Last week, Tremau had the privilege of attending TrustCon2024, one of the biggest gatherings of Trust & SafetyThe field and practices that manage challenges related to content- and conduct-related risk, including but not limited to consideration of safety-by-design, product governance, risk assessment, detection, response, quality assurance, and transparency. See also: Safety by design professionals worldwide!
It was a whirlwind of insightful discussions, inspiring keynotes, and valuable connections! So much so that we wanted to share some of our team’s main takeaways.
Team's key takeaways from TrustCon
For Louis-Victor, one of the key takeaways from this year’s TrustCon is the continuous growth of Trust & Safety as an industry in itself. This, notably through the great work of organisations such as TSPA, is enabling to bring together professionals from an increasingly wider range of backgrounds & platforms to share best-practices and discuss how to continuously enhance our individual and collective work to protect our rights online. The recent push for more open-source content detection tooling is also a great highlight of (unique) community engagement!
Pal observed the expanding presence of solution providers and professional services in the Trust & Safety realm. This development enables most platforms, even at their early stages, to make informed choices on how to design & scale their T&S operations. TrustCon has a unique atmosphere, characterized by a strong collective desire among participants to improve the online landscape
Community has been a central part of Matt’s professional career since he started in trust and safety. With over 1300 people in attendance, it is clear that the Trust & Safety community is showing up to discuss the tough issues that are facing online safety. Through the panels, workshops, coffee chats, or just walking through the halls there are people everywhere talking about trust and safety processes, catching up on the day’s events, and genuinely asking how people are doing. As trust and safety ages up as an industry, we will continue to see these formalised convenings as best practices and collaboration evolves. This collaboration is global and much easier to support when you have people together in the same space.
On Toshali’s side, it is clear that Trust & Safety is not going anywhere, because bad actors are not going anywhere. She learnt most at this conference at the panels and talks she ended up in by chance – from learning about how to spot fake emergency data requests to the horrifying trade networks of non-consensual intimate images. Coming out of TrustCon, she is spending more time thinking about the role of regulation, how industry and regulators can collaborate to target bad actors, and of course, the critical role T&S professionals play in protecting the internet.
Insights from the TrustCon panels we organised and moderated
'2024: The Year of Compliance' with Gerard de Graaf, Deborah Welsh, Alexander Hall, Madeline Moncrieff, and Louis-Victor de Franssu
- Building capacity: Regulators are moving fast to build their teams to enforce on the existing laws, write up guidance, and conduct consultations.
- Collaboration is key: The regulators are working together to identify the commonalities between their regulations, and more importantly, to ensure that the legislations work.
- Flexible, yet specific: While calls for more guidance are justified, to ensure that these regulations can work for the tens of thousands of online services it applies to, it is important that the regulators do not verge on being too prescriptive.
- Creating a safe online environment is also the work of platforms: By engaging with regulators and collaborating with other stakeholders, platforms are also working hard to protect their users, beyond complying with the laws, as seen during the recent elections.
- Regulations are here to stay: 2024 is the year of compliance, but so will be 2025 & 2026… and the years after that. This is now a regulated industry and compliance will likely continue showing up in various forms.
#BrusselsToTheBay - “Navigating emerging threats in the age of the DSA” with Gerard de Graaf, Patricia Cartes, Alice Goguen Hunsberger, Louis-Victor de Franssu, moderated by Ben Whitelaw
- The regulator’s priorities are clear: Elections, protection of minors, and consumer protection have been the running themes in the regulator’s enforcement actions and were echoed by the panel.
- There is no one regulator: The DSA sets up a framework where everyone can play the part of a regulator – be that auditors, researchers, civil society, or even users.
- All cars must be safe, but some can be safer than others: It is important to reach a solid baseline of safety, upon which other platforms can build to show they have more protections in place than others (potential competitive advantage).
- Leveraging AI: While the risks of AI are top of mind, it is equally important to consider how it can be used to enhance platform safety. Yet, AI tools do require strong T&S systems to also ensure user Trust & quality assurance for content moderationReviewing user-generated content to ensure that it complies with a platform’s T&C as well as with legal guidelines. See also: Content Moderator decisions.
- Compliance from the get-go: all platforms, whatever the size, now need to integrate compliance in their operations from day one. This should be seen as an opportunity for T&S professionals to help them ensure they have the right resources to implement scalable T&S systems and operations.
Operationalising risk assessments: Where do I begin? with Lisa Ball, Farah Ferreira, Aaron Tidman, David Sullivan, and Toshali Sengupta
- Start early: If there is one thing all panellists echoed – this exercise will take more time than you think. Start early, build your team, get everyone on the same page, and buckle up!
- Risk assessments are no easy feat: Cross-functional teams and subject matter expertise will be key to conducting a risk assessmentIt refers to the process of identifying, analyzing, and evaluating the severity and probability of risks and threats associated with business or product development, deployment, and maintenance. In the context of the DSA, very large online platforms are required to annually assess the systemic risks stemming from the design, functioning or use of the platforms, including any actual or foreseeable… that goes beyond a ‘check box’ exercise.
- Get early buy-in from your stakeholders to avoid a PM nightmare: Whether you are conducting a company risk assessment or a regulatory risk assessment, it is crucial to get buy-in from your teams to ensure that this exercise is meaningful and running smoothly. And most importantly, don’t forget your team’s holiday calendar!
- Beyond compliance, there is a point to risk assessments: Although burdensome, this exercise can open opportunities and be a systematic way to learn about your service’s current risk profile and areas of improvement.
- Governance sits at the heart of this exercise: A risk assessment is not a one-hit wonder. To make it meaningful, it is important to set up a robust governance structure – including processes for monitoring, repeating, and reporting on the exercise – and involve decision makers and leadership into the project.
T&S ROI: You’re Not Overhead, You Can Business Too! with James Grehsam, Stacy Orinstein, David Pounds, Jay Kennedy, Matthew Soeth
- Now more than ever, it is important to show the ROI of T&S when it comes to keeping users safe, maintaining trust, and meeting regulatory obligations. Be clear on your trust and safety processes and procedures. Developing clear workflows and detailing feedback loops to inform those processes will help ensure that cases will be handled correctly as they occur and will give your platform the freedom to pivot when emergencies arise.
- Identify the metrics and goals that align with your platform leadership. Get buy-in from leadership if the work you are doing aligns with the larger platform goals.
- Improving user experience directly equates to improving user trust in your platform and the experiences and communities you are building.
- User research, such as identifying trust in process, products, and services is a great way to evaluate the success of your trust and safety work.
- For this work to continue, we need more people discussing and sharing the metrics they use to evaluate success. Trust and safety is a social good cause, meaning, it should be something every platform does. In a world of finite resources, showing that something is good and being able to show on paper how that work impacts the platform’s overall financial success is a double win.
Whole-of-Sector Approaches to Countering Terrorist Use of the Internet with Pal Boza (Tremau), Erin Saltman (GIFCT), Rachel Kowert (T&S expert), and Jonathan Russell (Violence Prevention Network)
- Reducing TVE activity online is no easy feat: The adaptability of malicious actors, combined with automated systems’ challenges in grasping context and nuance, complicates detection efforts, while the sheer volume of online content makes comprehensive monitoring a daunting task.
- Addressing high-risk and vulnerable users requires a multi-faceted approach: Targeted support mechanisms, such as counseling and mentorship programs, and algorithmic alerts to identify and assist at-risk individuals are crucial. Educational initiatives to promote digital literacy and awareness campaigns are also vital. Cross-sector collaboration ensures that resources and expertise are effectively mobilized to support vulnerable populations, with projects like www.friscoproject.eu serving as good examples of such cooperation.
- Scaling Trust and Safety operations from a very small stage requires a strategic approach: Investing in robust, scalable automated tools for content moderation and threat detection is essential. Building strong partnerships with larger tech companies, industry coalitions, and NGOs can enhance resources and knowledge. Fostering an engaged community through clear guidelines and reporting mechanisms is crucial, as is incrementally scaling the Trust and Safety team with trained professionals.
Looking ahead: what we see for Trust & Safety after #TrustCon24
Looking ahead, it’s important to keep Charlotte Wilner’s opening address in mind: Trust & Safety is in transition, it’s not going away. Amidst fears of AI taking all our jobs, if TrustCon showed us anything, it’s the importance of keeping humans in the loop – and leveraging AI to keep these humans safer! While many of the threats platforms face today are not new, their scale is significantly more challenging, as bad actors become more sophisticated and cost of synthetic content generation decreases. In the face of this, risk assessments, threat assessments, clear processes and procedures, and cross-industry collaboration remain critical. Finally, with increasing regulations in this space, compliance is rapidly becoming a hot topic for all platforms. It’s important to recognise that all these stakeholders are not at odds with each other, but rather, engaging with everyone in the room – through events such as TrustCon – may be the most effective way to make our online spaces safer.
Coming back from TrustCon, we at Tremau are more committed than ever to our mission of making the digital world safe and beneficial for everyone. We plan to pursue this endeavor alongside the T&S professionals, academics, and companies we connected with during the conference. One thing is certain: Trust & Safety is a rapidly growing field, and we are determined to stay at the forefront of its evolution.
If you’d like to join the conversation about Trust & Safety, please reach out to us at info@tremau.com.
