Content Moderation Case Study: Scammers Targeting Scrabble Chat (2020)

Content Moderation Case Study: Scammers Targeting Scrabble Chat (2020)

4 years ago
Anonymous $y15ULlV7sG

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20201209/14041545856/content-moderation-case-study-scammers-targeting-scrabble-chat-2020.shtml

Summary: In the spring of 2020, Mattel and Hasbro announced that the official mobile version of the game Scrabble would no longer be the game produced by Electronic Arts, but rather a new game called Scrabble Go created by a company called Scopely. The change drew the ire of fans (who have even started a petition for the old game to be brought back) for taking what had been a fairly standard mobile version of the popular word game, and introducing a new, flashier version that had some additional “gamification” incentives and put the focus on playing against others, rather than the computer as was typical in the previous game.

This also introduced a new feature: chat. Since players are playing against other human beings, Scopely decided to add a chat feature, but apparently did not consider how such features may be regularly abused. In the months since Scrabble Go launched, there have been many reports of so-called “romance scammers” trying to reach out to people via Scrabble Go’s chat feature.