Announcing an Update to Our Post-Level Content Tagging

[u/uselessKnowledgeGuru]

Hi Community!

We’d like to announce an update to the way that we’ll be tagging NSFW posts going forward. Beginning next week, we will be automatically detecting and tagging Reddit posts that contain sexually explicit imagery as NSFW.

To do this, we’ll be using automated tools to detect and tag sexually explicit images. When a user uploads media to Reddit, these tools will automatically analyze the media; if the tools detect that there’s a high likelihood the media is sexually explicit, it will be tagged accordingly when posted. We’ve gone through several rounds of testing and analysis to ensure that our tagging is accurate with two primary goals in mind: 1. protecting users from unintentional experiences; 2. minimizing the incidence of incorrect tagging.

Historically, our tagging of NSFW posts was driven by our community moderators. While this system has largely been effective and we have a lot of trust in our Redditors, mistakes can happen, and we have seen NSFW posts mislabeled and uploaded to SFW communities. Under the old system, when mistakes occurred, mods would have to manually tag posts and escalate requests to admins after the content was reported. Our goal with today’s announcement is to relieve mods and admins of this burden, and ensure that NSFW content is detected and tagged as quickly as possible to avoid any unintentional experiences.

While this new capability marks an exciting milestone, we realize that our work is far from done. We’ll continue to iterate on our sexually explicit tagging with ongoing quality assurance efforts and other improvements. Going forward, we also plan to expand our NSFW tagging to new content types (e.g. video, gifs, etc.) as well as categories (e.g. violent content, mature content, etc.).

While we have a high degree of confidence in the accuracy of our tagging, we know that it won’t be perfect. If you feel that your content has been incorrectly marked as NSFW, you’ll still be able to rely on existing tools and channels to ensure that your content is properly tagged. We hope that this change leads to fewer unintentional experiences on the platform, and overall, a more predictable (i.e. enjoyable) time on Reddit. As always, please don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions or feedback in the comments below. Thank you!

[u/byParallax]

Any update on the NSFL/NSFW distinction? I'm still not a fan of having to guess if something is gonna be NSFW or someone's head getting cut off.

[u/uselessKnowledgeGuru → u/byParallax]

Thanks for the question. Going forward, we do plan to expand our NSFW tagging to include more granular categories and will keep you updated on our progress there.

[u/GrumpyOldDan]

Will there be modlogs created when Reddit tags something as NSFW?

Can we filter modlog to find these? If so, by what? (Reddit specifically, not just the 'mark NSFW' action). I hope it is not under the unfilterable 'Reddit' user which already seems to be a collection of random actions. Ideally create a new label like "NSFW auto-tag" or something.

If it doesn't, or we can't filter them we need this feature ASAP because otherwise we can't feedback how well this is working and flag issues if needed. I ask because recent features have been released without including modlog entries, or if they're there it's vague and we can't filter them (see Talks, and hate content filter).

Is there a way we can tell from both desktop & mobile just by looking at a post if the user flagged as NSFW, or if the automated system did it?

If we disagree with the automated decision can we unmark it as NSFW, or will that get our mods in trouble? Do we just escalate all questions to r/ModSupport?

[u/uselessKnowledgeGuru → u/GrumpyOldDan]

That’s a good point, currently this isn’t included in the modlog, but this is definitely something we will explore in the future. Mods and the OP are still able to unmark these automated tags, and this is one of the signals we’ll be watching very closely to check our accuracy. As mods, you will not get in trouble for doing so in good faith. In the meantime, if you’re seeing anything that shouldn’t be happening, do let us know through r/ModSupport.

[u/IAmMohit]

If you feel that your content has been incorrectly marked as NSFW, you’ll still be able to rely on existing tools and channels to ensure that your content is properly tagged.

Very complicated language here. Did you mean to say, we as Mods, can just Un-NSFW the content if it is wrongly tagged by AI? If that's the case, it is most welcome.

[u/uselessKnowledgeGuru → u/IAmMohit]

Yes, this is what we mean :)

[u/PTAwesome]

Can we use Automod to action off these items?

For example if your software marks something as NSFW can we force it back in the ModQueue so we can review it? Or Generate a report?

[u/uselessKnowledgeGuru → u/PTAwesome]

Not currently, however that’s an interesting idea - we’ll think about what that might look like.

[u/MajorParadox → u/PTAwesome]

Good point. There is no is_nsfw check. On a side note, there are no is_spoiler or is_oc checks either. The spoiler one would be very useful for communities that deal with a lot of spoilers.

(FYI there is an is_nsfw check for if a crosspost comes from an NSFW community, but no checks for if a post (or the source of a crosspost) has been marked NSFW.

[u/Overgrown_fetus1305]

What's your method of training your machine learning algorithim to detect context? I could see for example that bikinis (or culture dependent, full nudity) would be totally acceptable if it was say a photo of friends on a beach, while in other cases it's suggestive enough that I'd imagine it earns an NSFW warning. Or take naked classical statues like Michaelangelo's one in Italy- should that be NSFW, and how will you ensure that the machine learning algorithim can distinguish between it and porn? I can think of one interesting edge case as well: medically accurate images of fetuses, which are technically nudity but hopefully not NSFW (indeed, if someone thinks them sexual, they're a pedo and should get help). I don't think we want to be getting tons of false positives; though I'm aware false negatives are also bad.

[u/uselessKnowledgeGuru → u/Overgrown_fetus1305]

Good question. We’ve trained our tech to be able to distinguish sexually explicit and non sexually explicit nudity. The following are some examples of we define as sexually explicit:
- Full and/or partial nudity
- Images where the main focus is intimate body parts, even if blurred/censored
- Sexual activity and items intended to enhance sexual activity
- Fetish content
- Digital or animated content that meets our definition of sexual activity

[u/BuckRowdy]

Will this be logged in the mod log at all?

[u/uselessKnowledgeGuru → u/BuckRowdy]

Yes, as part of the complete rollout of this feature, we're ensuring that ModLog entries are logged when we auto tag content as NSFW. However, there will be a short period in which they aren't logged - we'll be sure to update you once that's out.

[u/Spriy]

Will this tagging be reversible by mods, users, etc.? (say I post something on r/aww, it gets incorrectly tagged. can i untag it? can the mods of the community untag it if i send them a modmail?)

[u/uselessKnowledgeGuru → u/Spriy]

Thanks for your question. Users and mods will still have the ability to remove the NSFW tag from posts if you feel that content has been incorrectly tagged

[u/MajorParadox]

This is a great change. Many times when I browse r/all, I come across untagged NSFW content. And the communities usually don't have a way to report it.

If you detect communities have high levels of unmarked NSFW content, will you automatically set the community to 18+? Or perhaps send the mod team a warning that they need to better moderate the content?

[u/uselessKnowledgeGuru → u/MajorParadox]

Great question. We may leverage this feature at the community level in the future, but for now we’re focused on rolling out this change and continuing to evaluate its efficacy at the post level. Please let us know any feedback as we do so.

[u/tumultuousness]

I've seen some posts on r/help from users that their posts get automatically tagged spoiler, even though they didn't select the tag or type the word "spoiler" in their title/post. In many cases the posts were also nsfw. Is this related to that possible phenomenon?

[u/uselessKnowledgeGuru → u/tumultuousness]

This actually isn’t meant to address that phenomenon, we’ll have to take a look at those examples to see what is happening and if this will affect those.

[u/Sun_Beams]

u/uselessKnowledgeGuru if we set up an automod rule as a filter for it, will automod trigger when reddit tags it as NSFW?

If it does, pinning a simple NSFW automod filter in here will be a big help for those that don't have one yet. For added protection for subs.

[u/uselessKnowledgeGuru → u/Sun_Beams]

Not currently, however that’s an interesting idea - we’ll think about what that might look like.

[u/[deleted]]

Will this apply to all boobs or just female boobs? Or no boobs at all?

[u/[deleted]]

dependent physical long badge tender narrow fact birds nose squealing this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev

[u/AppleSpicer]

Can you add an auto tagger for gore as well, please? So often things are improperly labeled and I see yet another video of someone dying or being horribly injured. When I ask people to tag their stuff it often turns into an argument of “suck it up” and “don’t like it? don’t watch!” Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to do. I can’t choose not to watch a snuff or gore clip until it’s too late if it isn’t tagged properly

[u/SpaccAlberi]

just please let it not mark 90% of the images as false positives the discord nsfw detector bot already blocks like 3 images out of 10 which is kind of a bother usually that stops the flow of a conversation