Trust & Safety (T&S) teams have become vital parts of tech platforms; ensuring safe platform use and combating abuse, harassment, and misinformation. However, between 2021 and 2023, T&S teams faced significant layoffs, impacted by broader downsizing in the tech industry. In addition, a reduction in T&S teams has also been attributed to partisan pressure against content moderation efforts designed to mitigate the spread of election and COVID-19-related misinformation. Accordingly, there exist crucial questions over the future of content moderation and T&S in the digital information environment, questions central to the work of CHI researchers interested in intervening in online harm through design, policy and user research. Through in-depth interviews with T&S professionals, this paper explores upheavals within the T&S industry, examining current perspectives of content moderation and broader strategies for maintaining safe digital environments.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3713662
The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (https://chi2025.acm.org/)