Conversation Moderation w/ Spectrum Labs

This function is to moderate messages between users via Twilio Conversations webhooks. An integration with Spectrum Labs API allows incoming messages to be subjected to abusive content alerting and moderation. Spectrum Labs AI engine analyzes message content for prohibited behaviors and returns a binary determination for the analyzed profiles.

Spectrum Labs helps social platforms deliver on their brand promises, drive platform improvements and create exponential impact with technology that detects disruptive behaviors in text and audio. In a few lines of code, Twilio users can integrate with Spectrum Labs and prevent messaging harassment, hate speech, scams, profanity, radicalization and other harmful behaviors, leaving room for positive engagement.

In some instances communications may contain unwanted or abusive content, drug references, vulgarity and other objectionable messaging. This function creates a pre-event webhook URL for Twilio Conversations to inspect message bodies for abusive content and remove communications based on results returned from Spectrum Labs API.

---

PROJECT SET UP

To get started with this project you will need the following:

• A Twilio account. Sign up for a free trial account and get free test credit.
• An SMS enabled Twilio Phone Number.
• Spectrum Labs account and access credentials

Create the Pre-Event Webhook

We will be configuring a Conversations Webhook and selecting the event onMessageAdd https://www.twilio.com/console/conversations/configuration/webhooks

---

Create a new function with the path /spectrum-webhook. Delete the placeholder code and paste the following code in the editor window.

const fetch = require('node-fetch');
var moment = require('moment-timezone');

exports.handler = async function(context, event, callback) {
  const client = context.getTwilioClient();
  const twiml = new Twilio.twiml.MessagingResponse();
  
  // timezone default to CST
  let timezone = event.timezone || 'America/Chicago';
  const messageTime = moment().tz(timezone).format();
  
  // Initialize the Spectrum Labs API request message body for inspection
  let spectrumReq = { 
          "timestamp": messageTime,
          "category": "sms",
          "content": {
            "id": event.MessageSid,
            "text": event.Body, 
            "attributes": {
              "user-id": event.Author,
              "media-url": event.MediaUrl0,
              "region": event.FromCity + ", " + event.FromState
            }
            }
          };
  const res = await fetch(context.WEBHOOK_URL, {
      method: 'POST',
      headers: {
        'Content-Type': 'application/json',
        'X-Client-Id': context.SPECTRUM_CLIENT_ID,
        'X-Api-Key': context.SPECTRUM_API_KEY
      },
      body: JSON.stringify(spectrumReq),
    });
    
    let data = await res.json();
    let stringData = JSON.stringify(data.behaviors);
    const violationIndex = stringData.indexOf('true');
    console.log(violationIndex);
    console.log(data.behaviors);

    if (violationIndex == -1) {
      callback(null, twiml);
    }
    else {
    //   twiml.message("SMS from ${event.Author} was blocked for content.");
    //   callback(null, twiml);
    let newBody = { "body": "SMS from " + event.Author + " was blocked for content." };
    callback(null, newBody);
    }
}

Configure Spectrum Labs API Credentials

To integrate this number with Spectrum Labs APIs you will need the following:

• The Spectrum Labs API
• The Spectrum X-Client-ID
• The Spectrum X-API-Key

Use the values for Spectrum API credentials to configure the following Envrionment Variables:

Variable	Description	Required
WEBHOOK_URL	The Spectrum Labs API endpoint	Yes
SPECTRUM_CLIENT_ID	The Spectrum ClientID credential	Yes
SPECTRUM_API_KEY	The Spectrum Api Key credential	Yes

Add the following dependencies to the service:

Library	Version
node-fetch	^2.6.1
moment-timezone	0.5.14

Deploy From GitHub

Pre-requisites

1. Install the Twilio CLI
2. Install the serverless toolkit

twilio plugins:install @twilio-labs/plugin-serverless

3. Clone this project

Environment variables

This project requires some environment variables to be set. To keep your tokens and secrets secure, make sure to not commit the .env file in git.

Copy the .env.default to .env.

cp .env.default .env

In your .env file, set the following values:

Variable	Description	Required
WEBHOOK_URL	The Spectrum Labs API endpoint	Yes
SPECTRUM_CLIENT_ID	The Spectrum ClientID credential	Yes
SPECTRUM_API_KEY	The Spectrum Api Key credential	Yes

Deploying

With the Twilio CLI:

twilio serverless:deploy

The deployed function URL can now be added to our Conversations Pre-Event Webhook.