Gill Phillips Discusses the Guardian’s Policies on User Content at Western Balkans Media Conference
CMDS Fellow Gill Phillips gave a short talk on the Guardian’s moderation policies at the Innovations and Solutions in Media Conference, a regional event for journalists and experts from the Western Balkans.
The two-day conference was organized by Mediacentar Sarajevo and the Citizen Association “Why Not,” supported by the Embassy of the Netherlands, with 100 journalists, media organizations, communications and media experts in attendance.
Gill Phillips discussed UK newspaper the Guardian’s policies on moderating comments on articles. The Guardian uses mostly post-moderation but also practices some pre-moderation, for example by putting some users who repeatedly violate the community standards on a watch list, or by not allowing comments on every article.
The Guardian relies primarily on human moderators but has also developed a machine-learning algorithm that supports human moderators by automatically removing abusive comments. This way, human moderators can focus on the more nuanced content, she explained.
She emphasized the importance of transparency regarding the guidelines under which user-generated content is moderated.