Introducing Susie: The Face of Kleros Moderate

Damjan Malbašić -

Anyone who has participated in any chat platform since the dawn of the Internet, from BBS's, forums to Telegram and Discord groups has witnessed how difficult moderation can be. The job of a community manager in the blockchain world and beyond today is a full time job, from maintaining a desired level of discussion to dealing with trolls, flamers and actors who can threaten community members and in some cases, their livelihoods.

What if there was a way to utilize the groundbreaking tech coming from the bot builders of today and implement this technology in the field of content moderation?

Kleros has been thinking about this topic, not just from a technological perspective, but also about the fine line between community protection and balancing free speech, transparency and fairness. After two years of our endeavour in this field, we are proud to announce that we've created the first implementation of Kleros Moderate, our solution to content moderation - Susie the Kleros Moderator, specifically tailored to Telegram.

A talk by the Kleros Moderate developer, Shotaro Granzier-Nakajima about our platform titled:"Can the Mods Do Something?" from EthCC 2022, Paris.

Susie, the Kleros Moderator

Susie, the Telegram bot comes from an upcoming family of content moderation bots all created under the Kleros Moderate banner. The main aim of this implementation built on top of the Kleros protocol is the prevention of misinformation, targeting and spam with transparent dispute resolution. The decisions are constructed in such a way to be speedy and efficient, done through the Kleros Reality.Eth oracle, while the fair judgements are passed through the Kleros Court.

The Process

The general outline of how Susie works.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so let's see how it works under the hood by following the process in a step by step manner. While initially setting up Susie, the owner of the group writes down the general group policy of bannable behavior (this can be customized to one's liking, but there are templates to use, of course).

After a user is suspected of commiting a bannable offence, she/he is reported to Susie by using the /report function.

As seen above, the user's message is saved on IPFS to prevent the user from deleting evidence and a question is posed on reality.eth on Gnosis Chain. A minimum bond is then set (in this case 1 DAI) to give an answer to the question.

If a bond is placed to the "Yes" answer, the user is then preventively muted for 24 hours until the question is resolved. If any user believes that the rules were in fact not broken, they can put the double amount of the bond to unban the member in question. All members are able to add evidence by using the /addevidence function.

If a final decision is passed via reality.eth, the winning side have their bonds returned to them in 24 hours. If the case goes to Kleros Court, the bonds are returned once the case has concluded.

Users can double the bond to unban the group member, thus participating in what is called an 'escalation game'.

If arbitration is requested, the case goes to the Kleros Court, where jurors analyze the evidence posted and bring about their final decision.

The interface of the Kleros Moderate Court for the case in question.

Once the case is concluded, Susie reports the result on the Telegram channel and points the way towards an appeal, if there is a need.

The interface of the appeal process from the Kleros Court side.

When the case is concluded, the decision is final and the group member is banned or unmuted. The escalation of the ban is set for 24hr for the first offence, then for 10 days, 100 days and so on. These parameters, as well as the policies can be adapted to specific needs of any group that wants to implement Susie.

An additional integral element of Susie are so-called Federations - if there is a need for Susie to moderate several groups under one umbrella, decisions can be transferred between them, thus enabling content moderation effectively from one group to many.

Get Susie Now!

Do you have a need for a moderation bot that can safeguard your community from trolls, flamers, spam and all negative actors?

Susie provides fast, optimistic content moderation with an added benefit of dispute resolution via the Kleros Court in a fair and transparent manner.

Feel free to get in touch with us and get an implementation of Susie now by reaching out to our Integrations Lead, Guangmian directly or via our official Telegram group.