Safety is Sexy Podcast

This episode of Safety is Sexy features Bethany Smith. From her beginnings at Twitter as a tech policy fellow to managing trust and safety issues at various platforms, Bethany discusses the challenges and nuances of the field, including content moderation, community management, and policy enforcement. She recounts navigating high-pressure situations, such as the Christchurch incident, which underscored the importance of thoughtful messaging and flexibility in enforcement. Bethany also emphasizes the collaborative nature of trust and safety, the need for transparency in user communication, and the mental health challenges faced by moderators. 

In this episode of Safety is Sexy, I'm joined by Agnes Everard to discuss how she transitioned from teaching to a career in Trust and Safety, We explore the intersection of tech, education, and policy development. Her career includes pivotal roles in crisis management at Airbnb, and shaping policies at Patreon. She delves into the complexities of policy development related to hate speech, misinformation, and the importance of diverse thinking. Agnes emphasizes the value of stakeholder collaboration, user education, and staying informed about regulation changes to create effective policies. 

In this episode of Safety is Sexy, I speak with youth safety expert Vaishnavi J to discuss the Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act (KOSPA) and its implications. We discuss the duty of care, default privacy settings, and regulations on data collection, as well as the challenges companies face in implementing these regulations, the broader implications of youth online safety across various online platforms, the importance of involving youth voices in policy conversations, and the impact of school policies on device usage.

In this episode of Safety is Sexy I speak with Louis Victor, CEO and Co-Founder of Tremau, about the role of trusted flaggers as outlined by the Digital Services Act (DSA). We discuss the significance of transparency, regulatory implications on trust flaggers, and the balance between user safety and freedom of expression. We also cover the responsibilities of Digital Service Coordinators, the operational and financial hurdles for trusted flagger organizations, and the role of transparency for trusted flaggers under the DSA. 

If you work in trust and safety, you have heard phrases like "it's just a joke" or "I was trying to be funny" A LOT! However, as we look at the data, we can see that microaggressions, a statement, action, or incident regarded as an instance of indirect, subtle, or unintentional discrimination against members of a marginalized group such as a racial or ethnic minority, happen A LOT! In this episode, I speak with Rachel Kowert as we discuss microaggressions, how they present, and what we can do as platforms to mitigate and reduce risk when it comes to this type of behavior before it escalates. 

This week we delve into the critical topic of risk assessments within the evolving landscape of online safety regulations. I’m joined by Agne Kaarlep from Tremau, exploring how various regulatory frameworks like the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the UK Online Safety Act (OSA) are implementing risk assessments to improve platform safety and governance. We discuss the necessity of continuous and cyclical risk evaluation, the differences in regulatory approaches between the EU and UK governments, and the broader impacts on trust and safety practices within companies. 

In this episode, I dive into my work with Anne Collier whom I worked with on the Social Media Helpline for schools. We go into the history of trusted flaggers and their relationship to industry. We also break down some of the helplines models we followed for starting our helpline in the US. We also dive into the challenges of identifying and reporting content that violates a platform’s community guidelines as a trusted flagger and what this insight could mean when it comes Article 22 of the Digital Services Act. 

This week I am joined by Eric Han as we discuss incident management and emergency response in online platforms. Eric is a Trust & Safety Veteran with 16 years of experience across giants like Google, Yahoo, Twitter, Uber, and TikTok. Everything that can happen will happen on a platform at an exponential rate, and now, it can happen text, photo, image, DM, livestream, or ecommerce. All of it is fair game for bad actors. We discuss best practices for developing and building a platforms incident response strategy.

This week, I’m speaking with Pearlé Nwaezeigwe, the Yoncé of Tech Policy. We discuss all things tech policy from platform policy, implementing policy, and how regulation is impacting policy development and decisions. We also discuss career advice, how to make yourself stand out and build up your network, and how to make plans and strategize your career growth. 

In the digital age, the importance of content moderation in fostering safe, healthy, and thriving online communities cannot be understated. But despite the consensus among both players and industry professionals that moderation is essential, the current but outdated model of content moderation on games platforms has proven insufficient. In order to do this, we need systems and procedures that scale moderation to meet the growing need of today's online players. This can only be done through humans and technology working together. 

The easiest way to make decisions is to automate the process. I first learned this as a teach building classroom policies. On average, a teacher makes about 1500 decisions a day. In order to streamline that process and make my life easier, I developed a system of procedures to make those decisions fluid and automatic so I didn’t wear myself out having to think about every thing that happened on a daily basis. Platforms are no different. When thinking about prevention and risk mitigation, having a clear process and procedure helps to ensure that systems function as they should and decisions are made in a consistent and healthy fashion. In this episode, I share an example from my own professional experience detailing the evaluation of risk, needs for change, cross team collaboration/buy in, and execution on a project.

Trustcon 2024 has come and gone, and the mission of trust and safety goes forward. In this episode I reflect on my time and experience at Trustcon, the professionals who make online safety possible, and the topics that are driving industry forward. As the industry matures, this is the time to look at our professional practices and standards when it comes to keeping users safe online.

As with any conference, fun happens, and it’s important to stay up and running and keep yourself healthy through all the excitement. In this episode I'm joined by Alice Hunsberger as we share our top 10 tips for surviving and thriving in conference settings.

I LOVE to read! On any given day I’m scanning through multiple articles, a book, and some research. The biggest question, how do I know what is relevant and up to date? Newsletters are a great way to stay on top of that. In this episode I list some of the professionals I’ve come across that consistently share informative and consistent content. This saves me some work when it comes to setting Google alerts or scouring the internet on topics related to my work.

This week is a special episode, it’s a keynote from my talk at the School Climate Conference in Southern California. This is an education conference for anyone directly involved with community health in a school or district. In this keyonte, I was asked to speak to the current trends around AI and education, concerns about screen time and mental health, cheating and phone bans. I got to share some stories I haven’t told in awhile as well as some new stories which I enjoyed immensely, I hope you will enjoy it too.

This week I speak with Patricia Cartes Andres, a pioneer in the trust and safety space. She was there for the early work at FB, the global team at Twitter, Door Dash, and so many more. We discuss the future of trust and safety, regulation, and look at new vectors of harm that happen when you use technology online to connect humans offline such as marketplace apps. This is a great episode, I hope you enjoy. 

This week I am joined by Louisa Bartolo to discuss all things algorithms. She recently finished her PhD on this very topic and we dive into every aspect of how content gets recommended to us online, publishing transparency reports, user tooling options, and regulation. Recommendation algorithms are a hot topic in regulation right now and Louisa shares some great research and insight into the topic, hope you enjoy the show. 

This week I speak with Majalise Tolan, an educator and administrator with 20 years of experience. We discuss the evolution of technology in education from computer labs to AI, and the importance of integrating these advancements into the classroom. Majalisse shares insights on the successful use of social media for district-wide communication, managing student behavior with tech tools like the Yonder Bag, and fostering positive digital habits. She emphasizes the role of educators in teaching students how to use technology responsibly and the relevance of having students involved in celebrating and documenting their educational experiences through tech. 

This week, I’m joined by Sean Herman, founder and CEO of Kinzoo Messenger, blogger at ThatDigitalDad.com, and author of Screen Captured: Helping Families Explore the Digital World in The Age of Manipulationan and I dive into the foundational principles of Kinzoo, where Sean wanted to create positive screen time experiences for under 13. We also discuss the importance of open parent-child conversations about technology, and the societal shift towards nuanced understandings of tech's impact on youth and how to cultivate healthy digital habits for children.