Advancing Trust & Safety: systems and standards for online safety professionals 

Trust & Safety (T&S) professionals play a vital yet often overlooked role in making digital spaces safe and accountable. This report examines the challenges they face and proposes steps to establish T&S as an independent, fully empowered profession. 

“Advancing Trust & Safety” outlines the evolution of T&S from crisis response to a global profession employing over 100,000 people. Drawing on insights from T&S professionals, their representative bodies and existing research, this report highlights systemic barriers inhibiting T&S as a sector. Key issues include business models that deprioritise safety, the absence of a formal mandate for T&S professionals, inadequate safety metrics, challenging working conditions and an absence of professional standards and oversight. 

To address these challenges, this report presents a series of recommendations to support and empower T&S. These include embedding safety assessments into product design from the outset, creating governance structures that ensure company leaders are accountable if they ignore or override safety advice, developing professional standards and enhancing workplace protections and including T&S’s mandate in regulatory standards.  

Beyond T&S, the report calls for comprehensive legislation to ensure digital products and services are age-appropriate, safe, private, secure, and rights-respecting by design and by default and greater accountability for industry leaders who are reckless about safety. 

By providing a clear, evidence-based analysis of the current state of T&S and offering actionable recommendations, this report is a valuable resource for policymakers, regulators, civil society organisations, and industry leaders. It is also an important read for T&S professionals themselves, offering both recognition of their vital work and a vision for a future in which they are empowered to act in the best interests of users, citizens, and society at large.