The Meet Group and Spectrum Labs Announce Groundbreaking Safety Actions Aimed at Improving Livestreaming Moderation

07/27/2021

NEW HOPE, Pa.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The Meet Group, Inc., a leading provider of interactive dating solutions, and Spectrum Labs, a leading AI-based content moderation platform,today announced an expansion of their partnership to include a significant R&D commitment into voice moderation aimed at protecting users from online toxicity, hate speech and abuse in The Meet Group’s livestreaming products.

“Social, Dating, and Gaming companies are leaning into livestreaming video to drive community engagement,” said Justin Davis, CEO, Spectrum Labs. “With that shift comes a growing demand for effective moderation for voice. With a billion minutes spent in its livestreaming platform per month and nearly 200,000 hours of content broadcast per day, The Meet Group is a fantastic partner to work with in deploying Spectrum Labs’ toxic voice detection and moderation platform to deliver best in class user safety controls for their moderation team and consumers alike.”

“User safety is fundamental to what we do and effective moderation of livestreaming video requires effective moderation of all aspects of the stream, including voice, text chat, and video,” said Geoff Cook, CEO of The Meet Group and co-CEO ParshipMeet Group. “The combination of Spectrum Labs’ technology and moderation solutions with our leading safety standards and processes create what we believe is a model that others in the livestreaming video industry may look to follow.”

Voice moderation is currently a challenge as recording all content is not privacy-friendly in an ephemeral livestreaming video context and existing methods of AI voice moderation are onerous and cost-prohibitive as they require voice content to be transcribed before the text AI can be applied. The Meet Group and Spectrum Labs are partnering to record content at the right time and proactively and cost-effectively detect toxicity, improve accuracy for moderators, and expand safety measures for users.

The voice tracking will begin recording from two different triggers. The first trigger occurs when, upon a report button being tapped, the tool will begin recording the voice track and will send it for analysis. The second trigger will begin voice recording automatically based on the comments in the video. If an issue is believed to exist in the video based on the comments in the chat, the live stream will proactively be reported. If a content violation is believed to exist, the recording, along with the behavior flag and a transcription, as well as the live stream itself, if still in progress, will be sent to one of The Meet Group’s 500+ human moderators who will review the content under the company’s strict Content and Conduct policy to see if a policy was violated.

The expanded partnership announced today also includes algorithmic moderation of all chats sent within The Meet Group’s livestreaming solution and AI private chat moderation.

The algorithmic chat moderation which will be available to The Meet Group apps as well as the company’s expanding list of vPaaS partners will be screening the nearly 15 million daily chats within the livestreaming feature for hate speech, sexual harassment and other code of conduct violations. In addition, private chats will also begin to be screened as part of the company’s ongoing focus on reducing online toxicity.

“The work of keeping our community safe online is never over, and we are proud to work with Spectrum Labs, a trailblazer in AI-based content moderation,” added Cook.

To learn more about how the AI-chat moderation works and The Meet Group’s other industry-leading safety initiatives, please visit The Meet Group’s website.

About The Meet Group

The Meet Group owns and operates the most engaging dating communities in the world, including MeetMe, Skout, Tagged, and GROWLr. Serving millions of daters daily, each month, our livestreaming solutions entice our community to spend 1 billion minutes in video. Our network size, technology, and leading moderation and talent teams enable us to partner for and acquire new audiences, including through video platform-as-service products. The Meet Group, Inc. is a subsidiary of ParshipMeet Group, a diversified international market leader in online dating, which also owns and operates leading matchmaking brands eharmony, Parship, and ElitePartner. For more information, visit themeetgroup.com, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

About Spectrum Labs

Safe online communities are profitable ones; our AI-based Trust & Safety platform identifies 40+ toxic behaviors across all languages enabling Trust & Safety teams to reduce content moderation efforts by 50% and increase detection by 10x. Spectrum Labs’ mission is to use the power of data and community to rebuild trust in the Internet, making it a safer and more valuable place for all. For more, go to spectrumlabsai.com.

Contacts

Press Contact for The Meet Group
Kim Plyler
kim@sahlcomm.com

Press Contact for Spectrum Labs
SpectrumLabs@archetype.co