Trust and safety

Trust and Safety (T&S) is a term commonly used in the context of online platforms, communities, and services. It refers to the policies, practices, products and teams dedicated to ensuring that users can trust and feel safe while using a service or participating in an online community.

Trust plays a key role in daily internet encounters because individuals and customers heavily rely on online technologies for communicative and commercial engagements.^[1]

One of the core objectives of trust and safety^[2] is to ensure that a web portal or digital platform is a trusted, secure environment, where personal identity, data and virtual assets are protected.

T&S helps achieve this by enforcing various measures and tools, such as policies and guidelines for acceptable code of conduct/behaviour, monitoring data breaches and malicious or harmful activities, and by addressing incidents and cybercrimes quickly.

By investing in the trust and safety^[3] of digital platforms, brands establish themselves as safe and reliable online destinations, building strong relationships with their users,^[4] thus, protecting their reputation.

Key services

Trust and safety encompass a range of services, including:

• Data security measures, such as encryption, secure storage, and restricted access controls protect user data from unauthorised access.
• Content moderation^[5] services involve reviewing content created by user-named user-generated content in the industry-and removing what is inappropriate, such as hate speech, misinformation,^[6] graphic or video violence and any other non compliant materials.
• Cybersecurity solutions^[7] like firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention systems, VPNs, antivirus software, and authentication solutions, eliminate the risk of hacking, data breaches, and other malicious activities.
• Real-time monitoring, allows for quick and automated threat detection and prompt response to incidents.
• Tools such as digital wallets, blockchain technology, MFA solutions, digital asset management platforms, or virtual asset recovery services enable the protection of virtual assets such as digital currency, in-game items, or other digital assets.The perceived level of trust by an individual plays a crucial role in strengthening the relationship between their behavioral intentions and actual usage, especially in the context of digital wallets.^[8]

Companies

Companies in the Trust and Safety space include:

• Cinder, started in 2021 by Glen Wise and Phil Brennan, who met at Facebook. Cinder closed $14M in 2022.^[9]
• Genpact a company that provides general AI services, has a trust and safety product offering.
• Hive offers AI models for identifying harmful text and audio content, for age verification, that can identify AI generated images and text, detect logos, and even help companies placing context-dependent advertisements.
• Jigsaw, a Trust and Safety research group within Google.
• TaskUs an outsourcing company provides Human+AI trust and safety solutions.^[10]

See also

• Cyberethics