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Models / Text / Profanity Detection

Rule-based Profanity Detection

Overview

The Profanity Detection model detects unwanted, hateful, sexual and toxic content in any user-generated text: comments, messages, posts, reviews, usernames etc.

This model is part of the Text Moderation API, along with other models such as the PII detection model. Each text item that is submitted to the API gets checked for profanity. You instantly receive a description of any toxic language found.

This model uses rule-based pattern matching. If you are looking for deep-learning models, head to the text classification models.

Categories of Profanity

For each detected profanity, the API returns the corresponding category to help you adapt actions to the type of content found.

CategoryDescriptionExample
sexual

term or expression that refers to sexual acts, sexual organs, body parts or bodily fluids typically associated with sexual acts.

here's my d*ck

discriminatory

discriminatory and derogatory content. Mostly hate speech that instigates violence or hate against groups based on specific characteristics such as religion, national or ethnic origin, sexual orientation or gender identity.

he's a tard

insult

words or phrases that undermine the dignity or honor of an individual, that are signs of disrespect and are generally used to refer to someone

you fatso!

inappropriate

inappropriate language: swear words, slang, familiar/informal or socially inappropriate/unacceptable words or phrases to describe something, or to talk to someone

what the cr@p?

grawlix

string of typographical symbols that are typically used in place of obscenity or profanity

you #@$%!!

Profanity Intensity

To help you sort the bad from the very bad, the API also returns an intensity score for each profanity. The intensity is a way to rank toxic language from mild to extreme. As a rule of thumb, low intensity profanity might be acceptable in many contexts, whereas high intensity profanity will almost always be problematic.

IntensityDescription
high

The highest level of profanity, with words and expressions that are problematic in most if not all contexts.

medium

Medium level profanity. Might be acceptable in some adult-only circles, while being unacceptable in public or in front of children.

low

Lowest level of profanity. Mild language.

Language support

English is the default language used for text moderation. This means that if you do not specify anything, the API engine will assume that the text is in english and will process it as such.

If you know with high confidence what language is used in the message, for instance because your users tend to mostly speak one language, you can set the language with the lang parameter. To do so, use the ISO 639-1 codes for languages:

LanguageCode
English (default)en
Chinesezh
Danishda
Dutchnl
Finnishfi
Frenchfr
Germande
Italianit
Norwegianno
Polishpl
Portuguesept
Spanishes
Swedishsv
Tagalog / Filipinotl
Turkishtr

If you are unsure about the language used by a user, you can specify multiple languages as a comma-separated list. For instance en,fr,es for users that might write in english, french or spanish. The API will then automatically detect the language and apply the corresponding rules. We recommend specifying the shortest possible list as this will yield better results both in speed and accuracy.

Other languages are available upon request. Please get in touch regarding your language needs.

Detection strength

The Text Moderation API is a lot stronger than word-based filters. It uses advanced language analysis to detect objectionable content, even when users specifically attempt to circumvent your filters.

As an example, for each word, the API will be looking up millions of variations that might be used to evade filtering, while smartly ignoring all situations that might generate false positives. Here is a partial list of the situations that are covered:

biiiiitttch
Repetitions

Characters being repeated to avoid basic word filtering

$#!t
Replacements

Replacement of characters with typographical symbols

B__* 0 __ 0 -- B__s
Insertions

Adding spaces, punctuation and more within words

ℙ🅤ᵴṨɏ
Obfuscation and Special characters

Unusual non-ASCII characters used to evade basic word filters

phok yu
Spelling mistakes & Phonetic Variations

Changing word spellings while retaining their original meaning or pronunciation

3as¯|¯AR|)
Leet speak

Replacing some alphabetical characters with a combination of punctuation, digits and letters

123FuckBlablah
Smart embeddings

Catching profanity based embeddings, while smartly ignoring potential false positives such as bassguitar amass...

Use the model

Let's say you want to moderate the following text item:

Have s_*_x or be a t@rd

Simply send a POST request containing the UTF-8 formatted text along with the ISO 639-1 language code (such as en for english). Here is an example:


curl -X POST 'https://api.sightengine.com/1.0/text/check.json' \
  -F 'text=Have s_*_x or be a t@rd' \
  -F 'lang=en' \
  -F 'mode=rules' \
  -F 'api_user={api_user}' \
  -F 'api_secret={api_secret}'


# this example uses requests
import requests
import json

data = {
  'text': 'Have s_*_x or be a t@rd',
  'mode': 'rules',
  'lang': 'en',
  'api_user': '{api_user}',
  'api_secret': '{api_secret}'
}
r = requests.post('https://api.sightengine.com/1.0/text/check.json', data=data)

output = json.loads(r.text)


$params = array(
  'text' => 'Have s_*_x or be a t@rd',
  'lang' => 'en',
  'mode' => 'rules',
  'api_user' => '{api_user}',
  'api_secret' => '{api_secret}',
);

// this example uses cURL
$ch = curl_init('https://api.sightengine.com/1.0/text/check.json');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $params);
$response = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

$output = json_decode($response, true);


// this example uses axios and form-data
const axios = require('axios');
const FormData = require('form-data');

data = new FormData();
data.append('text', 'Have s_*_x or be a t@rd');
data.append('lang', 'en');
data.append('mode', 'rules');
data.append('api_user', '{api_user}');
data.append('api_secret', '{api_secret}');

axios({
  url: 'https://api.sightengine.com/1.0/text/check.json',
  method:'post',
  data: data,
  headers: data.getHeaders()
})
.then(function (response) {
  // on success: handle response
  console.log(response.data);
})
.catch(function (error) {
  // handle error
  if (error.response) console.log(error.response.data);
  else console.log(error.message);
});

See request parameter description

ParameterTypeDescription
textstringUTF-8 encoded text to moderate
modestringcomma-separated list of modes. Modes are rules for the rule-based model or ml for ML models
categoriesstringcomma-separated list of categories to check. Possible values: profanity, personal, link, drug, weapon, violence, self-harm, medical, extremism, spam, content-trade, money-transaction (optional)
langstringcomma-separated list of target languages
opt_countriesstringcomma-separated list of target countries for phone number detection (optional)
liststringid of a custom list to be used for rule-based moderation (optional)
api_userstringyour API user id
api_secretstringyour API secret

The JSON response contains a description of profanities with positions within the text string.


{
  "status": "success",
  "request": {
    "id": "req_6cujQglQPgGApjI5odv0P",
    "timestamp": 1471947033.92,
    "operations": 1
  },
  "profanity": {
    "matches": [
      {
          "type": "sexual",
          "intensity": "medium",
          "match": "sex",
          "start": 5,
          "end": 9
      },
      {
          "type": "discriminatory",
          "intensity": "high",
          "match": "tard",
          "start": 19,
          "end": 22
      }
    ]
  },
  "personal": {
    "matches": []
  },
  "link": {
    "matches": []
  },
}

Any other needs?

See our full list of Text models for details on other filters and checks you can run on your text content. You might also want to check our Image & Video models to moderate images and videos. This includes moderation of text in images/videos.

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