Safe Space - Talking Trust and Safety
What does it take to make the Internet a safer place? More importantly, who does it take? Safe Space explores the human side of trust & safety—featuring the leaders, thinkers, and builders working to protect online communities. Hosted by John Starr, VP of Operations and Strategic Impact at Thorn, this podcast dives into the personal journeys of those shaping the future of the digital world—one policy, one decision, and one conversation at a time.
Presented by Safer by Thorn.
Safe Space - Talking Trust and Safety
Safe Space - Talking Trust & Safety: Jerrel Peterson | EP 2
From social work to social networks online, Jerrel Peterson, Director of Content Policy at Spotify and former Twitter alum, takes us on his unexpected journey into Trust & Safety. Thorn's VP of Strategic Impact, John Starr, talks with Peterson about his fascinating transition from aspiring plastic surgeon to social worker, and ultimately to a content policy expert bringing a unique perspective to online safety.
Jerrel explores the crucial role of "soft skills" in Trust & Safety and how he approaches leading teams through complex decision-making processes, balancing objectivity with organizational values in content moderation. He tackles the misconception that Trust & Safety operates in isolation and offers valuable insights into making it an essential requirement for platform success.
Learn more about Thorn’s technology for good at safer.io
Access more child safety resources for Trust and Safety professionals: https://get.safer.io/resources-trust-safety
(upbeat music)- So, we're at TrustCon, and I'm here with Jerrel Peterson, the Director of Content Policy at Spotify. Jerrel, welcome to TrustCon. Are you excited for the week?- I really am. TrustCon is a lot, it's a lot of people, so I'm pacing myself. And I did a lot of hugs, a lot of smiles already this morning. And so yeah, I'm looking forward. It's always a good time.- Well, I really appreciate you joining me today. We're gonna talk trust and safety.- [Jerrel] Okay.- We're not gonna dive into specific trust and safety outcomes, or talk the merits of current regulation in the world. I'm really interested in highlighting the humans that make up the space, that help create trust and safety. And so, we're gonna focus a lot of your journey about your experience. And I think whether or not you are a trust and safety pro, or maybe you're looking to get into the field. I hope that you find this really, really useful and helpful. So, Director of Content Policy at Spotify. Give us a two, or three minute commercial on like the day-to-day for you. Like, what does mean in reality?- Yeah so in reality, my team is responsible for researching and writing the rules that govern the content that's on a given platform. That's what content policy means, generally. And so, a lot of times we are looking at the abuse trends in the industry. We're looking at the new experiences that we're creating on the platform. And really thinking through how they can go wrong, how they can be misused, what kinds of harms are created. Our team is just primarily to minimize a potential for, for offline harm. There's lots of other kinds of harms, too, that are somewhat subjective. So my team is thinking about reputational, financial and emotional harms, as well. And writing about it, and trying to help the business think differently about what our roles should be, and getting them to move in a direction that supports business goals, but also keeps people safe. Because those things are intertwined. And then, the business successful without having trust and safety as the cornerstone. So that's the TLDR there. And I spend a lot of my time meeting with stakeholders. Getting them involved on this work, and excited about this work.- Very cool. So like, how does one get to this role? So, we're gonna get to that a little bit, right? So we have a former colleague, Shanae McSweeney. Shout out to Shanae. She did a TED Talk, which talks about, she talks about her journey, and the question that we're all asked as young people. Of, what do you wanna do when you grow up? And she actually talks about how that is becoming, you know, potentially out-dated. Because the roles that are available, as Director of Content Policy in Spotify, didn't exist when we were growing up. And so, we started with where you are now. Let's go back, what did Jerrel wanna do when he was growing up?- I (chuckling), I wanted to be a plastic surgeon.- Wow.- If I'm being honest.- Tell me more about it.- I wanted to be a doctor first, that was a big thing. And my mom has videos of me talking about wanting to be a doctor and be a physician. And I did internships at John Hopkins in the emergency department, trying to desensitize myself to blood, and all that stuff.(John laughing) I was like, this is what I'm going to do. Get comfortable with it, and make sure it's what you really, really want. And I got to college, and I liked chemistry, I liked lab and bio. But, I didn't like it as much as the other folks who were sitting next me. They had a lot more passion for it. And I had this whole thing about dropping out of pre-med, and all that stuff, and figure out where I would go. And I had a really amazing counselor who sat me down. And I was crying, I was a mess. He was just like, "After hearing your story,"you sound like a helper."There are a lot of people"who need a lot of help right now.""Have you ever thought about the helping professions?"Have you thought about there,"Have you thought about social work?" I was just like, "No, but I'll look at it."I'll look into it." And that's where I started, I started out as social worker.- Helper.- Mm-hm.- Super-powerful. So you mentioned, you started as a social worker. Give a little, give some context. Like, we're gonna spend a little bit of time, it gives the context of your entry point into social work. What was that like for you? And, how was that transition from what you wanted to be when you grew up, into maybe what you were meant to be?- Yeah it was hard, if I'm going to be honest. I felt like I was letting my family down by not becoming a physician. And being that person that they're supposed to call on when there was a problem.- [John] Yep.- But the other context at the time is, when I graduated from undergrad, the economy had tanked. There were no jobs anyway, at that time. So, unless you could afford to live for free in another state, with the hope that you might be converted into a full-time role, that was really what was out there. And my family is not independently wealthy. I'm the first generation to go to college on a... There was no safety net waiting for me. But, there was always social work jobs. There were always helping profession out there anywhere you looked around the world. There's always the folks who help. And when I moved back home, those jobs are right there waiting for me. So, I started my career working with really any (indistinct) population you can think about. Low-income families, seniors, people with severe mental illness, right? I feel like unprepared for that work. And then showing up, and having the spirit of, if not me, than who? And we can talk more about the parallels with trust and safety. But, limited resources, people don't really know what you do, right?(John laughing) You're tackling problems and challenges that have not been solved. Like, despite all the advances, there are still people who are poor. There are still people who struggle for food, and for housing. And, it's not because it's just like poor social skills and all that stuff. There is systems and structures that need to change if people are going to be better. And I found my calling, I was like "I can do this." I can engage with folks, and I can really help them think about their lives differently. And makes sense of the what, and navigate them in ways to help them achieve their goal. So I did that for a really long time. And I hit a ceiling a little bit, I would say. I don't know if you have social workers in your universe. But a lot of folks that do that work realize that the people who make decisions about what gets funded, about what programs you shine the light on, and in most cases, never had to worry about food, or healthcare, or education. And so I was like, "I wanna be that voice." I wanna take what I was seeing on the ground, and apply it to more macro systems, and represent the people who aren't in the room. And, I did that for awhile, and I worked for a few national non-profits, that flew me out to California, essentially. And then, I got laid off. And I was in this moment where like,"Oh, I found my calling, I'm great at what I'm doing.""Now what?"- [John] Now what?- And a friend was like, "You should think about tech.""You're in San Francisco, why is that not on your radar?""Or, why are you thinking about trust and safety?"- I was like, "What is trust and safety?"- So, let's maybe take a beat here. Because I think this is a really interesting moment in time for you, perhaps. (chuckling) Like, as well.- [Jerrel] Yeah.- With just so, when you're in this helping profession as a social worker, and it sounds like really entrenched in the helping profession. Did you know about trust and safety? Like what, like you mentioned tech wasn't on your radar. But like, this concept of helper does pull through, I think. At least for my kind of experience, to trust and safety pros. When did you understand that was a possibility, or like in the atmosphere for you?- It was conversations with folks in the industry. Because before I threw my head, and the way my anxiety is set up, I like to know what I'm getting myself into. So I did a lot of informational interviews with folks doing the work to hear like what was their day-to-day like? What do they love about their job? What do they hate about it? And, a lot of them where there altruistic reasons. They want it to be better than what it was. But, I did not know what trust and safety was. And then on recollection, I had lots of encounters with issues online. I was on MySpace back in the day. MySpace was a wild place to be. Providing, we were all coding and managing our pages. But, there were so many people communicating with each other. And there were many times I saw content. I was just like, "Whoa, I had no idea"this was even allowed on online spaces." And so, trust and safety was around me. Just, I never thought it was for me. Because, I'm not technical. And I think a lot of people outside of tech assumes that everyone who works here has a degree, can write SQL, is focused on engineering and building systems. I couldn't build anything. And the fun fact, too, starting at Twitter. I didn't even have a Twitter account-- [John] Oh, no!- when I started. Like, I was that far removed from tech generally. And yeah, I a lot of ways I was in the right place at the right time. And my skills really, really carried me.- So talk to me about the right place and the right time. What is that? You know obviously, you went on to work at Twitter. Talk about that right place and right time for you. Like what was that role for you? And kind of like, what was that entry point? What was like your first like,"This is trust and safety moment?"- Hm, my first trust and safety moment, I think for me, it was that my healthy skepticism of technology and online spaces was about (indistinct). And I didn't think that going in.- [John] I love that.- A lot of trust and safety teams have what they call, "Product trust." And so, product trust are the proactive arm of T&S. They're out there meeting product managers and engineers, helping them identify the risk before the future launches. And to be good at that, you have to be skeptical of what it can do. And that's hard, because if a PM comes in, there like, markets gonna be amazing. It's gonna change the world, it's gonna make so much money for our platform. And these guys are like,"Well, it could also hurt-"(crosstalk drains out dialogue)...too, and we have a chart record of that. So, that skepticism, like,"Oh, I love that feature, it sounds a lot of fun." But here's all the way things can go bad, and here's what I'm scared of it. That was my entry point. I was like, "Oh, I can do this." And then, my other ah-ha moment was the soft skills. Again, I had a lot of imposter syndrome when I joined. And I didn't think that social work belonged in this space. And I was like any moment someone is gonna come to me and be like, "Ah, you had a good run, this was your time."You squandered it, you lost, thank you so much."- Game over.- Within like-- Yeah.- A lot of success in the way I stood apart in those early days, were my soft skills. Collaboration. If there was any kind of group coming together, let's think about solving a complex job. It was like, "Put Jerrel on it."He's really good at building relationships.""He's really good at taking complex information,"and translating it for lots of folks." And, that comes from social work. It really, really does. We do that, social workers do that every single day.- I think I might of been one of the people who was like, let's put Jerrel on that. You're completely right on the soft skill component of it. So like, you go in, are you feeling like you're at home? Do you feel like, you obviously went from like this journey, home might be too strong. But you went from kind of this journey of like, this kind of like helping profession. Did it immediately feel like you could add value? And like, how has that evolved through your time and trust, and safety?- The answer is no.(John chuckling) I would say it wasn't until almost a year, or two, if I'm being honest, where I felt like I have found my voice in the space. And what differentiated me as a worker, but also as a future leader, I knew I really wanted to be a people manager in that space, I wanted to grow folks in this industry. And it wasn't until I had the opportunity to that, where I'm like, not only am I adding value and helping products shift and keeping people safe to manage complex escalations. But, I also had a lot of folks who look up to me. And feel like they have a place in this industry, because they worked on my team. And it was something that like I totally did not expect at all. And once I found that, I mean I joke with my folks. They're gonna have to drag me out of it now, because I just, I'm in it now, I really, really am.- Yeah, you built, I think you built a strong sense of community in the roles that you had. So any type of ah-ha moment? Those in trust and safety also always have an oh-no moment.- [Jerrel] Hm.- When was there, was there an oh-no moment of being like, "Oh, oh wow, this is real."- Yeah, a lot of them. So, working on social media platforms, they are always on. And, I think we know that in concept, and in theory. But Del Harvey has a really great TED Talk from years ago, where she talks about scale. And she has this line where it's like, if Twitter has 500 million tweets a day, and there's a one in million chance that something really bad is happening, that means on that platform something really bad is happening all of the time. And for me I was like go home, and I always thought I had really healthy boundaries with work. With social work a lot, you can't burn yourself out. And there were a few times I went home, and I'm like,"Oh, because I'm done,"that does not mean the platform is done." Or, thing are done. And that was a moment like,"Oh no, am I ready to sustain myself? And then, I'm not sure if you remember this-- Go on.- But, we had a conversation in passing, I was something, bad idea, that probably a lot of things bad that day. And you saw my face, and I must of just looked really, really tired, or burned out, or whatever. And you pulled me aside, and you were like,"Success in this space is a marathon, not a sprint."Don't burn yourself out now." And, it's something that I say to my folks to this day, and it's a good reminder. And again, the social work that I had those skills when I came.- That's cool.- You reminded me of that. And I was like, "Oh, I actually can do this."I can take my time and have progress over time."- It's true, I mean this space is always on. I remember a time, I remember a time, perhaps even worked on this. When there was... something bad happened at 3 a.m. East Coast time, and it was one of these things where, the way I think I went into a meeting with representatives of regions of the world that experienced this. And I made the mistake of saying,"It was a perfect storm of bad timing." And they said, "Well your perfect storm of bad timing"is three o'clock in the afternoon for us." And it hit me like very square. This is very early on at Twitter. Very squarely that, it's a globe run, the internet is global, fast. And humans have expectations as it relates to platforms, and how they're gonna operate. So for it was just immediately this kind of concept of like an always-on platform. I'm interested to get your sense of like, I haven't met anyone in trust and safety that's like, figure it out, we're perfect. What's a way that you would like to see the space get maybe 5% better, 8% better?- I think for me, leaning more into the concept that trust and safety teams support the business. I think when I started, I always thought about them as separate. And in some cases, in opposition of each other. That trust and safety teams slow things down, we're a cost center. Or, we are the sad path. No one wants to engage with us when that's not the case. So much research shows that when folks are experiencing abuse online, when they witness it, they are less likely to login, they're less likely to engage, they're less likely to post. Less likely to do all the things that the platforms want them to do. It's a business imperative to do trust and safety well, and to invest in it. And for me, getting comfortable with that, is I think also social work training, but also social justice is like radical, anti-capitalist and that kind of stuff. But, the platforms do a lot better when they are leaning into these issues and solving them. And I wanna make sure that folks who are coming in with these ideas of how the systems need to change, and context of all the bad things that have happened. Also know that doing their jobs well helps the platform be better. And maybe, maybe, there will be some days where it's like, "Oh, this platform is great." Because it has differentiated itself from a safety perspective. I trust that, I am not worried about how to use my information. I really get it. That's what kind of keeps me optimistic about the future.- I'll bet. So, there may be a young social worker listening. Maybe even an aspiring plastic surgeon.- Okay, okay.- Potentially an artist, people may not know you're an incredible artist. What would be your piece of advice for a young person curious about the field that we work in? Who's maybe in the field of social work. That's interested in exploring it, or maybe would like a career like you have. What would you say to them?- I would, of course, tell them to go for it. And, there's a huge community of folks like me, with non-traditional backgrounds. It's been interesting since I went to TrustCon last year how many more social workers I've met in the space, and there's a lot of them.(John indistinct) And a lot of them are executives, too. VP level social workers. We don't all put MSW behind our names in LinkedIn. But when we're out there, there's a community of folks there, but also, I think the biggest learning lesson for me is, a lot of folks are just figuring it out. They're doing the best they can with the information, and the resources they have available. And, they're practitioners, they've got skills and they are focused. But, you're not missing out something. You're not missing that thing. You've got it inside of you already. And the people you admire are doing the best they can. They're not like, "Oh, I got this, my job is easy."I can do it everyday." They are figuring it out, and they're trying to align folks around to vision to keep moving forward. And, anybody can do that. And be confident that you can do that.- Very well said. What is the most misunderstood part about our work, or about the humans that do the work?- That everything we do happens in a vacuum. And this is something that I misunderstood, as well. People are like, "Oh Jerrel, you lead content policy." And they're like, "The policy is so important."Just change it, right?"That'll make everything better, just write something new." And for me I'm like, yes, and I cannot do this work alone. Now, I'm very, very proud of the policies I've worked on. I'm very proud of the teams and stuff that they have built. But, our fancy little Google doctor has not changed the materiality of the people who use the respective platforms that I've worked on. It's just, they don't. It really, really doesn't. We need to engage with engineers, product managers, coms, legal, part of it is PR. All of those folks working together actually improves the experience for folks. So I get that question, "Why not just change the policy?" I'm like, great, let's change it right now. Do you feel better than(crosstalk drains out dialogue)?(John laughing)- Now what?- You got a lot of people around that division. I think that's something that I've done really, really well, leaned into.- You had to. My team does really well, as well.- Talk to me a little bit about this,'cause I find it compelling, and I can relate to a certain extent about the cons. You frame them soft skills. And for those of you who haven't worked inside of, at least a version of a tech company that I've worked inside. Is they tend to, and this is generally speaking. Tend to skew fast, tend to skew data-driven, tend to skew just very ship it. And... This idea of bringing people along, of slowing down to speed up, it's still going pretty damn fast. And really, really kind of educating and bringing the company along with honestly, concepts that weren't openly talked about in the public discourse until five, six, seven years ago. I remember having to literally go around the company, and bringing them up to speed. You did a fantastic job of bringing the organization up to speed about what different harm vectors are. How you and your team, or we thought about them. And what operationally was the response to them, and why it wasn't this. Or, they talked about like this idea of like it being a vacuum. The scale that it's working at. There was an important part point of time, of the trust and safety history that I feel like we got an influx. Like it went, well I mean speaking very frankly, it went from like a Twitter, a cost center to the strategy of the organization, of the company, in a matter of a year.- Whole team, yeah.- Yeah so like, give a sense of like, when you say soft skills, can you give a little color-- Yeah!- On like, what you mean by that. And, why it's so important?- Well I mean, there's a lot to say about that. For me, the soft skills part is important because most trust and safety teams are not in a position to say, "No."- [John] Right.- Right? And when you can't say, "No," you can't really stop the train when it's going. So the soft skills become important. Specifically, how do you get folks to think differently about their work? So, influence strategies really, really matter. And these are things that I picked up when I was doing public policy work, when I was doing social work. I couldn't change to law, itself. I could change how people saw it, about it, or what their agency was as they're navigating through the complex systems, that they didn't create. And so one thing, one of my old mentors would say is that, you can be a leader out in front, or you can lead from the wings. And that's something that I got really, really good at under your leadership. But it's also lots of other incredible managers that I've had in tech, and they know who they are. And, I thank them all the time. For but being comfortable that when the train is moving really quickly and you're in this meeting, and it's like, "We need to stop this," right? Or, someone says something smart, and I kind of slack them on the side. That's really, really smart. And, that connects to the shared vision that we have. And, that's enough. And then when we have a one-on-one, or a coffee, they're like, "How's your day?""My day is great. Here's what I'm thinking about"now that we're moving forward." Like those things. How do you help people think about their work differently? And see you as a collaborator and a stakeholder. And I think in tech, I was like,"It's my job to stand out and show myself." But again, my super-power was collaboration. Getting a lot of people to be aligned on one vision. And I was very, very surprised at the kind of stuff we can accomplish when we do that. And I brought that to role. And now, the steps I wanna take with me going forward.- I love that. So of course at Thorn, we build technical solutions. We're very focused on, I would say a really important, but a component of the large swath of kind of online harm. How do you think about staffing, or preparing your team to capture the different... the different kind of really important expertise within this kind of like ever-growing list of harms or adversary trust and safety matters?- For me, I always look for folks who are curious. Healthy skepticism is also important. I said that, I started at the beginning. That's why I think it added value for me, healthy skepticism. But also, curious. You see something that is happening, or you're aware of what's going on in our industry. And you start to think, "Well what could we do about that?"How does that impact us?" And they start to write, or they start to do something with it. I have a lot of folks who are like, "I do operations." Or, "I do marketing, I wanna jump into policy." And, they're surprised when I tell them that we write a lot. We're always writing, and we're always researching, we're always thinking deeply about this. So that curiosity, I think, really, really goes a long way. But then, I also look for folks who really wanna do the work, because it's work. It really, really is. And you've used pros, right? I like practitioners, too. We are practitioners, we're not just do-gooders. Being influential requires skills. Skills that you can practice being good at over the time. Getting a business to think differently about what it does means you have to understand their budgets and how they finance things. How we ask for resources, head counts, partnerships, all that stuff requires some knowledge. And not just, "This is great, we should do it." It takes a bit more than that. So, comfortably doing the work, but also being curious. I think is incredibly important. Especially right now, the technology is moving so, so fast.- Yeah. One of the things that I think is really that folks may not understand fully about, especially folks on the policy side. Or operational side of trust and safety, is often times... It was certainly the case with Twitter. Is that like... They're having to enforce things that make, rules that maybe on content they at best don't agree with, and at worse, they personally find insulting or worse. I'm curious to get a sense of like, I think that to me is one thing that I would love for kind of humans to know about those that work in trust and safety. Can you maybe talk a little bit about what it's like to lead a team that have, is like having to weigh... is having to weigh things generally, day-to-day, from an objective point of view? Having to work within this kind of environment of, of kind of multiple kind of responses to things?- Yeah, it's hard, and it's a thankless field in a lot of ways. And not because people don't like us, they just don't know what we do. I'm in the middle, we're not actually just twiddling our thumbs waiting for someone to text us something really bad. We're always on in a lot of ways, especially when we're in the office in front of our computer. I think for me, there have been a few things that guide me. One of them is biased toward understanding, and not agreement. Because the complexity of our work, when you ask 20 experts globally what should we do about a particular piece of content, you're gonna get a lot of opinions. And they don't always agree right now. And, I'm fine with that. But I want you to understand what we're doing. What is the trade off that we're making? Charlotte, Executive Director of TSP, says trust and safety is a trade off to sadness, right? We'll talk about the sadness part later. But the trade off piece is real. So when you help folks understand what you're solving for, and the trade offs that you're making, they may not agree. But, you can have much more productive conversations about where we're going when everyone is one the same page. Especially engineers and PMs, they're so innovative and creative. When we give them a challenge, and why we got this challenge and what we're hoping to get, they come with lots of ideas for how we can get it. Even if they don't agree where we are. And so, when folks are angry, I'm like that's a good place to start. How do we translate that energy into excitement? And therefore, motivating my people. What motivates me, is I know where we're going. I think the things that happen every single day can really beat you down. But I know what we're working towards. And for me, that's always inspiring me to think, seven to 10 years, not just what's happening in front of us. And as a leader, I think a lot of ways you can show up is by aligning folks around the vision and the values. Even if you don't have an answer. And on purpose, I will not give the right answer, even if I know. Because I'm like, here's what we are solving for. Run with that. And maybe we might get to a solution that I can imagine, or anticipated. Or, we might get to something better, too.- Love that. Was there anything else that you would wanna talk about that I didn't hit on?- Um...not necessarily. I think we covered all of it. Social workers should be everywhere. They belong in tech, definitely.(both chuckling)- Indeed. So Jerrel, thank you so much for joining. You are an incredibly hard-working and interesting person. And, I really enjoyed the conversation. I thank you very much for joining us.- I'm glad that you had me. Really appreciate it, anything to be done.(chill music)- Hey guys, I'm John Starr of VP of Strategic Impact at Thorn. Thorn builds technology to defend children against sexual abuse. If you're interested to learn more about our organizations or the solutions that we build, check out safer.io
