Not a day when the question is not asked! If there is a subject that arouses the ire of the readers of 20 minutesit is indeed that of the moderation of the comments that they leave (or try to leave) on our site or our Facebook page.
“Censorship”, “infringement on freedom of expression”, “lack of impartiality”, “offensive content not deactivated”, “unfair and unjustified deletion, because I reread your charter in detail and I respected it” … Here is an overview of the misunderstandings and reproaches that you share with us via the address [email protected], accessible on the page Understanding the charter of 20 minutes, after seeing your comment deleted. We might as well warn you right away, providing a personalized response to any Internet user who finds himself in this case is not the subject of this article. The purpose here is to explain to you what is the policy of 20 minutes regarding moderation of comments.
A bit of context
“Our newspaper has, since its launch twenty years ago, been concerned with uniting a community of readers, leaving them a space for conversation, recalls Anne Kerloc’h, editor-in-chief. There was a dedicated space in the newspaper, then the openness to comments on the Web. But this is not necessarily a space where everything is permitted. In the same way that everything is not allowed for journalists. There are French laws to respect. There are also editorial rules, like our internal charter. » Rules on which 20 minutes is all the more vigilant, if not intransigent, as it is a free and widely distributed newspaper.
“In the 2000s, with the arrival of the participatory Web, a form of democratic ideal emerged: all readers were invited to participate in the debate”, recounts The Media Review. Except that, “if the comment left by the Internet user is sometimes a provider of information and expertise, it is regularly offensive and provocative”, we can still read. Over the years, and faced with the deterioration of the messages left on their site, many press titles have decided to reserve the writing of comments to their paying subscribers. This is what was still announced in mid-December
Le Figaro to its readers, in order to “improve the quality of the discussions (…). We know that this change is not trivial. We encourage you to discover our subscription offers, starting at €9.99 per month. Far be it from us to criticize this or that colleague, but charging for information or the possibility of reacting to it is not exactly in our plans.
numbers and words
Watch out: between January and December 2021, 3,509,434 comments were left on our website, 7,640,278 were left on our Facebook page! These figures come from Netino by Welhelpa content moderation company to which 20 minutes appealed for ten years. Heavyweight in the French-language media sector (among its clients are The world West France, Canal+, M6, etc.), “Netino works in a hybrid way,” explains one of its project managers. Part of the comments are processed by artificial intelligence (AI), the other part by humans. »
Concretely, the AI part absorbs the message, makes a first reading of it by analyzing the pseudonym of the person, his e-mail address and the content. “This first step says several things: for example, that the person is banned and, in this case, the message is automatically rejected”, indicates the project manager. The ban may have taken place because the commentator made such offensive comments on such a date, because he took one of our journalists to task on social networks, etc. This first step also makes it possible to “detect, and reject, what are called forbidden words (profanity in the lead) and words indicating the comments to be prioritized (such as Islam, gay, migrants, Sharia, etc.), which evoke subjects on which skids are frequent”, continues the specialist. Indeed, some words are related to subjects on which slippages or remarks falling under the law are frequent. Note that nothing is fixed: all these words are part of a dictionary, which corresponds to several A4 pages, supplied, validated and updated by 20 minutes.
“Once the AI has carried out this first sorting, it switches all the comments that it was not able to analyze to the human operators”, continues the Netino expert. The latter must respect a moderation charter, which is a rather heavy document, of 30 or 40 pages, and which includes two blocks: “The first block refers to French law, and recalls that, in our country, racism is prohibited , homophobia, revisionism, or defamation, it is specified. The second is editorial and depends on each client: do we accept a message with capital letters, which can give the impression of shouting? Do we accept a URL, which can refer to a biased site? Do we agree to talk about punishments for children, the death penalty? Again, nothing is set in stone, and can be loosened or hardened over the years.
The gray zone and the second degree
When the operator is unable to determine whether the comment is sarcasm, second degree or any other “grey area”, he refers it to his supervisors, who themselves can contact 20 minutes to make a decision: reject or accept the comment.
But in fact, most of the comments will go through the AI, which can cause misunderstanding about the deletion. Example: Emmanuel Macron declares that he wants to “piss the non-vaccinated”. Internet users react (firmly, but politely) and quote the sentence. Normally, their comments should pass. In fact, the AI will certainly stumble on the word “fuck” and may reject them.
As part of this article, we asked Netino about two very specific challenges, which we ourselves had a little trouble evaluating.
MT: I wrote: Bad labs want to make money, Grrr, they’re bad. Your luxury car salesman sells his production to you without making a profit, I imagine… But it’s because he’s nice. To swallow all the information of the manipulators, it is perhaps more than naive, isn’t it? Pitiful!!!
Netino: This user is talking about information from manipulators? Is this a review of 20 Minutes? Defamation in relation to the laboratories? If in doubt, it is rejected.
J.-BM: I addressed Madame Taubira in the article, indicating “poor woman! What’s insulting?
Netino: The expression was seen as an insult, so it was rejected.
“In any case, we seek to have courteous exchanges, insists the project manager. And you can always submit a comment online in cases of rejection that are too severe. »
High surveillance
Some content is monitored very carefully. For example, “when someone talks about preparing an attack, we warn Pharos, which is the government platform for reporting illegal online content and behavior, informs the Netino expert. Their specialists are very responsive and take all the information we can provide. »
Do not forget point 7 of our charter: If you identify a comment that does not comply with this charter, use the “alert” function. Or contact us via private messaging, if applicable, on Facebook, specifying the post/article concerned and the user’s nickname. Because even if Netino provides moderation, our team watches.
AT 20 minutes, our community manager journalists produce and manage the publication of content for our social networks on a daily basis. “Every day, they spot problematic comments (messages with insults, homophobic, racist, anti-Semitic, or pornographic content, etc.) that have gone under the radar, under a post or an article, and alert Netino by Webhelp, who will suspend or delete them. immediately, reports Vanessa Rodrigues-Biague, head of the Engagement and Information Distribution department. These CMs (in the jargon) are also called upon to intervene directly on one of our pages (social networks) to manually delete the derogatory comment(s). And as much to say that they are subjected to a severe test!
Glad to have been able to talk about this subject and so well surrounded! https://t.co/pObGVBxPII
— Pierre Cloix (@pierrecloix1) January 31, 2022
Admittedly, moderation will always be imperfect, because the flow of comments is endless, the AI does not understand the second degree, the context or the humor. Nevertheless 20 minutes, unlike other media, did not remove comment spaces. Above all, genuine reader participation goes far beyond: “Participation in 20 minutes, it’s a way of conceiving the news by strongly involving readers, insists Anne Kerloc’h, we have tools that allow us to contribute differently and actively, in a very fine and qualitative way: calls for testimonials, a dedicated space in the newspaper, thematic Facebook communities, a community of readers, a #MoiJeune panel, the possibility of submitting Fake Offs to us. “. 20 minutesit is with you, again and always.
Other questions ? It’s here that it happens :
Pharos: How to report a crime or misdemeanor spotted on the Internet