🐱 Discord Buys AI Company To Help Combat Hate Speech And Harassment

https://www.thegamer.com/discord-buys-sentropy-ai-harassment/

Like any major social media platform, Discord has its fair share of unsavory elements using its services. As Kotaku notes, alt-right groups have been known to use Discord to coordinate their hate campaigns and harass particular targets online.

Discord's current moderation tools allow it to shut down hate groups when they spring up, but it's a manual process that relies on humans reporting bad behavior. However, Discord is about to add a powerful new weapon in its fight against hate and harassment.

Earlier this week, Sentropy CEO John Redgrave announced that his company had just been acquired by Discord to help moderate that massive chat platform.

"Three years after starting this company with Michele, Ethan, and Taylor, I’m thrilled to announce that we’re joining Discord to continue fighting against hate and abuse on the internet," said Redgrave. "While we anticipated a decade-long company-building journey, we were presented with the opportunity to instantly alter the scale of our impact and we could not be more excited by the fact that Discord represents a monumental leap forward for us."

Sentropy is a tech startup dedicated to creating “a better internet.” It sprang up in June of last yearoffering AI-powered chat moderation tools for large businesses and a free consumer-facing tool to help detect and protect offensive content on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Called Sentrop Protect, the free consumer service is now scheduled to shut down thanks to the Discord purchase.

Redgrave said that his team’s focus at Discord “will be on helping Discord expand and evolve its T&S [Trust & Safety] capabilities; we are also inspired by Discord’s commitment to knowledge-sharing and capability-building in the content moderation space, as exemplified by their Moderator Academy."

Harassment and hate speech is a big problem--just ask Twitch, which recently announced it hired an outside law firm to investigate harassment claims on its platform. With Discord working its way into things like PlayStation and Halo Infinite, the need for better tools to combat harassment has never been greater.

 

[LurkTrawl]

Whorenalist advocates censorship part one million.

 

[KittyGremlin]

Protip: use Keybase

 

[CoolSixtyNiner]

They should probably try to combat the pedophilic grooming their platform is famous for first.

 

[Finder]

They should probably try to combat the pedophilic grooming their platform is famous for first.

They’d lose most of their staff and collapse if they did that.

 

[Jeff Boomhauer]

"This new AI is great! Finally, we'll end racism and all LGBTBlahblahblah related phobias! ...Oh, and make sure you turn off the "child grooming" filter."

 

[thakin]

Part of me says that they won't actually go through with mass bans because it would impact their userbase and have people leaving because of muh privacy/surveillance, I remember there being a huge scare about mass bans back in June of last year and it turned out to be nothing.
Obviously, regardless of if they start mass bans for it or not, information gleaned from this is going to be used for something at least, imo it will probably be used to supplement their furry janny slaves in handling ban disputes or at least reports so that they can use their manpower for other projects or just cut costs

 

[WhoIsSutterKane]

They should probably try to combat the pedophilic grooming their platform is famous for first.

According to them pointing out their pedophile problem is hate speech

 

[Weed Eater]

I can't wait for Discord not to use this tool in the most proper ways they should, which should start with banning public servers that are open to anyone under the age of 18. Fuck off with this shit already.

It is horridly shocking how many of these servers exist with the sole intent of weeding out minors. The biggest red flag is when you see one that says some shit like "13yrs-20yrs, you'll be kicked if you are over the age limit or if you literally grow out of our server."


You can type up anything in Disboard and you will come across thousands of servers like this. Let's not pretend this is any better vs. what was said above.

 

[The Lawgiver]

I am convinced Francis E. Dec was in fact driven mad by visions of the future. We are living in the era of the gangster robot computer god and it's parroting puppet underlings.

 

[cummytummies]

I can't wait for Discord not to use this tool in the most proper ways they should, which should start with banning public servers that are open to anyone under the age of 18. Fuck off with this shit already.

It is horridly shocking how many of these servers exist with the sole intent of weeding out minors. The biggest red flag is when you see one that says some shit like "13yrs-20yrs, you'll be kicked if you are over the age limit or if you literally grow out of our server."

View attachment 2357639
You can type up anything in Disboard and you will come across thousands of servers like this. Let's not pretend this is any better vs. what was said above.

A fun & safe hangout for young women, you say? And where might I come across these horrible, absolutely disgusting servers? Do you have a direct link? So disgusting.

 

[Weed Eater]

A fun & safe hangout for young women, you say? And where might I come across these horrible, absolutely disgusting servers? Do you have a direct link? So disgusting.

They're all LGBT friendly and "gender inclusive". So "girls only" servers are a huge lie now.

 

[frozenrunner]

Lol, shit computer leaning algos can't stop chatters from creating terms it doesn't recognize.

 

[Elwood P. Dowd]

How does Discord even make money? I can't imagine the line for Nitro is exactly stretching around the block.

 

[Dan Abrams]

Sentropy is a tech startup dedicated to creating “a better internet.”

Right, like creating AI overlords that help censor the things on the internet that some company has decided is wrongthink.

How does Discord even make money? I can't imagine the line for Nitro is exactly stretching around the block.

Tencent, Time Warner, and the CCP writes it all off in exchange for all the data sent on Discord.

 

[cummytummies]

How does Discord even make money? I can't imagine the line for Nitro is exactly stretching around the block.

Most big public servers I've ever visited seem to be full of Nitro users, at least judging by the people doing most of the talking. I think those who use Discord as a VoIP platform to play vidya with their friends couldn't care less, but for those for whom it's a social media platform with cliques and in-jokes and phone notifications having Nitro is standard. Even smaller servers I've seen tend to be "boosted" to level 2 or 3. People will pay for stupid shit like animated emojis and a "profile badge" if there's enough (read: any) peer pressure.

Oh yeah and of course they collect and sell data and are probably bleeding money, I didn't mean to say they're actually profitable. Just that Nitro seems surprisingly popular.