“I Tend to Run to Problems That People Run Away From”: Emotion as an Essential Asset in Trust and Safety Work

Abstract

Platform-side Trust and Safety (T&S) is the crucial paid work of responding to and mitigating harmful content and behavior online and beyond. It is characterized by complexity, ambiguity, urgency, and trade-offs based on competing values across a constantly morphing landscape of technologies, abuses, and actors. Interviews with 47 T&S professionals suggest that their expertise is rooted in affective-relational skills: seeking multiple perspectives, reflexivity, curiosity, and collaboration. Furthermore, our findings suggest T&S professionals are motivated by a desire to protect users and spaces, the intellectual challenges inherent in the work, and the caliber of their colleagues. However, the fundamental challenges of the work are compounded by other conditions: both internal and external misperceptions about T&S, responsibility with limited autonomy, and organizational structures. In contributing a more nuanced and grounded perspective of platform-side T&S, we argue that emotion is not a liability, but rather an essential asset in T&S work. We call for valuing the affective skills and motivations T&S professionals bring to their work with the aim of a shift from coping toward well-being and from individually-borne responsibility toward organizational support.