Toward Accessible and Safe Live Streaming Using Distributed Content Filtering with MoQ

TL;DR

This paper introduces a real-time content moderation system for live video streaming using distributed filtering with MoQ, enabling quick removal of objectionable content with minimal latency impact.

Contribution

It extends the Media Over QUIC protocol to support real-time, distributed content filtering that selectively removes objectionable segments during live streams.

Findings

Latency increase is only one group-of-pictures duration.

System effectively removes objectionable content in real-time.

Supports distributed analysis on arbitrary client devices.

Abstract

Live video streaming is increasingly popular on social media platforms. With the growth of live streaming comes an increased need for robust content moderation to remove dangerous, illegal, or otherwise objectionable content. Whereas video on demand distribution enables offline content analysis, live streaming imposes restrictions on latency for both analysis and distribution. In this paper, we present extensions to the in-progress Media Over QUIC Transport protocol that enable real-time content moderation in one-to-many video live streams. Importantly, our solution removes only the video segments that contain objectionable content, allowing playback resumption as soon as the stream conforms to content policies again. Content analysis tasks may be transparently distributed to arbitrary client devices. We implement and evaluate our system in the context of light strobe removal for photosensitive viewers, finding that streaming clients experience an increased latency of only one group-of-pictures duration.