On October 29, 2021, Dave MC Carty, corporate vice president of XBOX operations, announced in a press release that Microsoft had acquired Two Hat, a leading provider of content moderation solutions. Two Hat is a leading provider of content moderation solutions, which aim to create healthy and safe online communities by keeping them free of negative social interactions for safe online sharing. Microsoft and Two Hat already collaborated on the XBOX, Minecraft and MSN communities.
It was in 2012 that Chris Priebe left his position as Director of Application Security at Disney Interactive to start his own company, Two Hat. A former lead developer of the security elements of Club Penguin, which was acquired by Disney and reached over 300 million users, Chris Priebe was motivated by a desire to tackle the major issues of cyberbullying, harassment and abuse on social networks. Like many Canadians, he was moved by the tragic story of Amanda Todd. The 15-year-old, who posted a plea for help on YouTube on September 7, 2012, after being cyber-stalked for months, finally took her own life on October 10. Chris Priebe turned this story into a cause by developing a tool that can make the web both safe and inclusive.
Two Hat uses artificial intelligence to “classify, filter and escalate over 102 billion human interactions per month in real time. Posts, usernames, videos, profile pictures are inspected for hateful, racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, sexist language. Two Hat focuses on cyberbullying, abuse, hate speech, violent threats and child exploitation that must disappear so that everyone is free to share online without fear of harassment or abuse.
Two Hat has created an adaptive, responsive, and comprehensive community management solution that combines best-in-class technology with unique insights resulting in a blend of AI/ML, linguistics, and cutting-edge community management best practices. It works with many online communities and shares the same beliefs as Microsoft, which has made moderating obscene, hateful, sexist, or violent content in video games a priority for several years.
Two Hat will therefore come under the umbrella of Microsoft while keeping its own customers. Two hat states:
“We have been working in partnership with Xbox and the Microsoft team for several years and share a passion and drive to make meaningful change in advancing civility and citizenship online. We are committed to ensuring that safety, inclusion and online health and wellbeing are always at the forefront of our work and by joining Microsoft we can provide the greatest concentration of talent, resources and knowledge needed to advance this vision.”
Dave Mc Carty confirms:
“At Microsoft, we believe that gaming should be inclusive and welcoming to everyone. Over the past few years, Microsoft and Two Hat have worked together to implement proactive moderation technology in gaming, and non-gaming, experiences to detect and remove harmful content before it even reaches our community members.”
Translated from Acquisition de Two Hat par Microsoft pour une expérience en ligne plus sereine
