Trust & Safety Curriculum

The Trust and Safety Curriculum is written by TSPA volunteers and protected by copyright. When referencing the Trust and Safety Curriculum as a whole, please use the following citation.

Trust and Safety Professional Association. “Trust and Safety Curriculum.” Accessed [Month Day, Year]. https://www.tspa.org/curriculum/ts-curriculum/

When referencing a specific chapter from the Trust and Safety Curriculum, please include the authors’ names. You can find author information at the end of the chapter and in the Acknowledgements section.

Curriculum Overview

Billions of people around the world learn, work, connect, and express themselves online. As internet platforms democratize access to information in an unprecedented way, they can also inadvertently facilitate the coordination of harmful activity and provide a venue for bad behavior. To effectively safeguard their users from harmful content, these companies must grapple with incredibly complex issues, from child sexual exploitation to misinformation, while also responding to new and rapidly evolving threats.  Policies and decisions by companies have real-world consequences, whether it is the safety of an individual or political repercussions for a nation; it is no wonder that civil society groups, governments, and regulatory bodies are increasingly scrutinizing the measures technology companies take to preserve users’ safety and privacy. This complex and high-stakes landscape has fueled a recent explosion of public interest in the field of trust and safety; it has also illustrated the importance of investing in trust and safety teams who are responsible for determining and enforcing the policies that keep users safe.

TSPA partners with those trust and safety teams to equip them with the expertise and skills they need to successfully navigate this incredibly high-stakes environment. This curriculum, written by volunteers with extensive experience in the field, is a key piece of that support. The Trust & Safety Curriculum defines core concepts, terms, and standard practices that make up the body of knowledge we call “trust and safety.” Through this curriculum, we hope to develop and democratize access to this field by helping aspiring or new trust and safety professionals gain a deeper understanding of this work. We hope this curriculum provides context on the complex considerations that influence how trust and safety professionals define acceptable behavior and content online and work to safeguard user safety and privacy. 

Our goals for this curriculum are:

• For trust and safety professionals, this curriculum will help to validate the incredibly complex work you do. It will give you a picture of how other types of companies approach the challenges you face, and will help you build knowledge in more specialized trust and safety topics. 
• For start up companies, this curriculum will give you a baseline knowledge of trust and safety and help you build your own trust and safety team. It presents issues to consider when developing trust and safety policies and mechanisms and when hiring trust and safety professionals.
• For the broader public, this curriculum will give you an inside look at how trust and safety teams operate today. We hope this peek behind the scenes will empower you to ask questions, spark new ideas, and contribute confidently to online community governance structures, and we hope we see some of you join the field! 

Currently this curriculum includes: Key Roles and Functions that make up a trust and safety team, a Glossary of Terms and Definitions, and the Trust & Safety Fundamentals, which are a series of chapters that focus on different topics fundamental to the trust and safety field.

Please note, due to the ever-evolving nature of laws and regulations, the information in the T&S Curriculum may not always represent the most current best practices to which your company may be subject. Before acting on any advice or information provided here, check with your legal counsel and/or public policy teammates as applicable.