As a content analyst at SocialWeb, my primary role has involved verifying UGC for our third-party clients. One of my key projects involved moderating and validating reviews for a new e-commerce platform.
The verification process alluded to two stages: validating the user and validating the content. We won half the battle by setting up a user authentication system, where users had to sign in using recognized social media accounts or verified email addresses. This minimized the chance of fake reviews.
For the content part, we developed a natural language processing (NLP) algorithm that checked reviews for relevance and sentiment. It flagged suspiciously positive or negative reviews and detected spam or inappropriate content.
One significant challenge was dealing with coordinated spam attacks, where a slew of irrelevant or abusive posts would flood in. To overcome this, we digressed from standard procedures by implementing a temporary manual review system, alongside our NLP algorithms, for additional safety.
The effectiveness of our UGC validation process is reflected in the platform's user trust level, which has led to a 20% increase in user engagement, proving the significance of reliable UGC.