Real411 routes digital harm complaints through three independent reviewers

Short summary

A developer details the architecture of Real411, a South African platform for reporting digital harms like misinformation and hate speech. The system uses an append-only status log instead of a mutable status column, enabling full audit trails and simpler state machine transitions. The platform routes each complaint through three independent reviewers, a secretariat review, automated duplicate detection scoring across URL, image, and text similarity, and escalation timers for unclaimed complaints.

• •Append-only status log replaces mutable status column for full auditability
• •Three independent reviewer tracks with blind assessment before secretariat verdict
• •Duplicate detection scores URL (40%), image hash (35%), and text (25%) similarity

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