Rod MartínezRod Martínez
Fanvue

Moderation clear to creators, faster for teams

Building an account health and user warnings system for creators, compliance, and trust at scale.

-15%manual review time per item, after launch.
Creator EconomyCompliance & Moderation
Moderation clear to creators, faster for teams
Responsibilities
Product Strategy · System Design · Information Architecture · Trust & Safety UX
Team
CEO, PM, Head of Support and support team, Head of Moderation, Moderation Lead and moderators, 3 Engineers
Timeline
Oct – Dec 2025
Moderation OKR · Q1 2026
-15%
Manual review time per item
Moderation OKR · Q1 2026
-10%
Compliance resolution time
Support OKR · Q1 2026
-14.9%
Support resolution time, 1h34m to 1h20m
Support · Mar→Apr 2026
-33%
Ban and suspension support chats, 1,219 to 811 a month
01 · Context

Where this sat inside Fanvue.

Fanvue is a creator economy platform headquartered in London: paid exclusive content, AI-powered creator tools, and a rapidly growing compliance surface.

Fanvue in numbers
Platform
200K+
Creators on Fanvue
Audience
5M+
Monthly Unique Visitors
Business
$40M→$200M
ARR growth during my design tenure
02 · The Problem

A moderation system that worked against everyone.

Creators learned about violations through a generic email, sometimes with a “Strike” attached. No dashboard. No context. No self-service. The result was predictable:

  • Missed or disputed warnings: the most common support trigger
  • Repeated violations because creators never understood the rule
  • Support acting as a permanent translator between creators and moderators

Why the Strike system failed at scale

38 violation types, one model. No severity, no escalation, no explanation. Creators couldn’t tell if a strike was a warning or a step toward a ban.

Policy changes made it urgent

New regulations on copyright, AI-generated content, deepfakes, and underage content demanded more nuance than a single strike could express.

Before (illustrative): one generic email, whatever the violation. It was the only creator-visible surface.
Before (illustrative): one generic email, whatever the violation. It was the only creator-visible surface.
Creators
No idea what a violation meant, or how close they were to a ban.
Moderators
No unified tool. Enforcement was inconsistent across the team.
Support
Fielding complaints blind, always checking with moderation before they could respond.
Support already saw it in the data
Sep 2025 · Support report
Pre-warn
Support's own recommendation: warn creators before restricting them. They had linked warning peaks to ticket spikes and lower satisfaction.
Oct 2025 · Support review
16.7%
Of badly rated chats were payouts blocked by compliance (review of 60).
Sep–Oct 2025 · Support
Removed
Satisfaction surveys on ban replies. Those ratings dragged the team score down.
03 · Solution

A unified source of truth for creators, moderators, and support.

The goal was a system where what happened internally was always reflected consistently in what creators saw. That required designing three things in parallel.

Account Health dashboard

A single view showing overall account status, active warnings, severity level, escalation risk, and a plain-language explanation of any action taken. Accessible from the homepage, notifications, profile page, vault, and email.

One surface consolidates four previously fragmented signals: warnings, severity, escalation risk, and account status.
One surface consolidates four previously fragmented signals: warnings, severity, escalation risk, and account status.

User Warnings (replacing Strikes)

Each warning shows the creator what happened and when, with the reason and where to get help. Severe or repeated warnings lead to a ban. Internal moderator notes (fraud, AML, legal context) are kept separate.

Warnings replace strikes: each one names the reason, so creators can see what is adding up before a ban.
Warnings replace strikes: each one names the reason, so creators can see what is adding up before a ban.

Clear content status at every stage

Three states: In Review, Removed, Approved, each with a plain-language explanation. Creators can self-delete removed content from the vault without contacting support.

Every removed item explains the rule it broke and offers a self-delete, cutting a recurring support ticket.
Every removed item explains the rule it broke and offers a self-delete, cutting a recurring support ticket.
Account states

Two models work together. Severity is the policy: four levels, from informational (Level 1) to zero tolerance (Level 4). The path is what the creator sees: at the third warning, access is removed and the creator gets an email. Severity then decides the outcome: Restricted, where the creator can talk to support and moderation and good faith is reviewed, or Banned, with no discussion possible.

Severity · the policy
Level 4 · Zero toleranceImmediate ban
Level 3 · CriticalMax 1 warning, repeat = ban
Level 2 · StandardWarnings add up
Level 1 · LowInformational, no escalation
Most violations are low severity and frequent. A few are severe and rare.
Path · what the creator sees
L2
Warning 1Warning 2Warning 3
RestrictedBanned
L3
Final warningrepeatBanned
L4
immediateBanned
At the third warning, access is removed and the creator gets an email. Restricted: can talk to support and moderation, good faith is reviewed. Banned: no discussion possible.
One violation, two records.

Every violation is recorded twice. One record is for the creator. The other stays internal to moderation and support. The split is what made graduated transparency possible: creators get clarity, legal and investigative context stay protected.

Creator Account Health summary and media tab
Visible to the creator
Where they stand: warnings, removed and in-review media, with the reason for each.
BalancesUser warningsMediaAdmin notes
DateViolation typeFinalWarned by
10/12/2025Other prohibited content✕Moderator
Admin notes · internal only
TypeUsed for
InternalFraud and AML checks, open investigations, legal context
fadmin · Fanvue's internal moderation tool (recreated)
Internal to moderation and support
A structured User Warnings tab: date, violation type, final warning, who issued it. Fraud, AML and investigations stay in internal admin notes.
Status, warnings, and content issues navigated from one surface, replacing four separate places creators used to check.
Content issues surface in the vault itself, where creators already manage their media: no separate moderation inbox.
04 · Entry Points

Surfacing issues where creators already are.

Violations surface through five touchpoints: homepage banner, notifications, profile page, vault, and email. Creators never have to go hunting for their account status.

01
Homepage banner
First thing a creator sees after logging in.
02
Notifications
Its own tab, so warnings never get buried.
03
Profile page
An alert on the creator's own page.
04
Vault
Flags on the media itself, where creators manage content.
05
Email
One template per violation, with a button back.
The homepage banner and a toast flag Account Health issues the moment a creator logs in.
The homepage banner and a toast flag Account Health issues the moment a creator logs in.
A dedicated Account Health tab keeps warnings from getting lost in the general notification feed.
A dedicated Account Health tab keeps warnings from getting lost in the general notification feed.
Profile-level alerts catch creators the moment they open their own page: one of five entry points into Account Health.
05 · Communication

Clear emails, per violation type.

Templates were created for each violation type. Every email says what was found in plain language, why the rule exists, and the action taken, framed as prevention rather than judgment. It ends with what to do next, links to the relevant policies, and a button back to Account Health. The tone is firm but supportive: warning without drama.

06 · Education & Prevention

From punishment to prevention.

Policy guidance is embedded contextually throughout the experience: not buried in a help centre. Every violation surfaces why the content was flagged, which rule applies, and what to do differently next time.

Policy guidance embedded contextually, replacing generic 'content removed' language with the specific rule and a self-serve action.
Policy guidance embedded contextually, replacing generic 'content removed' language with the specific rule and a self-serve action.
Each violation type has its own guideline page, putting the rule a creator broke one click away instead of buried in a help centre.
Each violation type has its own guideline page, putting the rule a creator broke one click away instead of buried in a help centre.
07 · Internal Alignment

Getting moderation, support, and compliance onto the same page.

Before this project, moderation actions, internal notes, and creator communications lived in separate systems. Account Health gave all three teams a shared view, eliminating the need for support to act as a middleman on every complaint.

Moderators log User Warnings (creator-visible) and Admin Notes (internal only, for investigations, fraud, AML, legal).

Support accesses full context directly from Account Health. No more back-and-forth with the moderation team.

08 · Key Design Decisions

Three trade-offs that shaped the outcome.

This project required making deliberate trade-offs between transparency, compliance, and operational scalability.

Warnings instead of Strikes

"Strike" reads as opaque and punitive. Warnings allow for graduated escalation, carry educational weight, and make ban thresholds legible to creators.

Separate User Warnings and Admin Notes

Legal and investigative context shouldn't be user-visible. Transparency must be controlled and intentional: not a liability.

A centralised view over inline indicators

Inline flags on content create noise without context. Creators needed to see patterns across their account, not isolated incidents.

Account Health on launch day: shipped to all 200k creators as a platform-level capability.
09 · Learnings

Learnings

L1
“Moderation is not an edge case. It is a core product system.”
L2
“Transparency reduces conflict more effectively than enforcement alone.”
L3
“UX must sometimes prioritise legal clarity over simplicity.”
L4
“Designing for scale means designing for org alignment, not just users.”
Next project

From friction to conversion, one test at a time

Fanvue · 2025
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From friction to conversion, one test at a time
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