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Design content moderation for a posting app

Last updated: Mar 29, 2026

Quick Overview

This question evaluates a candidate's ability to design content-moderation features, covering competencies in scalable system design, API and data modeling, UX integration for warnings/masking, extensibility for new rules/models, and monitoring/failure handling for production safety.

  • medium
  • Meta
  • System Design
  • Software Engineer

Design content moderation for a posting app

Company: Meta

Role: Software Engineer

Category: System Design

Difficulty: medium

Interview Round: Onsite

## Scenario You are given a small demo “post creation” web app similar to a social network composer: - **Frontend:** a page where users type a post and submit. - **Backend:** Node.js service. Many features are currently **mocked/stubbed**. You must add a **policy-violating content detection** module. ## Requirements 1. **Detect potentially violating content** in user-submitted posts (text is sufficient; you may mention how you’d extend to images/links). 2. Provide a **user experience** during composition/submission: - Show a **warning/prompt** when content is suspected to violate policy. - Optionally **mask** violating spans (e.g., replace characters with `*`). 3. The solution should be **extensible** (easy to add new categories/rules/models) and safe to evolve. 4. Discuss and/or implement (high-level is fine): - API contracts between frontend and backend - data model or response schema (e.g., violations, spans, severity, suggested edits) - latency and failure behavior (what happens if detection is slow/unavailable?) - logging/metrics for monitoring quality and abuse ## Interview follow-up After you present your approach, expect two additional feature requests (e.g., add a new violation type, add an override/appeal flow, add an admin configuration toggle) and explain how your design supports implementing them quickly.

Quick Answer: This question evaluates a candidate's ability to design content-moderation features, covering competencies in scalable system design, API and data modeling, UX integration for warnings/masking, extensibility for new rules/models, and monitoring/failure handling for production safety.

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Meta
Feb 12, 2026, 12:00 AM
Software Engineer
Onsite
System Design
3
0
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Scenario

You are given a small demo “post creation” web app similar to a social network composer:

  • Frontend: a page where users type a post and submit.
  • Backend: Node.js service. Many features are currently mocked/stubbed .

You must add a policy-violating content detection module.

Requirements

  1. Detect potentially violating content in user-submitted posts (text is sufficient; you may mention how you’d extend to images/links).
  2. Provide a user experience during composition/submission:
    • Show a warning/prompt when content is suspected to violate policy.
    • Optionally mask violating spans (e.g., replace characters with * ).
  3. The solution should be extensible (easy to add new categories/rules/models) and safe to evolve.
  4. Discuss and/or implement (high-level is fine):
    • API contracts between frontend and backend
    • data model or response schema (e.g., violations, spans, severity, suggested edits)
    • latency and failure behavior (what happens if detection is slow/unavailable?)
    • logging/metrics for monitoring quality and abuse

Interview follow-up

After you present your approach, expect two additional feature requests (e.g., add a new violation type, add an override/appeal flow, add an admin configuration toggle) and explain how your design supports implementing them quickly.

Solution

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