Online Trust & Safety

Why did YouTube ban my channel? What is the difference between X/Twitter and Bluesky? With over two thirds of the global population on the internet, questions of how online communication technology actually works - and who is in control - have never been more salient to questions of power and governance. The new professional and academic field of “Trust and Safety” has emerged with the practice of “content moderation”: the task of enabling online speech while also preventing harms, ranging from political violence to mental health crises to misinformation. In this applied, practitioner-led course, we will explore how business, government, and NGOs shape 21st century social technology; observe how companies build and operate their platforms; and tackle the challenges of content moderation at scale.



Abe Katz led trust and safety initiatives at Meta (Facebook), including making changes to feed ranking algorithms and managing high-profile content moderation crises during COVID and global elections. He now leads the “Safety By Design” work at Discord and teaches Public Policy at Duke University.