The developing trust and safety field (T&S) provides deep insights into the complex dynamics that have underpinned building, maintaining, and growing online spaces to date. The work of T&S practitioners, in concert with civil society and other counterparts, will reshape technology development in the twenty-first century.
Throughout its relatively short history, the practice of trust and safety (T&S) has undergone significant growth, yielding invaluable insights and the emergence of best practices. Lessons have been learned through both triumphs and challenges, leading to a deeper understanding of what actions should be taken and how they should be executed, and of frameworks that can help guide strategic thinking around these practices. The transformative potential for collaboration, knowledge exchange, professionalization, and innovation as T&S develops cannot be overstated. Robust collaboration and exchange with peers in civil society and academia has been crucial to shaping norms and standards. Aspects of T&S that were once considered mere “nice to haves” are now evolving into standard operating procedures throughout the technology industry. Regulatory pressure, established best practices, media attention, and compliance requirements with different parts of the technology stack have all contributed to establishing new prerequisites for the operation of technology platforms.
Despite the pivotal role T&S will play in shaping the 21st-century technology landscape, there is a lack of public documentation in the field. Best practices and essential tools are confined to silos; T&S teams within companies face ongoing challenges with limited resources; and voluntary initiatives that have driven T&S innovation sit on increasingly shaky ground.
To understand where T&S is going, it is important to understand where it has been. This annex provides a light overview of the evolution of T&S and its workflows; the broad range of technologies that must incorporate T&S practices; the tradeoffs that practitioners and companies navigate when considering T&S challenges; the diversity of governance models that have informed the development of the T&S field; and how existing T&S approaches may need to adapt in the race of immersive technologies.