CS 152 Stanford University
CS 152 / COMM 122 / INTLPOL 267: Trust and Safety
Spring 2026
CS 152 Trust and Safety

CS 152 / COMM 122 / INTLPOL 267: Trust and Safety / Spring 2026

Announcements

Wednesday, April 23 — Schedule update: Online Child Sexual Exploitation moves to Tuesday, April 28, Suicide and Self-Harm moves to Thursday, April 30, and Terrorism and Violent Extremism moves to Tuesday, May 5. The reading syllabus has been updated; please check the new lecture order before Tuesday’s pre-read quiz.

Monday, April 6 — Milestone 1 is posted!

Instructors

Alex Stamos
Adjunct Lecturer, Computer Science
Email: stamos@stanford.edu
Office Hours: Book here
Jeff Hancock
Professor of Communication
Email: hancockj@stanford.edu
Office Hours: Wednesday 12–1, McClatchy Hall Rm. 300J, or by appointment via email

Course Assistants

Kieran Barrett
Head Course Assistant
Email: kjavi@stanford.edu
Tracy Wei
Course Assistant
Email: tracywei@stanford.edu
Arjun Jain
Course Assistant
Email: arjunj@stanford.edu

Course Description

Trust and Safety is the field of professional and academic effort to allow people to positively use technology while being safe from harm. This course explores how online services and AI systems are abused to cause real human harm and the potential social, operational, product, legal and engineering responses.

Lecture: Tuesday & Thursday, 3:00–4:20 PM, 420-041

Discussion Sections (attend one per week):

  • DIS 02 — Monday 10:30–11:20 AM, 320-109 (31452)
  • DIS 03 — Monday 4:30–5:20 PM, Lathrop 190 (31453)
  • DIS 04 — Wednesday 11:30 AM–12:20 PM, STLC 104 (31454)
  • DIS 05 — Wednesday 6:30–7:20 PM, 300-303 (31455)
  • DIS 06 — Friday 10:30–11:20 AM, 60-108 (31456)

Learning Goals

This course aims to give students a strong overview of the risks inherent to online communication, media and commerce platforms and to prepare them to recognize and address these risks during their careers. By the completion of the course, students will be able to:

  • Explain to colleagues such as software engineers and product managers the common ways that internet technologies are used to cause harm.
  • Recognize the pattern of how long-existing societal challenges (hate speech, disinformation, child abuse) can be changed or amplified by modern communication platforms.
  • Understand the likely abuses of common internet products and propose potential solutions.
  • Design and implement a content moderation system powered by a machine learning classifier.
  • Have empathy for a broad cross-section of the people who use their products and the risks they face.

Alumni of this class have gone on to careers in trust in safety teams, the public sector, and civil society. They have also applied what they have learned to engineering, project management and entrepreneurial positions where they have an opportunity to make their products a bit safer for users and the world.

  • Schedule — Lecture dates, topics, and slides
  • Reading Syllabus — Required and optional readings by week
  • Policies — Grading, milestones, and course policies
  • Project — Group project information

Guest Lecturers

  • Riana Pfefferkorn — Policy Fellow, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
    Intro to the US Legal System, Privacy, Surveillance and Law Enforcement (Apr 14)
  • Evelyn Douek — Associate Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
    Free Speech on the Internet and Trust and Safety (Apr 16)