Sentropy Technologies

Sentropy Technologies was a specialized firm focused on developing artificial intelligence to combat online hate and harassment. The company was established in 2018 by co-founders John Redgrave, Michele Banko, Taylor Rhyne, and Ethan Breder. The impetus for the company's creation stemmed from CEO John Redgrave's personal concerns about online safety for his children, which evolved into a mission to use technology for societal benefit. Redgrave's prior experience includes roles at Palantir Technologies, where he worked on projects like disease outbreak tracking with the CDC, and as COO of Lattice Data, a company acquired by Apple that focused on using machine learning to structure unstructured data, including for the purpose of combating human trafficking. Co-founder and COO Taylor Rhyne also worked with Redgrave at Lattice and has a background in finance and technology, including a period at Apple post-acquisition.

Sentropy's business model was centered on providing its technology to other platforms, operating within the business-to-business (B2B) market for content moderation and trust and safety services. The company developed a suite of products, including "Sentropy Detect," an API that provided access to its classification technology, and "Sentropy Defend," a browser-based interface for moderation workflows. These tools were designed to be integrated into existing systems, allowing online communities and platforms to proactively identify and manage toxic behavior. The technology utilized machine learning and natural language processing to analyze content and flag various forms of abuse, with models that could learn and adapt to the specific norms of different online communities. This allowed clients, ranging from gaming sites to recipe-sharing platforms, to have a moderation tool that became more attuned to their unique context over time. The company secured $13 million in a Series A funding round in June 2020, with investors including Initialized Capital, King River Capital, and notable figures from companies like Twitch, Twitter, and Riot Games.

In a significant milestone, Sentropy Technologies was acquired by the communication platform Discord in July 2021 for an undisclosed amount. Following the acquisition, Sentropy's team and technology were integrated into Discord to enhance its trust and safety capabilities, and Sentropy began to wind down its standalone products. The acquisition was a strategic move for Discord to bolster its ability to moderate content across its millions of communities, referred to as "servers". John Redgrave transitioned to the role of Head of Trust and Safety at Discord, continuing his work on a larger scale.

Keywords: content moderation, AI moderation, online safety, trust and safety, hate speech detection, online harassment, natural language processing, machine learning, community management tools, user safety, API, B2B, John Redgrave, Discord, Sentropy Detect, Sentropy Defend, online abuse prevention, bias-aware AI, digital community protection, content filtering