Reading Syllabus
- Readings should be completed before the class they are listed under.
- This syllabus will be updated up to a week before the readings are due, so check back often.
- Readings above “Optional:” are fair game for the pre-class quiz.
- This syllabus benefited from readings identified by the Trust & Safety Research Consortium.
Tuesday, March 31 — Introduction to Trust and Safety
(There will be no quiz today)
- Cryst, E., Grossman, S., Hancock, J., Stamos, A. & Thiel, D. (2021). Introducing the Journal of Online Trust and Safety. Journal of Online Trust and Safety, 1(1). https://tsjournal.org/index.php/jots/article/view/8/2
- Trust and Safety Professionals Association list of abuse types https://www.tspa.org/curriculum/ts-fundamentals/policy/abuse-types/
Optional:
- Digital Trust & Safety Partnership Glossary of Terms https://dtspartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/DTSP_Trust-Safety-Glossary_CC.pdf
Thursday, April 2 — How Tech Companies Work: Designing for Trust, Safety, and Privacy
- Fighting the Forever War: Trust and Safety Engineering: Chapter 1 https://tsbook.org/ch1-introduction/
- Maxim, K., Parecki, J., & Cornett, C. (2022). How to Build a Trust and Safety Team In a Year. Journal of Online Trust and Safety, 1(4). https://tsjournal.org/index.php/jots/article/view/81/23
Optional:
- “The abuse uncertainty principle, and other lessons learned from measuring abuse on the internet” https://www.usenix.org/conference/enigma2020/presentation/freeman (30 minute video)
- “Your Speech, Their Rules: Meet the People Who Guard the Internet” https://onezero.medium.com/your-speech-their-rules-meet-the-people-who-guard-the-internet-ab58fe6b9231
Tuesday, April 7 — AI Safety Part I
TBD
Thursday, April 9 — Hate Speech, Incitement, Harassment
- Fighting the Forever War: Trust and Safety Engineering: Chapter 6 - Harassment
- Freedom of Expression: A comparative summary of United States and European Law, Transatlantic Working Group, May 3, 2019
- “Why We Terminated Daily Stormer” https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/
- Nigeria: Bills on hate speech and social media are dangerous attacks on freedom of expression https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2019/12/nigeria-bills-on-hate-speech-and-social-media-are-dangerous-attacks-on-freedom-of-expression/
- Simon van Zuylen-Wood, “MEN ARE SCUM”: Inside Facebook’s War on Hate Speech, Vanity Fair, February 26, 2019
- Lindy West, If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say, SAY IT IN ALL CAPS, This American Life, Jan 23, 2015. (Transcript or podcast, up to minute 26:30.)
- Online Harassment Glossary of Terms https://onlineharassmentfieldmanual.pen.org/defining-online-harassment-a-glossary-of-terms/
Optional:
- The State of Online Harassment https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2021/01/PI_2021.01.13_Online-Harassment_FINAL-1.pdf
- Skim: “National Commission for the Prohibition of Hate Speech bill” https://media.premiumtimesng.com/wp-content/files/2019/11/ational-Commission-of-Prohibition-of-Hate-Speeches-Bill-2019-1.pdf
- Harassment and Intimidation of Parliamentary Candidates in the United Kingdom https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1467-923X.12855
- The New Copyright Trolls https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:bt877dz8024/20211202-tz-twitter-takedown.pdf
Tuesday, April 14 — Intro to the US Legal System, Privacy, Surveillance and Law Enforcement
TBD New topic, readings to be assigned
Thursday, April 16 — Free Speech on the Internet and Trust and Safety
TBD
Tuesday, April 21 — Project Intro and Group Setup Day
TBD
Thursday, April 23 — Adolescent Well Being and Social Media
- Philippe Verduyn, Oscar Ybarra, Maxime Resibois, John Jonides, and Ethan Kross (2017). Do Social Network Sites Enhance or Undermine Subjective Well-Being? A Critical Review. Social Issues and Policy Review, 11, 274-302.
- Jeff Hancock, Sunny Xun Liu, Mufan Luo, and Hannah Mieczkowski. Psychological Well-Being and Social Media Use: A Meta-Analysis of Associations between Social Media Use and Depression, Anxiety, Loneliness, Eudaimonic, Hedonic and Social Well-Being. Stanford University.
Tuesday, April 28 — Suicide and Self-Harm
- Van Meter, Anna R., et al. “Online help-seeking prior to diagnosis: Can web-based resources reduce the duration of untreated mood disorders in young people?” Journal of Affective Disorders 252 (2019): 130-134. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6529208/pdf/nihms-1527830.pdf
- Nesi, J., Burke, T. A., et al. (2021). Social media use and self-injurious thoughts and behaviors: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review, 87, 102038. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272735821000817
- Facebook Safety Center: Suicide Prevention. https://www.facebook.com/safety/wellbeing/suicideprevention
If you’re affected by this topic, here are resources:
- CAPS at (650) 723-3785 and https://vaden.stanford.edu/get-immediate-help-now/immediate-mental-health-crisis-assistance
- Graduate Life Office (GLO) at (650) 736-7078 and https://glo.stanford.edu/glo-services/crisis-assistance
- Bridge Peer Counseling Center at (650) 723-3392
- Stanford Confidential Support Team 24/7 hotline: (650) 725-9955
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988 and https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
- The Office for Religious Life at (650) 723-1762
Thursday, April 30 — Terrorism and Violent Extremism
TBD
Tuesday, May 5 — Online Child Sexual Exploitation
Mapped from May 15, 2025 — Online Child Sexual Exploitation
- Fighting the Forever War: Trust and Safety Engineering — Chapter on child sexual exploitation: https://tsbook.org/ch7-cse/
- Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) statutes: 18 U.S.C. 2252, 18 U.S.C. 2258A, 18 U.S.C. 2258B
- Grossman, Pfefferkorn, Thiel, Shah, Stamos, DiResta, Perrino, Cryst, and Hancock. The Strengths and Weaknesses of the Online Child Safety Ecosystem, Stanford Internet Observatory, April 2024.
- Boburg, Verma, and Dehghanpoor, On Popular Online Platforms, Predatory Groups Coerce Children into Self-Harm, Washington Post, March 13, 2024.
- Pfefferkorn, Addressing Computer-Generated Child Sex Abuse Imagery, The Digital Social Contract: A Lawfare Paper Series, February 2024.
- Thiel, DiResta, and Stamps, Cross-Platform Dynamics of Self-Generated CSAM, Stanford Internet Observatory, June 2023.
- Hany Farid, An Overview of Perceptual Hashing, Journal of Online Trust and Safety
Optional:
- NCMEC Letter to LIBE Committee on anti-grooming tech
- Nicholas Kristof, The Children of Pornhub, The New York Times, Dec. 4, 2020.
- Quinta Jurecic, A Turning Point for Sextortion, The Atlantic, February 11, 2019
- A Marketplace of Girl Influencers Managed by Moms and Stalked by Men, The New York Times
- Keller and Dance, The Internet Is Overrun with Images of Child Sexual Abuse. What Went Wrong?, The New York Times, Sept. 29, 2019.
Thursday, May 7 — Working with Law Enforcement: Investigation Case Studies
- Facebook Helped the FBI Hack a Child Predator https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7gd9b/facebook-helped-fbi-hack-child-predator-buster-hernandez
- Logansport man gets almost 23 years in prison for child porn https://www.pharostribune.com/news/local_news/article_2df344b8-6454-573e-ab93-5ae5c7c7229f.html (if gated: archive.is mirror)
Optional:
- Criminal Complaint, US vs Buster Hernandez (Note: This complaint contains details of sextortion and disturbing communications. Reading is completely optional.)
- Ninth Circuit Opinion in US vs Rosenow
- A CS152 Student’s First-Hand Account of Sextortion
- Blunt and Wolf, Erased: The impact of FOSTA-SESTA, Anti-Trafficking Review
Tuesday, May 12 — AI Safety Part II
TBD
Thursday, May 14 — Fraud, Pig-Butchering, Scams
TBD
Tuesday, May 19 — Dating Apps and the Sharing Economy
- Fighting the Forever War: Trust and Safety Engineering: Chapter on safety in the sharing economy
- Interview with new head of trust and safety at Match Group
- Edelman, Luca, and Svirsky. “Racial Discrimination in the Sharing Economy: Evidence from a Field Experiment,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 9.2 (2017). (Read Intro pp. 1-3 and Discussion pp. 16-18.)
- Park, et al. “The Deterrent Effect of Ride-Sharing on Sexual Assault.” Information Systems Research, 2021. (Read pages 1-5)
- Andy Greenberg, Gay Dating Apps Promise Privacy, But Leak Your Exact Location, Wired, May 20, 2016.
Thursday, May 21 — Misinformation and Disinformation
TBD
Tuesday, May 26 — Content Moderation, Tooling and Resiliency
TBD
Thursday, May 28 — Emerging Issues and Career Advice
TBD
Tuesday, June 2 — Alumni Panel + Final Project Event
- Trust & Safety Professional Association. 2023. “Trust & Safety Curriculum: Key Functions and Roles.” https://www.tspa.org/curriculum/ts-curriculum/functions-roles/
- Explore the Trust & Safety Professional Association job board https://www.tspa.org/explore/job-board/ and the All Tech is Human job board https://alltechishuman.org/responsible-tech-job-board
- FAQ on careers in trust & safety https://www.tspa.org/careers/