BOULDER, Colo. - ColoradoDesk -- Not every moderation decision is clear-cut. With the Escalation Queue, moderators can now route ambiguous or high-stakes content to senior reviewers, without guessing, stalling, or breaking workflow.

What is the Escalation Queue?

The Escalation Queue is a new dashboard feature in Stream's AI Moderation platform that gives moderation teams a structured way to handle edge cases that require senior judgment.

Once enabled, moderators can:

• Escalate any item from the content queue in one click.
• Attach a reason, priority level (Low / Medium / High), and free-text notes for the reviewer.
• Pass context without losing it, the escalation header surfaces who escalated the item, when, why, and what they observed.

Admins and senior reviewers can:

• Access a dedicated Escalations inbox, separate from the standard review queue.
• Filter escalated items by priority, reason, moderator, date range, harm category, and more.
• Take the full set of moderation actions: delete, ban, shadow ban, unblock, send back to the queue or mark reviewed.
• Track resolved items in the Reviewed tab for audit purposes.

Who It's Built For

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The Escalation Queue is especially useful for teams with layered review structures:

Outsourced or third-party moderation teams

Teams handling high-volume routine cases but lacking the authority or context to make judgment calls on sensitive content.

Tiered internal teams

Where a first-level team triages and a second-level team handles complex cases, legal risk, or policy exceptions.

Compliance and legal workflows

Where certain content categories, CSAM-adjacent material, potential defamation, or regulated industries, require a designated reviewer before any action is taken.

Why It Matters

Remove the guesswork from hard calls.

When the right action isn't obvious, moderators need a way to surface items, not bury them or make the wrong call under pressure. Escalation gives them a structured path that doesn't interrupt workflow.

Keep sensitive decisions out of the wrong hands.

Role-based permissions mean only moderators with the right privilege can access the escalation queue. Front-line reviewers can escalate; senior reviewers and admins take action. You control who sees what.

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Build an audit trail for high-stakes content.

Every escalation captures who escalated the item, when, and why. That history lives in the Reviewed tab and audit logs accessible when you need to reconstruct a decision for legal, compliance, or internal review purposes.

Integrate into your existing tooling.

Escalation events fire the standard review_queue_item.updated webhook, including escalation metadata like reason, priority, and notes. Use those events to notify your team via Slack, track SLA resolution times, or feed your own reporting pipeline.

To share feedback, contact moderation@getstream.io or visit https://getstream.io/moderation/.