Hi. Thank you for taking the time to ask the questions and be curious about how moderation is being handled at Plex, and pushing for information to ensure that this is meant to be a safe and civil environment for a community. While some of your questions I won’t be able to answer at this early stage of Discussions, I hope what I do provide gives you (and others who might read this) a better idea of how we handle things. More statistics will be published later this year regarding total moderation efforts.
First, my background. I’ve been in community spaces personally for well over twenty years now and professionally for the last thirteen. I previously ran the community and support department for a large online entertainment company before coming here to Plex, where I’m doing the same thing. All of us who moderate are trained on our community guidelines and how to review user generated content (UGC) within the context of how it was said and what it may mean.
Now for how moderation is handled here at Plex. Users first have to have a verified email to create any type of user generated content, which helps to cut down on trolls and rampant spam or harassment. As mentioned in our Community Guidelines, anything that is considered user generated content (reviews, lists, user profiles like your bio, display name, avatar, comments, etc…) goes through our automated moderation. This catches a huge amount of violations of our Community Guidelines. Secondarily, we do have humans who review content that is being posted. Thirdly, the report feature on any UGC. Any user on Plex can report a review, a user profile, a discussion, or a list. Those reports (plus any appeals of a moderation decision) come straight to the humans to review. This 100% includes user harassment or abuse that needs to be reviewed.
Speaking of appeals, anyone who has had their UGC rejected due to a violation of our Community Guidelines, can appeal that decision. More information is included in that document at the bottom, but the gist is by replying to the email that a user receives.
To address spoilers specifically… I agree, being unintentionally spoiled is an awful experience, but there is always a chance to be spoiled. This is unfortunately not a problem unique to Plex, and one that is a potential on any social media platform. While we do our best to catch and handle it, users can also report any UGC for Spoilers for a human to review.
Finally, Hate speech has no place in the Plex community. Pulling directly from our Community Guidelines:
- This means absolutely no content that attacks, incites violence, discriminates, or shows intolerance towards anyone based on race, age, gender, gender identity, caste, immigration status, ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, religious affiliation, sex, sexual orientation, veteran status, or other protected attribute.
- This policy applies to: other users on Plex, real life people, fictional worlds, stories, characters, actors, casting decisions, and more.
We stand by that, and everything else listed in our CGs. This team is dedicated to providing a safe and fun space to be a part of the Plex community.
