We’ve never been better at child safety

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. 

Two major child safety reports dropped last week, both from the Tech Coalition. They document what unglamorous progress looks like in an increasingly unforgiving information environment. Today I’m digging into the most interesting and important parts of these reports.

Get in touch if you'd like your questions answered or just want to share your feedback. Don't be shy; I hope to dedicate an upcoming edition of the newsletter to questions I get from EiM subscribers and via LinkedIn Here we go! — Alice

For the month of May, T&S Insider will be guest-edited by Georgia Iacovou, author of Horrific/Terrific

The Industry Keeps Getting Better at Child Safety; While the Information Environment Keeps Getting Worse.

The T&S cases that have stayed with me longest in my career are all child safety cases, and I suspect that's true of everyone who has worked in this area seriously. Child safety is absolutely the most challenging part of T&S. There are many people working incredibly hard on child safety programs across the tech industry; anyone who does this work day after day is obviously not doing it for any reason other than genuine mission.

Unfortunately most public discourse about child safety online doesn't reflect that reality. The deeply important but unglamorous work of frontline child safety is often sidelined in favor of proposals that make for good press releases but incomplete outcomes, or bashing of big tech for failing children. The very real tradeoffs and complexities are often glossed over, and the acknowledgement of society's impact outside of online spaces is often left out completely.