• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, July 1, 2015

Laws like the Harmful Digital Communications bill that passed in New Zealand have Inversoft CEO Brian Pontarelli thinking the United States will soon see similar legislation come down the pike. While this bill aims to protect victims of cyber-bullying and online harassment, the shift also puts a strain on companies to monitor and protect their communities and reputations. So this week Inversoft will release  an update to the company's enterprise platform that moderates and filters profanity and more from online communities.

Pontarelli went so far as to suggest that former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo stepped down because of increasing pressure from the "media blitz around cyber-bullying, offensive content," and issues Twitter had with its community and user interaction. The question becomes, will U.S. companies that run portals and networks become liable for offensive online comments of readers or site visitors?

While the latest version of CleanSpeak adds advanced reporting and automated reputation scoring of users based on their behavior and written content, it also can automatically track the behavior of visitors across a company's branded network of Web sites in 18 languages.

Disney, NFL, E*Trade, Pokemon, National Geographic, and Activision are some of the companies working with Inversoft to filter racial slurs, profanity, personal information, URLs, email addresses and other types of unwanted content in the brand's game applications, forums, blogs, ratings and reviews, as well as their mobile Web and apps.

For instance, Disney owns ESPN, so CleanSpeak could track any site visitor jumping from one Disney-owned site to another, as well as affiliates. It builds a profile of the site visitor by monitoring and tracking conversations in chat windows  for logged-in users. Disney recently unified the log-in for all its brands, similar to Google, Yahoo, and Bing, to better track visitors across sites.

The missed opportunity in this technology is taking the language used by individuals and target or retarget advertisements. Pontarelli said it's not something the platform does today, but it's technologically possible. He said it gets a bit "dicey" from a privacy standpoint, and companies don't typically allow this type of data outside their domains.