Airbnb quietly acquired Koko, an AI-powered content moderation startup, in 2018 as it looked to avoid the pitfalls faced by social media platforms around toxic content

• In November 2018, Airbnb quietly acquired Koko, an AI-powered startup used by companies like Pinterest, Kik, and Tumblr "to identify bad actors and damaging content."
• Airbnb made the purchase around the time Facebook and other social media companies started facing increased scrutiny around efforts to police content.
• As Airbnb's platform approached six million listings, it too was looking for a way to more quickly and efficiently identify things hate speech and posts about self-harm.
• Koko initially started as a crowdsourced mental health tool through a clinical trial at MIT, eventually incorporating AI to speed up its moderation services.
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In November 2018, Airbnb quietly bought up a small startup called Koko that used artificial intelligence to help companies automate the process of identifying harmful and toxic content on their platforms, the company confirmed.

The previously unreported acquisition, the terms of which were not disclosed, came at a time when Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and other social media companies were beginning to face more scrutiny over how they deal with toxic and harmful content on their platforms.

"The Internet can be a scary place," Koko's former website read. "Koko keeps your community safe by using AI to identify bad actors and damaging content."

One of the challenges companies like Facebook were dealing with was how to find and moderate online interactions at scale. Airbnb's platform was approaching six million listings, and Koko offered it a way to tackle the challenge more quickly and efficiently.

Koko's website claimed at the time that its tool was being used "by several top online communities to support over 100 million moderation decisions per day," and according to the personal blog of one of its founders, that included communities on platforms like Pinterest, Tumblr, and Kik.

Koko, founded by Fraser Kelton, Kareem Kouddous, and Robert Morris, started as a "crowdsourced" online mental health intervention tool in the form of a clinical trial at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The project aimed to use machine learning to identify individuals at risk of self-harm and direct them to crisis centers, and "reached over a million people, mostly adolescents," according to Morris' blog.

The project then evolved into a venture-backed startup, where its use of AI to automate content moderation decisions attracted the attention of Airbnb, eventually leading to a purchase in 2018. Koko's founders joined Airbnb as part of the "acqui-hire," where they all still work, according to their LinkedIn profiles.

Here's the full list of companies we know Airbnb has acquired.