Close X
Saturday, September 21, 2024
ADVT 
National

British Columbia Tech Firm Guards Virtual Worlds From Cyberbullies

The Canadian Press, 03 Apr, 2016 12:14 PM
    VANCOUVER — As online communities come under the attack of cyberbullies, racist speech and spam, a British Columbia tech firm has developed technology to keep the trolls under the bridge.
     
    Community Sift, based in Kelowna, has built digital armour for social media and gaming companies trying to protect their virtual worlds. The chat filter and moderation tool examines real-time website commentary, chat room conversations and banter between game players.
     
    "We're not just talking about four-letter words," said CEO Chris Priebe, a senior programmer and security specialist. "We want to get rid of bullying across the entire Internet."
     
    The firm's technology advances a global campaign against digital abuse in part spurred by the 2012 suicide of Amanda Todd, a teenager from Port Coquitlam, B.C., who was victimized by online sexual exploitation.
     
    "The Amanda Todds of the world, we want to prevent that," said Karen Olsson, the firm's chief operating officer. "We want to be part of the solution."
     
    Based on the firm's analysis of four billion messages sorted daily, less than one per cent of social users behave badly yet they're causing the bulk of harm. Offensive material is classified into categories such as bullying, sexting, racism and bomb threats.
     
    The firm has catalogued more than one million phrases used frequently by trolls, for example, "u r so ugly," Priebe said.
     
    The technology takes context into account when identifying toxic behaviour. It combines machine learning and human verification by employing artificial intelligence and 30 language specialists. Priebe said online users are shielded from cyberbullies like anti-virus software protects computers.
     
    "We're looking for social viruses that are causing social destruction of social products and social lives."
     
    About 30 global clients are already using Community Sift. The flexible technology is tailored to client specifications, such as modifying content filters to be age appropriate.
     
    An internal database query by the firm estimated it has protected at least 34 million users over a recent two-week period in its U.S. data centre alone.
     
     
    Online cruelty inflicted on a Kelowna teenager was also part of the impetus for Community Sift, Priebe said. The teenager was goaded into uploading a selfie that trolls turned against her, generating pages of comments urging her to kill herself.
     
    The technology sifts the posts to emphasize positive comments from the 40 per cent of online users who are normally well-behaved to derail the attacks. 
     
    "They're going to say, 'You're beautiful, you're wonderful, you're helpful,'" Priebe said. "Now she'll have two voices inside her head and she can build the ability to handle all this bullying."
     
    The firm builds reputations for users participating online, and detects when someone crosses into a high-risk threshold. Consequences may include limiting identified trolls to certain queues where a moderator can decide if the content is inflammatory, silencing them automatically or banning them outright.
     
    "We always joke you can put them in the basement with all the other trolls and let them harass themselves," Olsson said.
     
    Others have also taken up the cause.
     
    A 13-year-old Illinois girl designed software that detects hurtful language as a Google Global Science Fair project. Trisha Prabhu's program ReThink prompts posters to think twice before hitting send. She found more than 93 per cent of teens alter their posts.
     
    Programmers with the National Youth Mental Health Foundation in Australia have also developed a Google extension called "reword" that flags potential insults by crossing them out with a red line.
     
    Community Sift identifies the tone of online communities rather than policing the Internet, Priebe said. It gives users options to choose settings for avoiding unwanted content, in the same way moviegoers can select films based on ratings.
     
    An emerging social world, called Medium.com, has deployed Community Sift to protect its users as they interact and post personal stories.
     
    "We want to provide the best place for people to freely and openly express themselves," said Greg Gueldner, who implements the startup's trust and safety protocol.
     
    Priebe has boosted online safety before by co-founding Club Penguin, a virtual world where it's safe for children to play games and interact. The company partnered with Disney in 2007 and has a user base of 300 million.
     
    The B.C. programmer, who has his own painful story about being bullied into his teens, said people currently believe they're powerless against trolls.
     
    "When people realize that it's a solvable problem," he said, "they won't put up with it anymore."

    MORE National ARTICLES

    Ontario Man Dies In 'Peace And Dignity' With Doctor Help After Court Approval

    Ontario Man Dies In 'Peace And Dignity' With Doctor Help After Court Approval
    The married father and grandfather, 81, had been suffering from terminal lymphoma and was all but bed-ridden and in unbearable pain.

    Ontario Man Dies In 'Peace And Dignity' With Doctor Help After Court Approval

    First Tornado Of The Year Touches Down In Ontario Farm Country: Environment Canada

    First Tornado Of The Year Touches Down In Ontario Farm Country: Environment Canada
    Environment Canada says the first Canadian tornado of 2016 touched down earlier this week in southwestern Ontario.

    First Tornado Of The Year Touches Down In Ontario Farm Country: Environment Canada

    B.C. LNG Approval Deadline Next Week 'Premature' As Feds Review Documents

    B.C. LNG Approval Deadline Next Week 'Premature' As Feds Review Documents
    A glut of new documents is undermining an approval deadline for the proposed $36 billion Pacific NorthWest liquefied natural gas project planned for British Columbia's northern coast.

    B.C. LNG Approval Deadline Next Week 'Premature' As Feds Review Documents

    Toronto Daycare Operators Get 30 Days Jail Time And $15,000 Fine After Toddler's Death

    Toronto Daycare Operators Get 30 Days Jail Time And $15,000 Fine After Toddler's Death
    Ruslan Panfilova, his wife Olena Panfilova and her daughter Karyna Rabadanova were found guilty in February of operating an illegal daycare and were convicted under Ontario's Day Nurseries Act.

    Toronto Daycare Operators Get 30 Days Jail Time And $15,000 Fine After Toddler's Death

    B.C. NDP Proposes New Laws To Tackle 'Out Of Control' Vancouver Real Estate Affordability Crisis

    NDP Leader John Horgan says people can't afford to live in Metro Vancouver, which hurts the vibrancy of the city and impacts the economy.

    B.C. NDP Proposes New Laws To Tackle 'Out Of Control' Vancouver Real Estate Affordability Crisis

    B.C. Liberal Party Reinstates Executive Director Charged In Ontario Scandal

    itish Columbia's Liberal Party is bringing back its executive director even as she faces criminal charges connected to a long-running document deletion scandal in former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty's office.

    B.C. Liberal Party Reinstates Executive Director Charged In Ontario Scandal