Generation Z, the young and app-saavy population born between 1996 and 2012, has embraced the live social discovery app Yubo. The app is geared toward Gen Z members who want to expand their social circles with other people their age from all over the world. Young people can hang out with their friends or make new ones, confident that Yubo, in partnership with cloud-based artificial intelligence solutions provider Hive, is making their online interactions more secure than ever before.
Unlike Instagram, Yubo doesn’t have likes or follows in hopes of relieving the pressure of popularity and performance, and instead empowering young adults to show their true selves by being able to connect online in an authentic way. “Safety is a cornerstone of our platform,” reads a statement from Yubo, “and we are proud to be the first social app in the world to introduce comprehensive user-age verification tools and real-time video and audio moderation for livestreams.”
Since its initial launch in October 2015, Yubo’s audio moderation partnership with Hive has expanded its technology for live streams to reach the U.S., UK, Australia, and Canada — four of its largest markets. And with the technology released in the U.S. at the end of May 2022, it’s become the “first major social media platform in the world to tackle the challenges of real-time audio analysis.”
This is on-brand for the site that declares, “Yubo is a live social discovery platform that celebrates the true essence of being young. We inspire a new generation to be themselves. Yubo is a place where anyone can belong, feel safe, and hang out.”
Yubo Plus Hive Equals Next-Level Online Safety
According to its website, Hive, the “leading provider of cloud-based AI solutions for understanding content,” states its application programming interface will “power next-generation search capabilities”. It also uses its APIs to offer developers the option to integrate “pretrained AI models” to find and address technically challenging content into its applications. As seen on Forbes’ website, Hive claims that its AI technology offers “‘human-level’ detection of harmful visual, text, and audio content” for some of the world’s largest companies like Reddit, Walmart, and video hosting service Vevo.
It’s been reported by the Anti-Defamation League that most of the people who have experienced online harassment have been in online gaming, the place where audio live streaming was at the forefront.
“Each year, ADL conducts a nationally representative survey of hate and harassment online to find out how many Americans experience incidents of hate and abuse on social media,” reports the organization, which has been battling hate since the 1910s.
“Harassment targeting marginalized people because of their identity constitutes hate-based harassment, typically for someone’s gender, race or ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, physical appearance, or disability. Hate-based harassment can drive marginalized groups out of online spaces, further undermining democracy and free speech as these spaces become central to public discourse.”
This is one area that Yubo and Hive are fighting against with the implementation of this technology.
Yubo Chief Operating Officer Marc-Antoine Durand stated that its expansion of “audio moderation technology is not only a key element of Yubo’s ever-evolving safety product roadmap, but a critical development in expanding the parameters of online safety industrywide.” While it’s still in the early stages of detection, Yubo reports that the technology has been effective in detecting “potential real-world risk, such as violence to others or self-harm.”
How Does Yubo’s New Safety Feature Work?
Yubo users can be reassured by this new technology, which will record and transcribe 10-second pieces of audio when a livestream hosts 10 or more people. AI kicks in, flagging phrases or words that violate the app’s strict Community Guidelines. Flagged material is reviewed by Yubo Safety Specialists, who then can take action and decide if it should be escalated to law enforcement.
“Machine learning” is what the algorithms utilize to power the audio moderation technology. But users’ privacy is still the focus; livestream transcripts that have not been noted for investigation are set to be deleted within 24 hours, while flagged transcripts are stored for up to a year after internal investigations have been processed.
Yubo’s COO Durand explains, “There is still a lot of progress to be made in the area of voice detection, but we are proud to be forging a path for our peers by being the first to launch audio moderation with Hive and helping make this tool more reliable and effective through this trial.”
Yubo’s “live social discovery app” allows users to do more than just livestream. Once you download the app, you can chat with friends worldwide, play games to show off your skills, or meet people based on common interests. Yubo’s website even offers “tips and tricks on how to make the most out of Yubo lives.” It breaks down different personality traits to help make the process easier.
Yubo is available to download for free on iOS and Android devices, and users can rest assured that Yubo and Hive have their backs.
Said Hive CEO Kevin Guo, “Effective content moderation is a responsibility that we know firsthand is of the utmost importance to Yubo. We are excited to be powering its ecosystem with our technology and learning together how to make online communities safer through continuous innovation.”
