Moderation rules: decisions you can explain and repeat

Moderation without rules is the opinion of whoever is on duty. Today a listing is approved, tomorrow the same one is rejected, and a week later the platform blocks the account for something that "always passed". Rules and a decision log turn moderation from taste into a process that survives a dispute with a user, a platform and a regulator.

What moderation rules are

A document that, for every content type, answers three questions: what we accept, what we reject and what we pass up for a decision. Rules consist of three layers — platform and regulator requirements, which are not negotiable; the product's internal standards, which the business decides; and grey zones, where precedents accumulate. Without the first layer the account gets blocked, without the second the product loses its face, without the third every disputed case is decided from scratch.

• Content types: listings, reviews, comments, profiles, images, promo materials and creatives before placement.
• Criteria per type: mandatory elements, prohibited elements, image and text requirements.
• Decision scale: accept, accept with an edit, reject with a reason, escalate.
• Rejection reasons — a closed list with wording for the user.
• Timings: within how many hours a material must be reviewed.
• Escalation: what goes to the lawyer, the product owner, the security team.

The decision log

Every decision is recorded: which material, who checked, when, what decision, under which rule, with what comment. The log is not for policing moderators but for three situations that are lost without it: a user disputes a rejection, a platform asks for grounds during a block, a regulator asks how materials of a certain category are checked. In all three, "we check" without a log does not count.

Disputed cases and review

1. A disputed material — one that fits neither "accept" nor "reject" under current rules — is flagged and passed to the rules owner for a decision.
2. The decision on a disputed case is recorded as a precedent: a new rule item or a clarification of an existing one.
3. Once a month accumulated precedents are reviewed, the rules are updated as a dated version, moderators receive the changes.
4. Rejected materials disputed by users are re-reviewed by a second moderator — this protects against the first one's mistakes.

Specifics for iGaming, finance and marketplaces

For products with betting and financial advertising the regulator layer is the main one: mandatory disclaimers, age labels, prohibited promises, platform restrictions. Rules for these categories are written with a lawyer for each market, and the log is kept so that for any creative the pre-placement check result can be shown. For marketplaces the main layer is the platform's rules: listing requirements, prohibited categories, review formatting; a violation leads to a seller block, not a warning.

Automating moderation

Part of the checks can be automated: mandatory fields, prohibited words, image format, duplicates. Language models help with initial classification and highlighting suspicious spots, but the final decision on disputed and rejected materials stays with a human — it is their decision and justification that the log needs in a dispute.