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6 min read T&S Insider

Are T&S professionals part of the problem?

A new report argues that, without industry-wide standards or codes of practice, T&S professionals are vulnerable to corporate pressures and destined to always be reactive to company's conflicting priorities. The answer? Greater independence.

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.

I'll be in London soon for the Trust & Safety Summit, which is very exciting! Spending time with others in the T&S industry is always very energising for me, and I'm looking forward to seeing some EiM subscribers there.

This week, I've written about another T&S industry report but the bigger question is: do you enjoy it when I draw attention to these reports or would you rather I skip them?

Get in touch to let me know or to arrange to meet up when I'm in the UK. Here we go! — Alice

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Are T&S professionals part of the problem?

Why this matters: Trust & Safety professionals don't have industry-wide standards or codes of practice. A new report from the 5Rights Foundation argues that this makes them vulnerable to corporate pressures and that, without certification and oversight, T&S remains reactive, not protective. The answer? Professionalisation — before platforms drift further from accountablility.

When I used to manage a customer experience department, my team would compile Voice of the Customer reports every month. Their purpose was to would tell the rest of the company about issues that our customers were frequently complaining about.

We put a lot of time and love into these reports and tried various formats, but disappointingly they were read by only a small group of my colleagues. I think this was because people already had their priorities, so they weren’t particularly interested in being told about a bunch of new problems to add to their already long list of to-dos. 

I share this anecdote because I feel like we are in a similar situation with some of the excellent reports on Trust & Safety that have been published lately. There’s some really helpful information out there, but much of it is a) answering questions that few people are asking or b) shares truths that people might not want to hear.

I'll explain what I mean using a report that came out just last week.

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Published by:

Alice Hunsberger

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