Have you ever wondered how Two Hat maintains a dynamic and up-to-date chat filter in an ever-evolving world, in 20 languages?

In light of recent global events, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the #BlackLivesMatter movement, we wanted to provide insight into our internal process.

We spoke to Portuguese Language Specialist Richard Amante, a journalist with 15 years of international experience, about how he and the team stay on top of the latest news.

As Richard explains, the Language & Culture team researches trending topics and new linguistic expressions and adds them to the dictionary in multiple languages. It doesn’t end there.

After the team adds new expressions to the chat filter, they review and adjust how those expressions are used across different communities and in different contexts. That includes finding and fixing false positives (low-risk content incorrectly flagged as high-risk) and false negatives (you guessed it — high-risk content incorrectly flagged as low-risk), detecting new and unexpected linguistic patterns, and upgrading and downgrading the riskiness of a phrase based on cultural shifts.

Especially today, in a world where so many of us are stuck at home, the lines separating our “real life” from our “online life” are blurry, if they exist at all. Whether we’re forming a clan in a multiplayer game or commenting on a friend’s profile pic, we’re having conversations online about everything, from the latest news to pop culture.

You might be wondering — why does this matter? It’s simple. Our clients want to know what their players and users are talking about; and more importantly, they want to keep them safe from abuse, hate speech, and harassment — while still promoting healthy conversations.

Every online community has different standards of what a healthy conversation looks like. An edtech platform designed for 7-12-year-olds will likely have a different standard from a social network catering to millennials. Here is the great power of Two Hat’s Community Sift: While the Language & Culture team provides a baseline by adding new words and phrases to the dictionary, clients can augment those words and phrases in real-time, as needed.

In this way, we work closely with our clients to maintain a living, breathing global chat filter in an ever-changing world.

Want to learn how Two Hat can help you maintain a safe and healthy online community? Request a demo today.