📖 Content moderation glossary
What is reactive moderation?
In short
Reactive moderation is a moderation method in which content is reviewed only after a user, a trusted flagger or an authority reports it, rather than being checked systematically.
In reactive moderation, the community does the first filtering: readers click a report button, and only reported content reaches the moderators. It is cheap and respects freedom of expression, since nothing is reviewed without a reason.
Its limit is obvious: abusive content stays online until someone bothers to report it, and many users never do. On a small brand page, an insult may remain visible for days. Reports can also be abused, for example when a group mass-reports a comment it disagrees with.
Reactive moderation is still essential, because the Digital Services Act requires hosting services to offer a notice and action mechanism (Article 16) so that anyone can report illegal content. In practice, organisations combine reports with proactive automated review so they do not depend on users alone.