Spam detection for user-generated multimedia items based on concept clustering

• US 9,208,157 B1
• Filed: 05/15/2014
• Issued: 12/08/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 01/17/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.)
• Inventors: Kacholia, Varun, Garg, Ashutosh, Stoutamire, David
• Primary Examiner(s): Hoang, Son T
• Application Number:
  US14/278,414
• Time in Patent Office: 572 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/35 Clustering; Classification
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/435 Filtering based on additional data, e.g. user or group profiles
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/7867 using information manually generated, e.g. tags, keywords, comments, title and artist information, manually generated time, location and usage information, user ratings

Abstract

A system, a method, and various software tools enable a video hosting website to automatically identify posted video items that contain spam in the metadata associated with a respective video item. A spam detection tool for user-generated video items based on concept clustering is provided that facilitates the detection of spam in the metadata associated with a video item.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for processing a multimedia item, comprising:

storing the multimedia item and associated metadata in a multimedia database, wherein the metadata includes a plurality of tokens;

determining, for each of the plurality of tokens, a concept associated with the token;

determining a number of related concepts from concepts determined from the plurality of tokens included in the metadata;

clustering the related concepts into corresponding clusters; and

responsive to a number of distinct clusters exceeding a threshold, marking the multimedia item as spam.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the multimedia item is a video.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising:

removing the multimedia item from the multimedia database when the multimedia item is marked as spam.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising:

refraining from indexing the multimedia item if the multimedia item is marked as spam.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the metadata is provided by a user who uploaded the multimedia item to a hosting website.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the threshold is based on a distribution of the number of related concepts from the item description that are not indicative of spam.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the threshold is based on a mean number of unrelated concepts.

8. A computer-implemented method for processing a multimedia item, comprising:

storing the multimedia item and associated metadata in a multimedia database, wherein the metadata includes a plurality of tokens;

determining, for each of the plurality of tokens, a concept associated with the token;

determining a number of related concepts from concepts determined from the plurality of tokens included in the metadata;

clustering the related concepts into corresponding clusters; and

responsive to determining at least one combination of distinct clusters, marking the multimedia item as spam.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 8, wherein the multimedia item is a video.

10. The computer-implemented method of claim 8, further comprising:

removing the multimedia item from the multimedia database when the multimedia item is marked as spam.

11. The computer-implemented method of claim 8, further comprising:

refraining from indexing the multimedia item if the multimedia item is marked as spam.

12. A system for processing a multimedia item, the system comprising:

a computer processor; and

a computer-readable storage medium storing executable code, the code when executed by the processor performs steps comprising;

storing the multimedia item and associated metadata in a multimedia database, wherein the metadata includes a plurality of tokens;

determining, for each of the plurality of tokens, a concept associated with the token;

determining a number of related concepts concepts from concepts determined from the plurality of tokens included in the metadata;

clustering the related concepts into corresponding clusters; and

marking the multimedia item as spam responsive to a number of distinct clusters exceeding a threshold.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the multimedia item is a video.

14. The system of claim 12, wherein the code when executed by the processor performs further steps comprising:

removing the multimedia item from the multimedia database when the multimedia item is marked as spam.

15. The system of claim 12, wherein the code when executed by the processor performs further steps comprising:

refraining from indexing the multimedia item when the multimedia item is marked as spam.

16. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium containing program code for processing a multimedia item, the program code when executed performs steps comprising:

storing the multimedia item and associated metadata in a multimedia database, wherein the metadata includes a plurality of tokens;

determining, for each of the plurality of tokens, a concept associated with the token;

determining a number of related concepts from concepts determined from the plurality of tokens included in the metadata;

clustering the related concepts into corresponding clusters; and

responsive to a number of distinct clusters exceeding a threshold, marking the multimedia item as spam.

17. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 16, wherein the multimedia item is a video.

18. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 16, wherein the program code when executed performs further steps comprising:

removing the multimedia item from the multimedia database when the multimedia item is marked as spam.

19. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 16, wherein the program code when executed performs further steps comprising:

refraining from indexing the multimedia item when the multimedia item is marked as spam.

20. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 16, wherein the threshold is based on a mean number of unrelated concepts.