Word / Phrase Filters
Highly intelligent & extremely fast to allow significant throughput without hindering the user experience. (We like to say our filter's $%*&#!@ great!)
Limit Profanity & Negativity
Our approach has been developed over a decade and has been battle tested in a diverse set of applications: from games processing billions of chat messages per month to fortune 500 companies analyzing customer communications. We’ve got you covered
Blocklist Filtering
Blocklist filtering is used to identify inappropriate words and phrases in a collection of text. Cleanspeak uses Natural Language Processing and proprietary algorithms to determine if a text contains a blocklisted word or phrase.
Every blocklisted word Cleanspeak detects is classified with a tag (e.g., Sexual, PII, Vulgarity, Bullying, and many more) and a severity (e.g., Mild, Medium, High, Severe). You can decide to either handle the list of Cleanspeak detections yourself or instruct Cleanspeak to apply an action to the results.
By applying moderation rules, Cleanspeak’s analysis results in a simple direction (e.g. allow, replace, reject, pending) depending on your app's capabilities. Everything is configurable via a simple web interface making it easy to change the tolerance of the content filter without changing a single line of your application’s code.
Keep Users From Bypassing Your Filter
To keep false positives to a negligible minimum, we focus on how users communicate to prevent them from modifying inappropriate text to sneak past a content filter. Cleanspeak catches these common tricks, among many others:
Kid's Chat Filter
Kid's Chat Filtering is the opposite of blocklist filtering and only allows acceptable words and phrases. Anything that is not included in the allowlist will be rejected. Typically targeted at young audiences (under 12 years old), Kid's Chat Filtering is much more restrictive than typical blocklist filtering. We developed this in close partnership with many of the past decades largest online games for children who wanted more rigorous filtering methods for their sensitive audiences.
Username Filter
Usernames present a unique use case as they aren’t “typical” words that would be used in standard communication. Oftentimes words and numbers are included in a username, like Joe123. This can present a significant problem for a simple content filter, resulting in either too many false positives or false negatives, ultimately frustrating your users. Cleanspeak has a specific filter designed for usernames that implements advanced language analysis and more aggressive rules to ensure that only appropriate names are allowed.
Email & Phone Filter
At this point, most people know that you should not share personally identifiable information (PII) in public areas of the internet. Still, some people ignore this or, worse, can be potentially tricked into sharing their info for something other than a core competency of an app/website etc. Cleanspeak includes email and phone number filters to assist in protecting users.
URL Filter
In some cases you will want to limit user’s ability to include URLs in their communication in an effort to avoid spamming or perhaps from users leaving your site. Cleanspeak has an advanced URL filter to ensure they will not be shown.
The URL Filter Whitelist, similar to the Kid's Chat Filter, allows you to configure specific URLs or URL patterns that Cleanspeak should ignore when filtering. For example, you might want to configure Cleanspeak to ignore URLs inside your domain using this feature.
Implement Anywhere
Whatever your brand's specific use case, Cleanspeak can be incorporated into your workflows easily.
Chat
A filter is a fundamental component for apps and communities using chat, so that they might maintain civility and prevent user abuse. Being an immediate form of communication, there is no time for a moderator to review a chat message and decide whether it should be displayed or not; this makes choosing a high quality filter a key requirement for applications using chat. A cutting-edge filter can keep communication productive and even help guide the behavior of a new users.
Games & Mobile Applications
Creating a safe, productive environment for your users is essential. In games encourage players to interact through chat, Cleanspeak's filter helps prevents problem users from disrupting the game and driving away players. In contrast, a poor text filter can cause needless community interruption resulting is massive user attrition and backlash. In worst case scenarios, the filter can become the focus of users, rather than your game.
Usernames
In online communities it is common for members to want to create online personas that enable them to express themselves and establish an online social identity. By allowing users to choose unique (and public) usernames to represent the personas they aim to create, you encourage repeat interaction and engagement with the community. While it is vital to encourage this, it is also important to ensure public usernames remain appropriate for your environment.
Usernames present a unique use case as they aren’t “typical” words that would be used in standard communication. Oftentimes words and numbers are included in a username, like iFyouSeeK123. This can present a significant problem for a simple filter, resulting in either too many false positives or false negatives, ultimately frustrating your users.
The Cleanspeak Username Filter implements advanced language analysis and more aggressive rules without modifications to your filter, ensuring that only appropriate names are allowed.
Customer Communications
Companies utilize several methods to interact with their clients. From billing statements to online chat assistance, there are areas where customers and disgruntled employees alike can do serious damage to your company and brand reputation.
A well-known company had a serious incident on their hands when one of their customer service representatives changed a customer’s name from “John Smith” to “A!@hole Smith” after a heated phone call.
Occurrences like this can result in customer attrition, litigation costs and loss of revenue. Don’t wait for something to happen - we’ve seen this too many times. Proactively protect your brand. We have a significant amount of experience working with brands to prevent PR disasters.
Read: Customer Communications Case Study
Retail
Retail presents a specific use case within the umbrella of customer communications. In the retail industry, order forms and custom delivery requests are frequently used, oftentimes with a public facing display or on receipts. Customers and employees have the freedom to add their own language and you want to insure both incoming and outgoing communications are clean to maintain the integrity of your brand.
Read: Papa John's Case Study
Personally Identifiable or Personal Health Information
Sharing personally identifiable or personal health information online can be dangerous and, for companies, potentially illegal due to various international privacy regulations. We understand that compliance is a difficult issue to tackle alone which is why we offer a product that provides a simple solution to this complex issue.
Cleanspeak comes with pre-built lists of common words and phrases that are related to PII and PHI. By implementing this feature you can ensure that type of information (addresses, phone numbers, etc) is not shared.
Digital Displays
In-venue digital displays allow brands to interact via crowd-sourced content (e.g. a live Twitter feed at a sporting event). Organic user-generated content is an extremely valuable marketing tactic with huge growth potential that should be utilized. Capture the authenticity of social impact without losing control of the content by implementing Cleanspeak as your safeguard.
Forums / Reviews
Giving users the ability to post within a community has become a key feature to a business’s online presence. Forums and reviews foster engagement and encourage product feedback, but the value can quickly be diminished by spam, hate speech, phishing and the like.
There’s one fact that all successful community managers will immediately agree upon: Forums and reviews require moderation. The success of this type of user-generated content relies heavily on the quality of content contributed. User retention along with new user acquisition suffers when inappropriate or irrelevant content is posted. Implementing a profanity filter not only keeps the content free of profanity, it can also help ensure conversations and reviews are useful and maintain their integrity.
Cleanspeak is built to accurately remove objectionable content to maintain a safe and productive space.
Kid-Focused Communities
Apps, games and communities that are targeted towards children need stringent rules to ensure proper behavior is maintained.
Cleanspeak was originally designed for an online kids game and we have extensive experience in this area. Many categories in our blocklist of bad words/phrases are targeted to prevent inappropriate behavior that is often prevalent in kids communities (e.g., bullying, grooming, abuse).
For very young audiences (typically under 12) we also have an allowlist filter whereby ONLY those words can be used in the community. This essentially reverses the blocklist methodology. Rather than keeping the bad stuff out, a whitelist only lets the good stuff in.
Specific laws, like COPPA, detail the requirements and penalties for sharing of PII. Avoid multimillion dollar lawsuits and payouts by protecting your community with a proven solution.
Multiple Languages Supported
22+ base language lists included, but you can amend them or add your own lists to leverage the powerful Cleanspeak algorithms.
