(Newswire.net — August 30, 2016) — Microsoft announced the end for trolls on Skype and Xbox by installing a customer support feature that allows users to report ‘hate speech’, company stated Friday in a press release.
The new system also includes an appeals forum to dispute the reporting and reinstate content. Microsoft will be the judge and jury against potential hate mongers on the Internet.
Everybody is a critic nowadays, and freedom of speech allows bad comments. However, bad publicity out of hate can cost companies a great deal of money.
Following the Twitter harassment of Saturday Night Live and Ghostbusters movie star Leslie Jones, the entertainment industry is searching for a technological way to prevent abuse and hate speech. Microsoft has come up with a new customer service feature that would delete such posts if labeled as inappropriate.
For many years, Microsoft sought to “protect customers by prohibiting hate speech and removing such content from our hosted consumer services,” Microsoft wrote in a press release.
According to Wired magazine, the new Microsoft system operates on “notice-and-takedown” approach where an internal team reviews the complaint, looks into factors and context around it and then makes the decision at their discretion. The capacity of reviewing those reports is not disclosed.
If the author feels the content is wrongfully labeled as inappropriate and removed, the user has a right to appeal, and if granted, the content would be restored. However, there is no timeline for responses to either request.
This is not the first time Microsoft has made a commitment to its users’ well being, PCWorld reports. The corporation followed Google’s lead in 2015, and made it easier for victims of revenge-porn to have links to their images removed from Microsoft’s search engine Bing.
Since then, Microsoft reported taking down 63 percent of 537 requests.
Microsoft’s complaint form includes all Microsoft-hosted consumer service, such as Skype, Xbox Live, Docs.com, Outlook, OneDrive and Sway.