Trust and Safety: Designing for Community Health

Online communities are fragile ecosystems. They can foster connection, creativity, and belonging—or they can become toxic wastelands that drive users away. The difference often comes down to design.

Beyond Content Moderation

Most discussions of trust and safety focus on content moderation: detecting and removing harmful content after it's posted. This is necessary but insufficient. It's like treating symptoms while ignoring the disease.

Effective trust and safety requires designing systems that:

• Prevent harmful behavior before it occurs
• Encourage positive interactions
• Make moderation scalable and sustainable
• Protect user wellbeing proactively

Designing for Prevention

The best moderation is the moderation you don't need. Design choices can dramatically reduce harmful behavior:

Friction as a Feature

Adding friction to potentially harmful actions gives users time to reconsider:

• Confirmation dialogs before posting inflammatory content
• Cooling-off periods after heated exchanges
• Preview screens that show how messages will appear to recipients

Defaults That Protect

Default settings should prioritize safety:

• New accounts start with limited reach
• Privacy settings default to restrictive
• Notifications default to less intrusive options

Positive Reinforcement

Reward the behavior you want to see:

• Highlight constructive contributions
• Celebrate community milestones
• Make positive interactions more visible than negative ones

The Human Element

Technology alone can't solve trust and safety. Human judgment is essential for:

• Nuanced decisions that algorithms can't make
• Appeals and edge cases
• Community-specific context
• Evolving threats and tactics

But human moderators face enormous challenges:

• Exposure to traumatic content
• Impossible volume of decisions
• Pressure to move quickly
• Lack of context and tools

Designing for moderator wellbeing is as important as designing for user safety.

Metrics That Matter

Traditional engagement metrics can incentivize harmful behavior. Outrage drives clicks. Conflict drives comments. Controversy drives shares.

We advocate for metrics that measure community health:

• Quality of interactions, not just quantity
• User sentiment over time
• Retention of positive contributors
• Moderator workload and burnout

Transparency and Appeals

Users need to understand the rules and have recourse when they feel wronged:

• Clear, accessible community guidelines
• Explanations for moderation decisions
• Fair and timely appeals processes
• Consistency in enforcement

The Platform Responsibility

Platforms have a responsibility that goes beyond legal compliance. They shape the environments where billions of people interact. Design decisions have real consequences for real people.

This responsibility requires:

• Investing in trust and safety as a core function
• Empowering trust and safety teams with resources and authority
• Measuring success by community health, not just growth
• Being willing to sacrifice engagement for safety

Conclusion

Trust and safety isn't a feature—it's a foundation. Communities that prioritize safety create environments where users feel comfortable participating, sharing, and connecting.

The work is never done. Threats evolve, communities change, and new challenges emerge. But with thoughtful design and sustained investment, we can build online spaces that bring out the best in people.