus restricted content.
- Tailor multilingual and market-specific needs accurately.
- Break up complex information into smaller, more digestible—still accurate—chunks.
- Restrict permissions to teams or specific users.
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Choosing the right outsourcing partner
Outsourcing has the potential to overhaul your operations, catapulting you into success. Strategies, vision, and goals should align to ensure a mutually beneficial partnership. Determine if you’re the right fit for each potential outsourcing partner you research or interview with these suggestions.
What to look for in a moderation vendor
Draw up your must-haves in a content moderation partner. Look for these non-negotiables to ensure successful content moderation risk management:
- Experience with platforms at scale
- Multilingual capabilities
- Advanced tech stack capable of integrating with your systems
- Industry- and platform-specific experience
- Alignment with your needs
- Flexible solutions
- Dedication to your business
Questions to ask vendors
Of course, any sales person can say that they have the features you’re looking for. These questions can help you ascertain how potential providers exhibit the above qualities.
- “How do you handle edge cases?”
- “What QA processes are in place?”
- “How do you handle escalations or legal violations?”
- “What tools and software do you use to moderate content?”
- “How do you prioritize tasks when moderating a large volume of content?”
- “What criteria do you use to determine whether content violates community guidelines?”
- “How do you stay updated on the latest trends and issues in online content moderation?”
- “How do you approach moderating content in different languages or cultural contexts?”
Real costs of getting it wrong
Content moderation isn’t a task worth playing around with. While extreme harm may seem rare, all it takes is one slip-up to lose a customer and overall brand trust. Negative publicity is difficult to shake, leaving your business forever attached to something you could’ve prevented or handled better with the proper guidance and resources.
You may also face fines or legal action, specifically in correcting errors or removing harmful content in healthcare and finance situations. Employees respond to poor internal practices, leaving you with high attrition and further financial strain as you attempt to replace them.
Conversely, high-quality content moderation services can help you realize these benefits of a safe online space:
- Greater brand trust
- Scalable solutions
- Streamlined processes
- Higher employee and customer satisfaction
- More high-quality engagement
- Higher conversions
- Customer loyalty
Conclusion
Outsourcing content moderation is not just an affordable business tactic—it’s a strategic decision to enhance the reliability and quality of your brand. Assess your current risks and scalability needs by meeting with a content moderation outsourcing provider.
Contact Global Response for a free quote of our scalable solutions.
Content Moderation Outsourcing FAQs
It’s the process of hiring external experts to monitor, review, and manage user-generated content across platforms.
It ensures harmful or inappropriate content is flagged or removed before it affects public perception.
Text, images, videos, reviews, comments, and user profiles across social, eCommerce, and app-based platforms.
Costs vary by volume, languages, hours of coverage, and regulatory requirements. Many providers offer scalable pricing.
Yes, many vendors offer hybrid models that combine AI filtering with human review for edge cases.
