Cheap LLM Moderation: Estimate Token Cost Before You Classify User Text and Images
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A moderation queue in a media product has a cost shape that surprises people the first time they graph it: the median report is about thirty tokens, and the bill is set entirely by the ones that aren't. Someone pastes a 40-page forum thread into the "describe the problem" box. A transcript arrives as a single message. So measure before you spend — count the tokens on the raw user text first, then use a compact chat model with a fixed JSON schema to produce the allow / review / block decision tha