External Engagement

Please note, due to the ever-evolving nature of laws and regulations, the information in this chapter may not always represent the current best practices on how to engage with or share information with an external third party to which your company may be subject. Before acting on any advice or information provided here, check with your legal counsel or public policy teammates.

External engagement is the process by which a platform seeks input, advice, and feedback—or conducts formal research—with individuals or organizations outside of the company. Whether it’s creating policies or building a new safety feature, it’s critical to ensure that teams are soliciting input from a diverse set of individuals and perspectives. These perspectives not only help to create better policies and products for a platform, but also they can be a critical tool in building trust by giving voice to outsiders’ perspectives. 

There are many parties with which platforms engage in their Trust & Safety work: regulators, lawmakers, advocacy groups, activists, NGOs, academics, community leaders, and users. In some instances, platforms are compelled by law to engage with regulators or other parties.

At other times, a team proactively seeks out experts with specific experience to help inform the direction of a new project. These engagements can be wide ranging: for example, external parties providing expertise on “safety by design” processes (i.e. diversity, equity, and inclusion within a product or policy area); regional or cultural knowledge specific to some parts of the world; or interacting with a government body regarding specific legislation. Some external engagement is forward looking: e.g., a team is looking to revise a policy and is looking for guidance on how to approach this work.

At other times, external engagement is retrospective: a mistake in a moderation decision has led a team to seek input from individuals representing an affected community to understand how to improve their policies and systems.

Here are just some instances in which third party engagement may be useful (please keep in mind that this list is non-exhaustive):

1. As part of a policy development process that includes many different perspectives, teams will often build in a period to collect feedback from external stakeholders to help consider different perspectives and weigh trade-offs of varying approaches to a given policy. 
2. When analyzing new products, services or features, it’s important for Trust & Safety teams to engage with a third party as a form of due diligence to understand and mitigate potential harmful impacts to users such as human rights issues, equitability issues, or potential censorship. 
3. In the wake of global catastrophe or emergent world events, platforms can work with third parties to get reliable and contextual information that is used to more accurately make decisions on how to apply their policies to content related to these emergent events. Examples of these third parties include, but not limited to: local law enforcement, government agencies, relief and human rights agencies. Especially when events are rapidly evolving, it is important to gather the most relevant and accurate information that can be used by operations teams on enforcement decisions. 
4. When laws are created or are in the process of creation, Trust & Safety professionals can work with their public policy teammates to create impact assessments for agencies to lobby for changes in laws or acts.