Crisp Thinking has launched NetModerator for U13 (children under 13), an advanced version of its popular child protection offering that introduces adaptive white list technology. The new product enables family-oriented communities with chat features — games, virtual worlds and websites — to be COPPA compliant without onerous parental authorization.
NetModerator for U13 goes far beyond a "hard" list of predefined words allowed in chat. The new adaptive white list technology starts with an initial list of approved words and then continually calculates hundreds of thousands of likely variants.
Until now, online properties had two equally problematic ways to meet COPPA requirements. Community moderators typically chose a white list of pre-defined words which participants were allowed to use in chat. In practice communication was frustrating to young users because too many words were blocked, if they missed typed a word, it was barred and they could not use evolving slang.
The alternative is black lists that restricted specific phrases. Due to the potential of personal information being transmitted with this approach, children under 13 years old have to request their parents submit a credit card or fax in signed parental authorization. This second method allows more freedom of expression, but it creates barriers to entry that hurt new user acquisition.
Crisp Thinking's new NetModerator for U13 incorporates adaptive white list technology, minimizing the need for parent concern and provides publishers an easier path to COPPA compliance.
"The way kids and teens speak privately online is so fluid and changing that systems without our adaptive list technology just can't fully cope," explains Adam Hildreth, founder and CEO, Crisp. "It doesn't matter if it's urban slang, regional colloquialisms, l33t speak or even invented words, NetModerator for U13 can deal with it. Our technology goes far beyond just monitoring for specific words. We can analyze the context and intent of the participants."
Crisp's management and control system is already the best child protection system on the market. NetModerator offers real-time analysis of online communications, and is the only available set of automated tools that can evaluate the context and intent of conversations to identify potential threats. The system knows how people speak and can read subtle behaviors. This allows the system to identify predators even when they are using what may be considered "safe" words.
NetModerator for U13 reduces the need for live moderation/customer service teams to deal with low-level issues, offering savings of up to 80 percent. Companies can decide what low-level user violations the system should handle and how to resolve them including issuing warnings, silencing, temporary bans and even kicking out users. Resources formerly dedicated to those activities can be leveraged to deal with higher level incidents that require immediate human intervention as well as active community management helping user retention.
Full details of all Crisp Thinking solutions can be found at www.crispthinking.com.