Join a TSPA Working Group

TSPA’s oldest and most-established Working Group, the T&S Curriculum Working Group, is seeking new members for specific modules and chapters! This working group is led by Harsha Bhatlapenumarthy.

The T&S Curriculum Working Group was established in October 2020 to:

• Democratize the trust and safety body of knowledge by creating a free, open curriculum including core concepts, terms, activities, and standard practices;
• Empower both the global T&S community and the average internet user with context on the various considerations influencing safety, privacy, and the enforcement of acceptable behavior and content online.

Since then, many incredible T&S practitioners and SMEs joined the working group to publish six chapters in the curriculum, and many are actively working to publish at least four more chapters in the next year. We are currently seeking new members for the following:

• A chapter focused on privacy considerations in T&S. We are seeking three to four (3-4) individuals with subject matter expertise and direct experience related to privacy in trust and safety to write a chapter for the T&S Curriculum.
• Content Moderation Simulation module. We are seeking two to three (2-3) individuals with subject matter expertise and direct experience related to content moderation and/or training content moderators to complete an interactive simulation module for the T&S Curriculum.

As a member of this group, you’ll benefit from:

• Meeting and working with other T&S professionals;
• Potentially participating in a TrustCon workshop or presentation related to this group’s goals and deliverables;
• Authoring or contributing to a publication on this topic;
• Receiving public acknowledgement for your participation.

Responsibilities

• Commit to attending scheduled meetings;
• Commit to actively participating in group discussions and assignments;
• Commit to authoring and/or contributing to portions of the T&S curriculum;
• Commit to potentially shaping and/or participating in a TrustCon workshop or presentation.

One of TSPA’s newest Working Groups, the Safe and Secure by Design – Moving Upstream to Prevent Harms Working Group, is seeking members! This working group is led by Jen Weedon, and we are also looking for a co-lead.

The aims of this group are as follows:

• To provide an interdisciplinary space to share learnings and recommendations across trust & safety and its adjacent functions regarding prevention-focused work, primarily through the lens of practitioners; 
• To convene perspectives across functions, product types, industries, trust & safety areas, and differing company maturities to distill relevant themes across these areas;
• To create two deliverables to add further definition to the practice and share knowledge via a workshop or panel at TrustCon (format tbd) and a curriculum chapter for the T&S Curriculum.  

Due to the nature of this group, applications are encouraged from individuals who represent varying perspectives in terms of function (for example, Policy, Engineering, UX, Intelligence, Product, Operations, Security, etc.), industry type (e.g., social media, gaming, dating, fintech), and size/maturity/geographic location(s) of team and org. We aim to have representation from those focused on harm prevention through areas such as traditional safety issues (child safety, counter extremism, NCII), to security, civic discourse, and other online harms (harassment, doxing, etc.).

As a member of this group, you’ll benefit from:

• Meeting and working with other T&S professionals;
• Learning more about topics related to T&S and particularly around prevention, design, and effective partnerships in ensuring harm reduction;
• Potentially participating in a TrustCon workshop or presentation related to this group’s goals and deliverables;
• Potentially authoring or contributing to a publication on this topic;
• Receiving public acknowledgement for your participation.

Responsibilities

• Commit to attending biweekly scheduled meetings.
• Commit to actively participating in group discussions and assignments;
• Commit to potentially authoring and/or contributing to portions of a chapter about safety and security by design for the T&S curriculum;
• Commit to potentially shaping and/or participating in a TrustCon workshop or presentation.

One of TSPA’s newest Working Groups, T&S in the Metaverse, is seeking members! This working group is led by Michelle Toborowski. Please note that for the purposes of this group, we’re defining “Metaverse” broadly as “shared, immersive, and persistent virtual spaces.” This can include virtual and augmented realities, NFTs/digital tokens, and/or other similar spaces.

The aims of this group are as follows:

• Provide a space to discuss the unique T&S challenges faced by professionals in the Metaverse stacks. 
• Create recommendations regarding future specialized topics that may be unique to this space.
• Develop a TrustCon workshop or presentation on this topic. 

Due to the nature of this group, we welcome applications from individuals who work in shared, immersive, and persistent virtual spaces and who would like to discuss T&S challenges including building policies, operational and enforcement structures, and performing investigative/intelligence work in this space. For example, how do you protect a specialized online marketplace your platform has developed in digital items or a digital currency from misuse? How do you build policies that allow interaction in augmented reality? How do you develop scaled enforcement for specialized user-generated content unique to this environment?

As a member of this group, you’ll benefit from:

• Meeting and working with other T&S professionals;
• Learning more about topics related to T&S and particularly around prevention, design, and effective partnerships in ensuring harm reduction;
• Potentially participating in a TrustCon workshop or presentation related to this group’s goals and deliverables;
• Potentially authoring or contributing to a publication on this topic;
• Receiving public acknowledgement for your participation.

Responsibilities

• Commit to attending biweekly scheduled meetings.
• Commit to actively participating in group discussions and assignments;
• Commit to potentially shaping and/or participating in a TrustCon workshop or presentation.