Moderation API
A moderation API is a service that lets any app or website automatically check content for harmful material and get an instant decision back. In plain terms, an API is a way for one piece of software to ask another piece of software to do a job. A moderation API's job is to look at a message, comment, or image and answer the question "is this safe, and if not, what is wrong with it?"
What it means
Instead of building moderation from scratch or hiring people to read everything by hand, a company connects its product to a moderation API. Whenever a user posts something, the app quietly sends that content to the API, which analyzes it and returns a result in a fraction of a second. The app then uses that result to allow the content, hide it, hold it for review, or warn a moderator. All of this happens automatically and fast enough that users never notice the check.
Real-world examples
- A chat app sends every new message to a moderation API and hides anything flagged as harassment before other users see it.
- A gaming platform checks usernames at signup so offensive names never get created.
- A dating app screens profile text and photos for sexual or abusive content automatically.
Why it matters
A moderation API turns safety into something a small team can switch on rather than a project that needs its own department. It scales to millions of items, works around the clock, and applies the same standards every time. Because the analysis happens through purpose-built AI, a good moderation API understands intent rather than just scanning for banned words, which means fewer wrongly blocked messages and better detection of disguised abuse. Supervisor is a moderation API that covers both text and images across more than one hundred languages.