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5 min read T&S Insider

I read the State of Safety Tech report so you don’t have to (but you should)

An important, and growing, part of the Trust & Safety landscape is the support and expertise provided by technology services companies (aka vendors). A new report sheds more light on these companies

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. Happy new year to you all.

Wow. Yesterday's announcement by Meta dominated the news coverage and will be the big talking point for the coming days. Like many of you, I have a lot of thoughts but I'll save them for next Monday's newsletter.

In the meantime, a big thanks to all T&S Insider readers who filled out the EiM end-of-year audience survey, it means a lot. We’ll report on our the results soon but a couple things stood out:

  • Many of you said you have too much to read and too little time, but staying up to date is important.
  • Many of you are thinking about content moderation, tooling, and practical applications and insights.

Luckily, that’s what T&S Insider is for!

This week, I’m digging into an 88-page report with a lot of really fascinating detail on Safety Tech providers, the state of the T&S industry, and predictions on regulation and AI. But if you don’t have time, keep reading for my three takeaways from the report.

As always, get in touch if you'd like your questions answered or just want to share your feedback. Here we go! — Alice

Three things to know about the future of Safety Tech

Why this matters: An important, and growing, part of the Trust & Safety landscape is the support and expertise provided by technology services companies (aka vendors). A new report shows there has been growth in the sector, but there remain many opportunities and challenges for further adoption of these technologies.

Let's be honest, the T&S industry is not short of research and reports. In any given week, Ben and I will read and share new outputs from a wide range of non-profits and think tanks, governments and regulators, academic institutions and platforms.

The State of Safety Tech stands out from that list for its focus on technology or tools that facilitate safe online experiences, or 'Safety Tech' as it has become known in the UK. Commissioned by Paladin Capital and produced by PUBLIC, which supports startups to transform public services, and advisory firm Perspective Economics, it charts the growth of a sector that is growing as a result of online safety regulation around the world.

The 2024 edition was published at the end of last year when most T&S teams were wrapping up for the year. So I had a read and decided to share my takeaways with T&S Insider readers. In no particular order...

The Safety Tech sector is growing, but there were layoffs on the vendor side

Despite a 14% increase in Safety Tech providers this year, the sector has lost jobs:

“We suspect that the decline in employees may be driven by a combination of factors, including global pressure to reduce operating costs across the global tech industry and increased adoption of AI tooling leading to productivity improvements.”

The report estimates about 600 Safety Tech layoffs since the 2023 report was published. This is a 4% decrease, bringing the total global employees in dedicated Safety Tech services to 15,731. Interestingly, they estimate 1 in 12 T&S professionals worldwide are in Ireland, predicting emerging T&S tech companies there as a result.

The report also estimates 597 Safety Tech providers, with 402 fully dedicated to T&S. Compare this to ~3,500 cybersecurity providers to see how much more nascent T&S tech is.

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Published by:

Alice Hunsberger

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