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7 min read T&S Insider

How to develop your Trust & Safety voice

Many T&S professionals stay silent about their work — and that's a problem. Ben and Alice explore why more folks should speak up, what’s holding them back, and how to share safely and strategically.

I'm Alice Hunsberger. Trust & Safety Insider is my weekly rundown on the topics, industry trends and workplace strategies that trust and safety professionals need to know about to do their job.

This week, Ben and I try something a little different as we go back and forth about why it's important for T&S professionals to speak up publicly. (If you want to hear more about it and are at TrustCon, come hear me on Tuesday at 1:30pm). Plus there's a chunky section of must-reads including a big announcement that helps move T&S forward internationally.

A quick programming note: Next week I'll be on vacation, so there'll be no T&S Insider. I'll be back before you know it.

Get in touch if you have thoughts about today's topic and if you see me at TrustCon, please say hi! Here we go! — Alice

Q&A: How T&S professionals can share more publicly

Ben: So, I was actually due to be sharing a stage with you at TrustCon to talk about T&S professionals finding their voice. But because I recently became a dad, I’m not going to TrustCon year. But I thought we could talk a bit about the topic because I think it’s fascinating.

For you, why should people working in T&S be out there publicly sharing what they do and think?

Alice: So many people outside of Trust & Safety have strong opinions about how T&S should work, but they fundamentally misunderstand what we do. I think this could be because many folks outside of the industry come at the problem for a very specific reason. For example, they’re concerned about dangers to youth online, or about privacy, or about reducing hate speech, or about promoting free speech and preventing censorship. They care about this one thing, and that’s how they find out about T&S.

It’s easy to have a strong opinion if you only care about one of those things, but it’s very difficult to balance all of them, and it’s impossible to make all these stakeholders happy all of the time. The more that T&S people speak out about how they’re making tradeoffs, what those are, and how extremely hard the job is, the more that we (as a collective society) can advocate for sensible solutions that promote safety, instead of expecting the impossible or passing laws rooted in fantasy.

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Published by:

Alice Hunsberger

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