The Evolving Trust and Safety Vendor Ecosystem

Tim Bernard recently completed an MBA at Cornell Tech, focusing on tech policy and trust & safety issues. He previously led the content moderation team at Seeking Alpha, and worked in various capacities in the education sector. TrustCon Swag In September of last year, just before the inaugural TrustCon, the annual convention of trust and safety professionals, the Tech Policy Press Sunday Show podcast was entitled “Trust and Safety Comes of Age?” The following month, Elon Musk acquired Twitter and proceeded to decimate its trust and safety operation. This was followed by extensive cuts and hiring freezes at other large platforms, including Meta, Google and Amazon. Since then, Donald Trump has been admitted back on to Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, misinformation policies on COVID and elections have been rescinded. Last month, the newsletter Platformer asked “Have we reached peak trust and safety?” This month, I attended the second TrustCon in San Francisco. With over 800 attendees, the sold out event was three times larger than last year’s. Despite the scenario described above, the mood was upbeat, with professionals across the industry, along with civil society representatives, regulators, and academics excited to spend time connecting and learning from each other. There is a certain esprit de corps among those who spend their days working in the dark trenches of the internet; that sensibility was on display in the slogans on stickers and fridge magnets distributed to conference participants.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, the professionals at TrustCon were somewhat optimistic about the future of…The Evolving Trust and Safety Vendor Ecosystem