📖 Content moderation glossary
What is user-generated content (UGC)?
In short
User-generated content (UGC) is any content created and published by users of a service rather than by the organisation itself, such as comments, reviews, forum posts, photos and videos.
UGC is valuable: comments create engagement, reviews drive sales and community posts bring authenticity. It is also a risk, because the organisation displays content it did not write and cannot fully control.
Example: a marketplace displays product reviews written by buyers, a news site shows readers' comments, and a city's participatory platform publishes residents' proposals. All three are UGC and all three need moderation rules.
Under the Digital Services Act, an organisation that stores UGC at users' request acts as a hosting service for that content, with obligations such as notice and action and statements of reasons. OpenModeration moderates UGC on websites through its API and on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and WordPress.