A new way to tackle online safety: online reputation tracking.

 Ensuring the safety of users can be a big headache for brands that create and maintain online communities, as anonymity has traditionally made it incredibly difficult to ‘vet’ them. Maybe they have a history of abusive behaviour on other sites? How would brands be able to tell until the same behaviour patterns have emerged in their community, the damage already being done?

Well now there’s a system that has the potential to eliminate the problem. We’re starting to offer our clients trials with the revolutionary ReputationShare technology (a product of LOOKBOTHWAYS Inc). We believe that this technology marks a significant step in community management, and, more importantly, online child protection.

ReputationShare tracks the online reputation of community users and shares this information with companies that also use the technology on their websites. It does this by linking the user’s online reputation to their email address(es). It also allows people to check their own user rating – more details can be found in the ReputationShare whitepaper.

We’re hoping that the technology will be adopted by as many people in the community management and moderation sector as possible.

The more companies that adopt this technology, the more effective it will be.

To sum up the benefits of ReputationShare:

Reputation travels - ReputationShare lets brands access user reputation information so that a user’s reputation will travel with them when they join a new site/community – in much the same way that credit reference information is shared.

Which means that if a user is notorious for stoking flame wars, trolling, cyberbullying or grooming on one or more participating websites, the technology lets the website they are joining see that the new user has a negative reputation, which gives the site owners a chance to make an informed choice about who they interact with based on reputations. Moderating staff will receive automatic updates on the behaviour of their users on participating sites, so a user's status is always current and moderating decisions can be based on up-to-date information.

Rewarding positive participation - But this technology is not all about moderating bad behaviour, it’s also about acknowledging positive participation. Allowing companies to identify and reward users who take a positive, active role in their communities.

Making moderation and community management more efficient.  There are potential cost savings  as companies find that users with a history of positive participation don’t require as much of the moderators attention as those with no history, or a less than stellar reputation.  Community Managers will be much more effective in their targeting of the best or worst performing users on their site.

Are there any concerns?

As with all technology, especially technology that monitors the activity of people, concerns will be raised.

Data Protection - Naturally, reputations are anonymous and secure. To ensure user's privacy ReputationShare provides services with a secure one-way encrypted hash algorithm to apply against their user's email addresses; it never receives or stores personal information.,which is important for data protection purposes.  The reputation information can be leveraged by all participating companies across the whole spectrum of online services, but no company ever receives details about another company's user base; this information remains anonymous.

What about freedom of expression? - As we have discussed in our teens and tweens whitepapers, moderators have to allow people to have disagreements and give them the space to work them out between themselves, only stepping in if community rules are broken, or things start to get out of hand. So it is important to note that everyday misunderstandings will not massively impact users’ reputation scores.

Users will only get a seriously reduced rating for specific, serious abuse of the rules of a website (like uploading offensive or abusive material onto a community designed for children).  The service’s algorithms take into account the date and severity of the offence and only in cases where an incident report is extreme, such as a report of sexual or grooming behaviour, would a single report dramatically damage a user’s online reputation.  

What if a user feels they have been unfairly scored?  Users can view their online reputations and challenge a negative contribution with the site concerned if necessary.  Reputation Share will be monitoring the participating sites to ensure that moderation actions are fair.

Participating sites choose for themselves how to interpret ReputationShare information and apply rewards or strictures accordingly.

It’s always going to be difficult to provide one hundred percent protection for children, teens, even adults, one hundred percent of the time. As technology progresses there will always be work-arounds that savvy and malicious users can exploit to manipulate the vulnerable, but, if brands work together with the same aim in mind – protecting their communities – we can all make a huge contribution in the continuing fight to give all of us a safer online environment.

Moderating Teens and Tweens Online – an exercise in brand protection?

The teenage brain is, “like a car with a good accelerator but a weak brake. With powerful impulses under poor control, the likely result is a crash.” – Laurence Steinberg

Teens are always going to make mistakes: it’s part of what being a teenager is about after all, but the internet represents a whole new set of issues for teenagers.

For older teens, innocent pictures of a night out posted on their Facebook profile or MySpace page can result in difficulties when they eventually start looking for work. Younger teens and tweens can run into trouble by posting to much seemingly harmless information about themselves, positing anything from their favourite place to hang out after school, to what they’ll be wearing when they go out.

Naturally, risk taking is a key part of anyone’s development, but do social networks foster too great a sense of security? How can we give teenagers the space to explore and share whist doing everything possible to keep them safe?

Without some sort of guardian present, online spaces can become a virtual version of the unsupervised school playground, often made worse due to the anonymity afforded by the internet. Someone who may think twice about harassing a class mate face-to-face may have no such inhibitions when sitting behind a computer screen in the comfort of their own room.

So how can we guide teens, without stifling them?

Inhabit their world

Understand the language used by teens / tweens. This includes keeping up to date with changing language trends, including code words that children use to get round automated filters.

Children are developing and need some freedom to do this. At this stage in their lives, they are forming individual opinions and testing ideas. Our role as adults is to keep children safe, not censor them. But be clear what the line is, and intervene once it is crossed.

Listen to concerns or questions, and respond quickly. Traffic should be two-way – not only to protect your users and your brand, but also to learn from them and develop your offering.

Avoid being intrusive, or engaging with the user over the wrong platform. Listen (see above) to what platform children want to engage with you over, and use it.
    
Earn trust and respect. This is so important to young people finding their own boundaries and voices. Show trust and respect (and consistency), and don’t patronise teens and tweens. That way you’ll get trust and respect back.

Keep them engaged and happy online. Diffuse difficult situations, be aware of the day-to-day dramas and heartache and help them through the highs and lows. But don’t jump in too soon. Assuming a child is not in any danger, he or she will only learn how to deal with the emotional journey of teenage years by experiencing it.

Keep them safe
    
Watch out for and deter cyberbullying, peer-to-peer abuse and the kind of peer pressure that leads to this abuse. Researchers cited by CNET in an article on online abuse  say that anywhere from 40 percent to 85 percent of kids have been exposed to some kind of digital bullying, whether it's a stolen password or being called "fat" via instant message.

Spot and prevent grooming behaviour. Technology has become so advanced that it is possible to use software as well as human moderators to spot early grooming behaviour by analysing patterns of behaviour, and to link that behaviour to previous activity on a website.

Keep children safe from themselves. Most children will give away personally identifying information (particularly from live feeds) without even thinking about the consequences, which can lead to abuse.

Don’t let them be exposed to potentially damaging, offensive or otherwise inappropriate material, uploaded by other users.
    
Educate them on the consequences of inappropriate behaviour. The role of a moderator in educating children is to work with parents and other adult role models to act as a guide for children – akin to a teacher in the playground, rather than a more censorial role – to help diffuse potentially damaging situations, or help children work their responses out for themselves.

Create mechanisms to report abusive behaviour, give feedback, or voice concerns. It is so important that children can easily voice their concerns or ask questions in confidence.

The moderator’s role as guardian

Adults who have a presence in online worlds inhabited by children – no matter how good their intentions – will be seen alternately as role model, common enemy, powers-that-be, guide, teacher and intruder. That is the role of an adult mentor, or guide, to a teenager starting to flex their muscles - it’s the way of the world.

Above all, moderators must be a guide to steer children through difficulties, and someone to keep them from self-harm or abuse by others.

Currently, there is no legal obligation to moderate online behaviour or content – although the Digital Britain report indicates that a content labelling system of some sort is not far away - but of course there is a moral one. The reputational risk of being associated with offensive material could have wide-reaching implications for brands.
 
For a more in-depth look at marketing to teens/tweens and their online behaviour, see eModeration’s white papers on the subject.