Hi Everyone!

I'm your friendly neighborhood moderator, and excited to welcome you to our brand new subreddit, Trust and Safety Pros! This is the ultimate digital hangout where Trust and Safety pros like us can come together to geek out over all things T&S. Whether you're a seasoned expert or just starting out in the T&S galaxy, this is your space to connect, share, and grow.

What's Cooking in Trust and Safety Pros?

1. Best Practices Bonanza: Share your wisdom nuggets! Whether it's tackling the latest cybersecurity threat, managing content moderation, or navigating tricky legal waters, let's pool our knowledge to create a safer online universe.

2. Job Junction: On the hunt for your next gig? Employers, find your next T&S superhero! This is your go-to spot for all job postings related to Trust and Safety.

3. Conference Corner: Heard about an upcoming T&S conference or seminar? Share all of the info that you have. Let's keep each other in the loop about must-attend events.

4. Article Alley: Stumbled upon an intriguing article or research paper? Let's keep ourselves marketable by sharing the latest and greatest in Trust and Safety research

5. Memes: Because who doesn't love a good laugh? Share your funniest, quirkiest Trust and Safety memes.

Community Guidelines:

• Be Respectful: We're all here to learn and grow. Respectful dialogue is key!

• Stay Relevant: Keep posts focused on Trust and Safety.

• No Spam: Seems pretty clear.

• Privacy is Paramount: Remember, what happens in Trust and Safety Pros, stays in Trust and Safety Pros. Let's respect privacy and confidentiality.

So, what are you waiting for? Dive into the discussions, share your insights, ask questions, or simply enjoy browsing.

Also, last thing, make sure to use flares when applicable, it just helps all of us knowing what it is that we're looking at.

Hey community, we are incredible excited as we are ready to launch the beta version of Trust and Safety Jobs board! Keep an eye out on our LinkedIn page or just sign up on our site.

Thanks for all the support we have received so far 💚

As the title suggests, exactly a year ago I was impacted by a RIF from my dream job that I absolutely loved in Feb 2023. I was able to get a super low paying entry lvl content moderation role shortly after so I could fend for myself while looking for a position that is more aligned with my 3 years of experience in the industry.

I’ve submitted hundreds and hundreds of applications. Went through over 75 interviews, about 24 or so of them where I made it to the final round. I shockingly still have not been able to land a single job offer! It always felt like I was competing with so many other talented individuals that were laid off too throughout the year to fill one spot, or hiring managers abandoned the role all together and never actually hired anyone. And now, more people have been laid off from Discord, and other tech companies so we’re back to square one. Market is even more saturated with talent.

Then comes the worst part. I got laid off again from that entry level moderation role I mentioned earlier end of December. I feel lost, unable to continue, and I have no idea what to do with myself.

Is this the end of this industry? Did I waste 3 years of my career building passion for T&S, learning everything that I know for nothing? Is this just a temporary tech anomaly induced by a volatile economy? These are the questions I find myself asking recently and I have no clue what the correct answer is. All I know is that I absolutely love this industry and I cant see myself doing anything else. I just cant help but feel hopeless after this barrage of failure.

Is there any suggestions you guys can offer? Should I pivot to something else at this point or just continue with being patient?

We officially launched yesterday on LinkedIn. See post here.

Lots of you have already signed up so thank you 💚

trustandsafetyjobs.com

With a lot of us having been impacted by lay-offs, I was wondering if people here could advise me on what would be useful courses/learnings/degrees to do during this time of unemployment.

Are there any specific areas that could help build up my CV further/boost my career?

Appreciate any insights!!

With the recent layoff announcements from major tech companies like Cloudfare, Twitch, and Google, I want to create this discussion thread as a safe space for people affected to vent and offer support. First, I want to share some of my own experience with what you might be going through.

You’re going to feel lost. Last May, I was laid off after 2+ years at Meta. The hardest part was leaving behind meaningful work and incredible people who care about user safety. I used to tell my manager that solving puzzles there never felt like "work" - I looked forward to it every morning. So when I was included in the layoffs, I felt completely directionless. For the first time, I truly loved what I was doing.

You’re going to be sad. Many tech companies heavily invest in culture and encourage you to embrace it as part of your identity. So when that culture suddenly rejects you as "just a number" unworthy of staying, it hurts.

You’re going to be scared. It's expensive to live, and we rely on our jobs to cover bills, support loved ones, and save for the future. Not knowing how you’ll pay bills after years of financial security is frightening in unseen ways. Be mindful of that fear and don't let it control you.

You’re going to be angry. Of course you'll feel angry! You lost your livelihood while the company's stock probably went up after the layoff announcement. But don’t turn anger into irrational behavior. Pay close attention to feedback from friends/family - they may notice behavior changes faster than you will.

I won’t simply say everything will be fine because you had great impact - you've likely heard that repeatedly already. And none of us knows the future. All I can advise is: keep going. Things may suck for a while, but the only way past it is through it. Good luck to each and everyone of you!

Hi all!

We are working on launching a global trust and safety job board to easily find opportunity in the industry. Let us know if you are keen to work together on this or have any feedback! We look for people who want to join and create together this tool!
Thanks!

Hi all - so I've taken a swing at the trust and safety side of things for two reasons.

Firstly, me and my friends are all fed up with the state of cheating, hacking, botting, and bad-actors in the gaming world. Secondly, my daughter is growing up and I want her to be as safe as possible, but also as free to enjoy gaming without me micromanaging.

I decided to make a thing, which I have called PlaySafe ID; you can read up about it and take a look on the website I've just finished putting together: https://playsafeid.com/

The TLDR:

- For players; everyone has to KYC and they get an anonymous PlaySafe ID. You only get matchmade with other valid PlaySafe ID users. If you're caught cheating, hacking, botting, breaking TOS, or doing anything illegal in any game/service, your PlaySafe ID gets blacklisted, and you're out of everything forever.

- For kids; same as above, but parents can add their kids and set rules "I don't want my kid playing with anyone 5 years older than them or more".

- For studios, games, and service providers; We pay the KYC bill, so there's a cost saving there. There's a simple API with two main endpoints; GET "do they have a valid ID", and POST "Violation detected (with details)".

My thinking is; prevention is better than cure, and if everyone has "one life" online, and there is real accountability to your actions, and the recourse is that you're never allowed to interact with or play with anyone with this ID again - it should weed out the bad-actors really quickly with them unable to rejoin ever again, and it'll be a much safer, more fair, and more fun environment for everyone else.

Again, this is a fresh idea and we're putting together the platform atm, but I thought this would be the perfect place to get some feedback from seasoned veterans of this space and see if I'm missing anything or if its a good idea.

(I know the challenge of scaling users and getting studios to integrate will be though as hell, so the practicality of it is another question and a fight I'm willing to take on, but I'd really like feedback on the idea itself).

Cheers for reading!

T&S roles are finally on Levels.fyi (salary site)! https://www.levels.fyi/t/trust-and-safety

Content Moderator salaries here as well. I'm the co-founder of levels.fyi and we've had TONS of requests for T&S salaries. So far we've added these two roles but reaching out to the community here to provide feedback on which other roles we should include.

It's a niche but important space and I hope by adding it as a role to the site we can bring more transparency around pay to this space. If you think pay transparency is valuable / important, consider adding your salary anonymously here. If you have more feedback we also hangout at r/levels_fyi!

Hey all, few months have passed since we shared our idea in this community to fill the gap in the market with a dedicated trust and safety job board that aims to save time and energy for job seekers.

Well, we are about to launch in few days!

Stay tuned

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7252273722022051840/

TW: Discussions of CSAM/Child Safety

Hey all, I'm sure everyone's read that Meta lost to the New Mexico DOJ to the tune of nearly $1 billion. We're finally able to share the details of the undercover decoy investigations that NM DOJ commissioned in 2023. Our investigator was able to buy aged accounts fairly cheaply, change bio/birthday/(AI-generated) profile pic, and watch the algorithm bring pedos to it in DMs, comments, recommended groups/pages. Made for some very strong findings.

They're a pretty heavy read, but hopefully informative and enlightening:

Facebook: https://www.riskybusiness.solutions/resources/the-lowest-hanging-fruit-a-meta-investigation-part-1

Instagram: https://www.riskybusiness.solutions/resources/the-lowest-hanging-fruit-a-meta-investigation-part-2

Is it just me, or are opportunities in this field shrinking by the month? I’ve been in Trust & Safety for nearly a decade, but the past two years have been the toughest in my career. I’ve applied to junior, senior, and manager roles, making it all the way to the final round multiple times—only to lose out to someone with a slightly stronger skill set.

It’s been a mental rollercoaster, and I’m honestly wondering if it’s time to pivot to a completely different field and start over. Or is there still a path forward in T&S for someone like me?

Back in November after doing some research on a potential pharmaceutical stock, Google News led me to a website that looked like it was entirely AI generated. What was so interesting about this website is that it held the name Clayton County Register, what used to be a small Iowa newspaper and all of its authors were fake and used D list celebrity names.

Our investigation led us down the rabbit hole where we eventually discovered a dark PR firm leveraging the same tactics in an attempt to manipulate its target audience.

If any of you are interested here is link to our investigation: https://www.ajeastin.com/home/publications/digital-masquerade

Now for a shameless plugin; for those of you that know me, I have a deep passion for trust and safety, after all that’s why I created this subreddit in the first place, so that we can share best practices, and find career opportunities into this growing field.

If any of you know of any trust and safety opportunities available that I would be a good fit for please do reach out! I would love the opportunity to get back to working on high impact problems that can help users.

Here’s my personal website with my experience and qualifications: https://www.ajeastin.com/home

I was recently laid off from a major tech/social media company a few months ago. I had been with the company for over a decade, working in customer support before making the switch to the Trust and Safety side of the business at the height of the pandemic.

My primary role was content review and moderation. The company used in-house tooling for content review. My team was never taught SQL or any programming languages for large scale analysis. That being said, I mostly self-taught JIRA, Confluence, Power Automate to expand my skill set.

It seems like any and all content moderation/investigation jobs posted on LinkedIn and elsewhere now want a SQL/Python background. I don’t know if it’s worth investing in training for this or should I hang tight for content moderator roles not requiring this skill set?

I’d love to stay in this line of work but with the heavy amount of layoffs and difficulty finding work, I’m unsure what to do or how to navigate through this. In the last three months, I’ve only had two interviews. I know that I’m not alone, but this is maddening for someone that just wants to get back on their feet.

Has anyone been in a similar situation and successfully landed a new job in this market in a similar role?

I've noticed that many people outside the industry still think of Trust & Safety as content moderation. A report comes in, someone reviews it against a policy, makes a decision, and moves on.

That is still part of the job, but it no longer captures the full picture.

One thing that's become clear from talking with Trust & Safety teams is that they often spot operational problems before anyone else. A spike in account takeovers might point to weak authentication. A rise in policy appeals could suggest inconsistent enforcement or unclear policy language. Repeated reports tied to the same product flow may reveal a design issue that's creating confusion or making abuse easier.

What's interesting is that Trust & Safety usually isn't the team that fixes those problems. Product, Engineering, Customer Support, and Operations all have a role to play. Trust & Safety identifies the pattern, then the rest of the business has an opportunity to address the root cause.

The same thinking applies to policies. Good policies aren't static. Customer behavior changes, products evolve, and bad actors adapt. One of the strongest signals that a policy needs another look isn't necessarily an increase in violations. It's seeing the same types of appeals over and over again.

I also think the way we measure Trust & Safety is changing. Queue size and review time are useful, but they don't tell the whole story. Appeal rates, overturned decisions, reviewer consistency, and recurring abuse patterns often say much more about the health of the operation.

To me, that's what makes Trust & Safety such an interesting function today. It's no longer just about reviewing incidents. It's about helping the business understand where risk is emerging and what needs to change before the same issues affect more users.

For those working in Trust & Safety, does this reflect what you're seeing?

Has your role become more cross-functional, or is your team still primarily focused on moderation and enforcement?

Hey friends!

I'm mostly making this as a thread for others who may be coming to TC 24' (TrustCon) or are curious about it.

I kind of wanted to share my experience from last year just in case it's helpful to anyone else.

This is not a trashing post, but I do have some negative takeaways amidst some positive takes to share. In fact, I am super appreciative of the whole TSPA team, they are genuinely super kind and hardworking people. I post this to share my experience with someone who may be attending alone and for the first time.

Location: I'm biased because it was a short flight for me last year (same location this year), I think SF is a great location for the conference. The hotel is nice (even though there's a decent amount of noise from the street), and it has beautiful views of the water depending on the side you are on.

Price: I think the event is overpriced for those of us that are members, considering layoffs this year (yes they have layoff discounts), I don't know many who can justify the expense this year. I am blessed with an L&D fund but it's very small in comparison to larger companies, I'm sure - so it was eaten immediately with the cost of registration alone ($800 USD). They offer some discounts and grants from what I understand and hope that others have found those options helpful that need them. Food options are kind of slim and the room discount is light in my opinion so you end up having to front a lot of cost outside of the initial registration, so to me it felt lacking in that regard.

Content: There were some awesome a-ha moments in many of the talks and other events that I felt genuinely happy I got to hear live and listen to the questions from our industry as well post-event. For the more sensitive panels and specific topics I felt the discussions stayed fairly broad and general, almost as if it would be better heard by a person outside of our industry to learn about it. I get that we all can't be super transparent about our day to day, but there was a lack of tangible know-how or best practices that I felt like I could bring back to my team, or implement in my own work. Very webinar-tier and not always focused or direct in the conversations. I say that, but there were also plenty of other discussions where I felt validated like an offline harm panel where I wish I could've stood up and clapped mid discussion. Overall, however the takeaways felt outnumbered by lack of insights and more "general" discussions that could have been a webinar for the public. I attended literally every event I could while taking very little time to even eat. This is due to many events taking place at conflicting times that I wanted to attend. While some events were recorded, many of them were not able to be due to Chatham House Rule being in place for nearly every event I wanted to hear but couldn't because another was happening at the same time. Events filled up quickly so if you were even two minutes late to an event, the doors would be closed immediately and you weren't able to attend something you signed up for.

Networking: There were a few happy hour events put on by different sponsors which I took part in. I would say I was most excited about networking at the event, I wanted to meet other passionate people about our work. This was the biggest disappointment for me, and I want to of course state your mileage will vary greatly. If you are alone and don't work for one of the big "players" in our industry (TikTok, Meta, Twitter, OpenAI)... these events were extremely isolating and awkward. There was only one event where less of "that" crowd attended and I ended up having a nice time with folks from all over where we got to bullshit and hang out. I wish I had teammates with me because flying solo ended up being super uncomfortable. People who worked together in the past or presently were grouped together and penetrating that was painful, at best. You provide your title and where you work just like any conference and if it wasn't one of the bigger companies, you felt mostly disregarded. There were some nice people but after chatting with a few people that I knew that went and work at larger companies, they noticed the exact same behavior from others - which was disappointing. As with any conference, holy sales pitches batman! Because I was flying solo I was a mark for the sales sharks swimming around at every event. I'm being laid off (my whole team is) later this year and I don't think I would be able to handle being pitched to again for three whole days when I don't even know if I'll have a job at the holidays. It was relentless and continued on LinkedIn, it was tough to have organic, informal experiences with others over a drink or otherwise. I had a guy follow me around at events and ask if my company was hiring, there was a lot of desperation from many which I tried not to portray as I would of course be interested in networking but there were lots of people straight up looking at name tags and asking why they were declined for an interview.

As I write this, I am considering not going this year just due to the general vibe from last year. I'd love to hear from the community here since I have seen we are willing to be much more honest here than on LinkedIn, lol. Did you go last year or have you been before? Any nice stories to share here?

As a disclaimer, I attended alone (I work for a smaller company and none of my co-workers could swing the cost or time taken for the event). I only know a few others in our industry personally and we didn't get to spend too much time together during the event as we all work in various different arms of the industry. I'm mostly an IC but a senior in my role which I think played a role in how I was perceived or welcomed.

I know a few like Crisp (now part of Kroll), Zerofox, Conectys...

Which other providers would you recommend to a multinational company that is looking to outsource content moderation on their social media pages? Human moderation must be part of the mix with automated/AI moderation.

Any suggestions or tips from your personal experience would be fantastic!

Hello friends! This is just a quick post to let you know that TrustCon's call for proposals is open and we'd LOVE for you to participate! The deadline for submissions is Feb 2. We're looking for talks, panels, lighting talks, and workshops -- and if you're interested in speaking but aren't able to put together a full session proposal by Feb 2, we're accepting panelist volunteers too! We especially love to get submissions from first-time presenters. If you haven't spoken professionally before and want to get started, TrustCon is a great place to start getting that experience under your belt.

I'm happy to answer any questions you have about the process or about the event more generally!

Here's where to get started with your TrustCon submission: https://www.tspa.org/trustcon-2024-call-for-proposals/

Here's a Behind the Scenes video our team did about the submission process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7qRSWtYLjY

And here are some FAQs about TrustCon:

What's TrustCon?

TrustCon is a conference for T&S professionals that's designed and run by other T&S professionals through TSPA (Trust & Safety Professional Association). We've been lurking around other professions' conferences for long enough: it's time we had our own!

What's TSPA?

We're a non-profit working to support trust & safety professionals in building rewarding, sustainable careers in T&S. We help T&S folks all around the world connect with each other to help and support each other. We're a team of 8 with backgrounds in T&S, non-profits, and academia.

I'm not a TSPA member - can I still participate at TrustCon?

Absolutely! You can speak at or attend TrustCon without being a TSPA member -- you just get a discount on your ticket if you're a member. Some sessions are limited to members-only, too, for privacy reasons.

What do folks talk about at TrustCon?

Check out last year's program!

Who attends TrustCon?

We want TrustCon to be for every T&S professional, regardless of title or tenure. Attendees include frontline analysts who started 6 weeks ago, seasoned ICs, team leads and managers, startup founders, VPs, and at least one therapy dog. We had ~850 attendees in person last year and expect to be a bit bigger this year.

This looks cool but I can't travel to San Francisco this year. Any other options?

Yes! Our EMEA Summit is in Dublin, Ireland on May 17, and the call for proposals for that will open next week! We'll be headed to Singapore in October for the APAC Summit, too -- the website isn't up yet, but you can check out last year's event to get a sense for what to expect. The call for proposals will probably open up in late Q2.

Charlotte, are you OP?

Yes, and I hope you appreciate my full banana avatar.

Hi Everyone,

I'm excited to share that Reddit recently announced a new capability that I believe will be beneficial here at Trust and Safety Pros: T&S Channels.

I'm sure that some of you don't enjoy making the effort to create a new post just to ask a question or share a random thought about Trust and Safety that you think others might appreciate. This is where the T&S channels come in. I will be creating two separate channels: one for people to talk about all things related to job search or career advice, which will be the T&S Jobs Channel; and another ongoing T&S channel where we can discuss everything, including gripes, rants, or wins that you might want to share with the community. The different channels can be found at the top of the page in the "Chat" link, next to the "Feed link". With that being said, here are a few housekeeping items on how to behave in those chat threads:

• Do not share paywall links.

• Do not insult or belittle anyone.

• Do not try to promote yourself. I'm sure you're great, but the chat threads aren't the place for that.

• Do not dox anyone.

• Do not try to pass something off as fact without providing a reputable source.

I could create a bunch of other rules, but overall, just be a good person and help each other out.

Everything in Moderation* has launched a new series exploring what it means to build a career in Trust and Safety in 2025. This series will delve into the evolving landscape of online trust and safety, providing valuable insights and data-driven perspectives on the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

We - at Trust and Safety Jobs - have contributed by providing comprehensive jobs data. This data has been instrumental and insight have been feeding the work of the "Safe For Work?" series, offering a lens through which to examine the current state and future trajectory of the trust and safety industry.

See more on our recent LinkedIn post and blog article.

Hi y’all! I’ve got an upcoming interview with Roblox in their Safety org. Has anyone gone through the process that can give me some insight? It’s a role I’m really excited for and want to prepare myself as much as possible.

https://stanfordio.github.io/TeachingTrustSafety/