Spectrum Labs, which provides patent-pending technology and services to consumer internet brands to help identify toxic behavior online, has secured a $10 million Series A investment led by Greycroft with participation from Wing Venture Capital, Ridge Ventures, Global Founders Capital, and Super{set}.
As the world increasingly relies on Internet-based services, apps, and games, online communities continue to grow exponentially, representing billions of messages and transactions every day. Harassment, hate speech, and other toxic behaviors within these communities are accelerating, requiring a solution beyond outsourced moderation, keyword lists, or in-house legacy technology that’s ill-equipped to deal with the scale of the problem.
“The online toxicity problem is massive, growing, and a huge strain on companies dealing with thousands of incidents per day with outdated tools,” said Justin Davis, CEO of Spectrum Labs. “Toxic behavior has outpaced brands’ ability to accurately recognize and respond in real time to every threat. It’s hurting their communities and destroys trust in the Internet. Consumers are demanding a higher quality experience, and brands who can deliver on this expectation will be market leaders. Right now, safeguarding the user experience from toxicity has to be every consumer-facing brand’s top priority.”
Spectrum Lab’s platform uses AI models to recognize 40+ distinct toxic behaviors, including harassment, hate speech, scams, grooming, illegal solicitation, and doxxing, and its workflow automation helps Trust & Safety teams react in real time. Each behavior identification model is contextually aware and can distinguish between an appropriate comment or action and toxic behavior, enabling online platforms to address toxic content with a high degree of accuracy and speed.
“Unchecked toxicity destroys online communities by eroding the core user experience,” said Alison Lange Engel, Venture Partner at Greycroft and Spectrum Labs Board Member. “Spectrum Labs helps companies ensure their platforms and communities are being used the way they were intended, accounting for the context and norms unique to each platform.”
Riot Games is using Spectrum Labs to safeguard the player experience.
“Our players send hundreds of millions of messages on a typical day, and it’s important that those messages contribute to a safe, positive experience for all our communities,“ added Paul Snyder, Product Lead Player Dynamics. “In Spectrum Labs, we have a partner who is in the trenches with us, helping us meet that commitment. As we roll out new services powered by Spectrum Labs, we’re seeing great results and know our players will experience a significant positive impact in the safety, health, and enjoyment of our games.”
Partnering with social networks, gaming platforms, dating sites, and e-commerce companies, Spectrum Labs has driven dramatic results from brands able to more quickly and accurately respond to safeguard their users.
- Spectrum Labs is more than twice as likely to find and flag a guideline-violating username than a customer’s existing internal moderation solution. For one customer, Spectrum Labs helped achieve a 150% increase in unsafe username detection, with 97% precision over the internal solution previously used.
- For a peer-to-peer marketplace customer, Spectrum Labs was able to improve the detection of transitions being taken off of the app by 20%, resulting in a gain of $16M worth of listings and $1.6M in revenue for the customer.
- Many platforms employ search autocomplete functionality to make the search experience fast and easy, but autocomplete recommendations can be overrun by toxic content. For a global social platform customer, Spectrum Labs reduced problematic terms from 10% to less than 0.2% with 98% detection precision.
Read more on Spectrum Labs’ Series A announcement in CEO Justin’s Davis blog post here: https://medium.com/@_justindavis/rebuilding-trust-in-the-internet-560d84dda037
About Spectrum Labs
Spectrum Labs provides contextual AI, automation, and services to help consumer brands recognize and respond to toxic behavior. The platform identifies 40+ behaviors across all languages enabling Trust & Safety teams to deal with harmful issues in real time. Spectrum Labs’ mission is to use the power of data and community to rebuild trust in the Internet, making it a safer and more valuable place for all. For more, go to spectrumlabsai.com.
About Greycroft
Greycroft is a seed-to-growth venture capital firm that partners with exceptional entrepreneurs to build transformative companies. Greycroft manages more than $1.5 billion in capital with over 200 investments, including Acorns, App Annie, Axios, Bird, Braintree, BetterCloud, Bright Health, Buddy Media, Huffington Post, Icertis, Lightricks, Openpath, Plated, Scopely, Shipt, TheRealReal, Thrive Market, Trunk Club, and Venmo. www.greycroft.com
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200924005197/en/