Moving from Community Sift to Lasso: A complete migration guide

If you're still deciding which platform to move to, the Community Sift alternatives guide covers your options honestly, including where other platforms outperform us. If you want background on what Community Sift was and what's happening to it, start with what is Community Sift.

API migration: what changes and what doesn't

Authentication

Community Sift used an API key passed as a query parameter or request header. Lasso uses Bearer token authentication. Pass your key in the Authorization header on every request:

Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY

Generate your key at https://app.lassomoderation.com/settings.

Endpoint mapping

Full reference: api-reference.lassomoderation.com

What a Lasso webhook payload looks like

When Lasso has processed a piece of content, it sends a POST to your configured webhook endpoint with a payload like this:

{
  "content_id": "msg_abc123",
  "user_id": "user_12345",
  "actions": [
    {
      "action_type": "remove",
      "rule_id": "rule_hate_speech_high",
      "actor_id": null,
      "timestamp": "2026-02-25T11:34:00Z"
    }
  ]
}

The actions array tells you what Lasso decided, which rule triggered it (or which human moderator acted, if it came from the review queue), and when. Lasso signs every webhook with HMAC-SHA256 so you can verify it genuinely came from Lasso before processing it.

Previously in Community Sift, your webhook received named event types like FLOOD, MUTE, or BAN. In Lasso, all decisions come through the same actions array structure: simpler to handle and easier to log.

Rate limits

By default, Lasso's content endpoint has a rate limit of 60 requests per minute. This can be customized based on your requirements. Check the API reference for current limits across all endpoints.

Feature mapping: what you had and what replaces it

The table below is a reference for your audit. Use it to identify what you need to rebuild, what transfers directly, and where to plan for something different.

Migrating your moderation rules

Your CS custom classifiers and rule configuration represent real institutional knowledge: decisions your team made, tuned over time, and validated against your community's actual behavior. It's worth migrating this carefully rather than starting from scratch.

The most common mistake we see: teams port their old severity thresholds directly into Lasso without recalibrating. CS and Lasso score content differently, so a threshold that was well-tuned in CS will often over- or under-flag in Lasso until you've run it against real content. Build in time for that.

Step 1: Export and document your CS configuration.

Pull a full export of your custom classifiers, severity thresholds, and policy guide settings. Document not just the settings but the reasoning: which rules exist because of specific incidents, which thresholds were tuned after false positive complaints, which language-specific rules your team added manually. You'll need this to rebuild intelligently.

Step 2: Categorize your rules by type.

CS rules generally fall into a few categories: keyword-based blocks, classifier threshold adjustments, per-feature strictness settings, and trust tier adjustments. Each maps differently to Lasso. Trust tier adjustments are the one category with no clean mapping. If CS's reputation states were central to your moderation strategy, flag those rules separately and plan for a custom approximation before you start rebuilding.

Keyword-based blocks translate directly to Lasso custom rules with keyword conditions. Classifier threshold adjustments become Lasso rules that fire when the AI score for a given category exceeds your calibrated threshold. Per-feature strictness maps to rules that check a context attribute in the content payload.

Step 3: Rebuild rules in Lasso's rule interface.

Lasso's custom rule builder is no-code. Conditions use a logical AND/OR structure, and actions include flag, remove, strike, priority, and tags. Any rule change goes live immediately. No deployment required.

Step 4: Test against historical content before going live.

Use Lasso's import endpoint to run historical content samples through your new rule configuration and compare outcomes against what CS would have done with the same content. This is the fastest way to find calibration gaps before they affect production. Lasso also offers offline analysis on historical content to help find gaps and tune the rule configuration.

For a full walkthrough of Lasso's rule capabilities, see the custom moderation rules documentation.

Once your rules are rebuilt and tested against historical content, you're ready to start routing live traffic. That's week two.

The 3-week migration plan

Lasso's initial integration takes about two days. The rest of the timeline is parallel testing, rule calibration, and a controlled cutover. That's where you want to spend the time.

What to expect when you're live on Lasso

A few things will feel immediately familiar. The fundamental architecture is the same: content in via API, AI processes it, actions come back, human reviewers work a queue, rules are configurable without engineering involvement.

The dashboard is different. Lasso's UI is its own design, not a reskin of Community Sift's. Your moderation team will need a short onboarding period, but Lasso is rated 4.9/5 on G2 for ease of use, which tends to make that curve short.

Rule changes go live immediately with no deployments. Lasso's AI Moderators also self-improve over time: every flagging decision your human moderators make is automatically fed back into what the AI filters going forward. The longer your team uses it, the more accurate it becomes to your specific community.

The one genuine gap to plan around: Lasso doesn't replicate CS's User Reputation states. If your community safety strategy relied on the three-tier trust promotion system, you'll need to design an approximation with Lasso's custom rules, or decide whether that specific behavior was truly necessary for your use case.

Getting help

We've worked through this migration with enough teams to know where things get complicated. Migration support is free.

The fastest path is to book a free migration consultation. Bring your CS integration documentation and a list of any custom classifiers or rule logic you've built. We'll spend 30 minutes mapping your setup to Lasso's equivalents and flagging anything that needs special attention.

If you prefer to work async, reach us at info@lassomoderation.com. For documentation, start with the Lasso API reference and the custom moderation rules guide.

If you're still weighing your options before committing to a migration path, the Community Sift alternatives guide lays out the full landscape.

The information about Community Sift features in this article is based on the Two Hat and Community Sift public website and API documentation archived prior to Microsoft's acquisition. We may have missed details or edge cases. If something is wrong or outdated, please flag it at info@lassomoderation.com.

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