Social media platform UpScrolled faces challenges moderating hate speech after a period of rapid user growth, testing its safety tools.
San Francisco: A popular social media platform called UpScrolled is having trouble keeping its users safe. The website grew very fast — almost 40% in just two months.
The company uses computer helpers to find and remove bad words and mean messages from users. These helpers flag about 12,000 things each day. But after the fast growth, they miss more than before and wrong flags happen more often now.
The team that watches over what people post has fewer workers now. In October they had 150 people but by January only 90 remained. User reports of mean messages have gone up by 60%, making the problem worse.
Experts who study online safety say this happens often when social sites grow too quickly. They worry that some groups will be unsafe until the company hires more helpers and makes its computer helpers better at finding real problems.