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Welcome to the latest issue of Trust & Safety Lately! As always, we’re sharing industry insights, updates, and thought-provoking content — from legal regulation impacting the gaming industry and other online social spaces to the latest data and reports to inform your work.

Here's what we've gathered for you this month:

🔨 DSA all day! Big Tech companies make changes to reach compliance with new laws impacting EU consumers
💸 Research from Take This shows toxic users are affecting your bottom line
🏅 A new research award from Google hopes to spark innovation in trust & safety

Let's get to it! 🔸

Industry News

❗ The DSA is HERE

As part of the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) going into effect last week, Big Tech companies had to produce their first required risk assessments to the European Commission, and the context each platform shared was illuminating. In addition to risk assessments, how are these companies and their platforms responding? Google and Meta shared their action plans and commitments, and TikTok and Instagram will be launching chronological feeds for their users (Remember when we used to call them timelines? 🤓) Plus, some changes coming soon for Snapchat users, allowing them to opt out of custom content recommendations.

🎉 Call of Duty Deploys Voice Chat Moderation

This one's a bit self-serving, but it is important news for the industry at large: Activision announced yesterday that they're deploying Modulate's ToxMod voice chat moderation platform in Call of Duty. The rollout kicked off for Modern Warfare II and Warzone players in North America, and will be followed by a global launch with Modern Warfare III in November. ToxMod will proactively escalate any violations of Call of Duty's Code of Conduct to Activision's moderation teams, including categorizing and scoring toxic speech and providing full conversational context.

🏁 Gamescom 2023 Clocks in at 320,000 Attendees

The world's biggest games event kept its crown this year, amassing over 300,000 attendees in Cologne, Germany - a 15% increase over last year. Trust & Safety was a recurring topic in many panels, discussions, and offsite events, such as Sharon Fisher's talk on prioritizing community health and the Community Clubhouse, an all-day summit focused on building successful game communities and positive player experiences.

🙇 The Grey Areas of Content Moderation

A new paper from Stockinger, A., Schäfer, S., & Lecheler, S. explores the role of content moderators and how they structure their work. The researchers conducted a qualitative interview study with 18 professional content moderators in Austria and Germany with varying degrees of experience in the field. The full paper dives into the "grey areas" of uncivil comments and the tools that can be employed to make the job less daunting.

Read the paper on SageJournals

☁️ Netflix Ponders its Future in Cloud Gaming

Stadia. Luma. GeForce Now. Plenty of well-funded, well-meaning, well-positioned technology companies have tried to tackle cloud-enabled game streaming... and have mostly failed. So what's Netflix thinking in jumping into those unclear waters? This quote from Netflix’s VP of Games, Mike Verdu, offers a good glimpse:

“We’re not asking you to subscribe (to game streaming) as a console replacement, so it’s a completely different business model. The hope is over time that it just becomes this very natural way to play games wherever you are.”

🚫 Twitch Allows Streamers to Block Certain Viewers

Twitch is updating their user experience to allow streamers to block problematic viewers. Prior to the update, streamers could prevent blocked or banned users from accessing their chats. Now a streamer’s content will be entirely hidden from blocked or banned users.

🏅 Google launches Trust & Safety research awards

Google is seeking research proposals and will provide unrestricted grants to support Trust & Safety research efforts across disciplines, including Computer Science, Legal Studies, Public Policy, Social Sciences, Psychology, and Human-Computer Interaction. Google is ready to grand funds up to $100,000 and is "extremely interested" projects based in or working within the context of EU law.

Data Spotlight

💰 Take This & Nielsen: Toxic Gamers Are Alienating Your Core Demographic

The study found a 54% gain in revenue for games that "don’t sell consumers spewing name calling, racial epithets, holocaust denial, misogyny, threats to one’s safety, and your garden variety rape and death threats."

6 out of 10 players reported that they had quit a session/match or quit playing a game permanently because they were subjected to harassment and hate within that gaming community.

72% of players reported that they have avoided playing certain games because of the reputation of that game's community.

Take This and Nielsen recently published their full report on "The Business Case for Community Management," which we got a preview of last month. The report dives into the impacts and consequences of moderating player communities -- or leaving players to fend for themselves. The data proves that the idea of damaging revenue or community sentiment by alienating a "core demographic" after incorporating moderation tools is unfounded.

💡 Data.ai & IDC: Gaming Spotlight 2023

Mobile gaming revenue will reach $108 billion in 2023.

The console market is poised to hit $43 billion in 2023, up 3% year-over-year.

Cloud-streamed gaming is expected to bring in $3.8 billion across all platforms.

A rise in spending for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S|X is mostly to thank for rising console spending in 2023, according to a new report from Data.ai and IDC. The report also forecasted that handheld revenue is expected to fall by 20% to under $3 billion, thanks to waning interest in the Nintendo Switch Lite.

Industry Events

Backend Services Summit

October 24, 2023

Los Angeles, CA

Fancy a day in LA with the brightest folks in backend engineering? The inaugural Backend Services Summit will include a mixture of chats, panels, and roundtables – plus a fun, chill beach vibe. (Oh, and Modulate will be there!)

Register | Meet with us there