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
- Slattery et al., The AI Risk Repository: A Comprehensive Meta-Review, Database, and Taxonomy of Risks From Artificial Intelligence, 2024. Read pages 4–10 (taxonomy overview and domain descriptions). Also explore the interactive database at airisk.mit.edu.
- EU Digital Strategy, Regulatory Framework for AI — read the risk pyramid summary page.
- OpenAI, Preparedness Framework v2, 2025. Read through page 13.
Optional:
- Hendrycks, Mazeika & Woodside, An Overview of Catastrophic AI Risks, 2023.
- Weidinger et al., Taxonomy of Risks Posed by Language Models, FAccT ‘22.
- Shelby et al., Sociotechnical Harms of Algorithmic Systems, AIES ‘23.
- Anthropic, Responsible Scaling Policy, 2024.
- Google DeepMind, Frontier Safety Framework, 2024.
- Bengio et al., International Scientific Report on the Safety of Advanced AI, 2024.
Thursday, April 9 — Hate Speech, Incitement, Harassment
- Fighting the Forever War: Trust and Safety Engineering: Chapter 6 - Harassment
- “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
- Wiretap Act: 18 U.S.C. §§ 2510, 2518
- Stored Communications Act: 18 U.S.C. §§ 2702, 2703
- Dell Cameron, “US Lawmakers Move to Kill the FBI’s Warrantless Wiretap Access,” Wired, Mar. 12, 2026
- Riana Pfefferkorn, “Eight (or so) Questions to Ask about the ChatGPT Warrant,” Stanford CIS Blog, Oct. 24, 2025
Optional:
- You might find it helpful to watch some of the short videos in Prof. Jonathan Mayer’s Surveillance Law course on YouTube. Note that this course is from Fall 2014, so it is outdated in some important ways; there are multiple major legal developments that have happened since then.
- Orin S. Kerr, How to Read a Legal Opinion: A Guide for New Law Students, 11 Green Bag 51 (2007) — read pp. 51–61; you can skip part IV
Thursday, April 16 — Free Speech on the Internet and Trust and Safety
- Freedom of Expression: A comparative summary of United States and European Law, Transatlantic Working Group, May 3, 2019
- Re-read the “American Laws” section of Fighting the Forever War: Trust and Safety Engineering: Chapter 1
- Twenty-Six Words Created the Internet. What Will It Take to Save It?, ProPublica
Tuesday, April 21 — Project Intro and Group Setup Day
You will get pre-read credit for submitting your team preference form, which will be posted on Thursday and due Friday at midnight. Make sure to submit your GitHub username so we can get you into our GitHub project. If you don’t have a GitHub account create a free one here (don’t pay for anything, we’ve taken care of that).
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 — 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.
- Mahmoud Salem, How Do You Find an Illegal Image Without Looking at It? — an interactive PhotoDNA explainer.
- Hany Farid, An Overview of Perceptual Hashing, Journal of Online Trust and Safety
Optional:
- Thorn, Trends in Financial Sextortion, 2025.
- Internet Watch Foundation, What Has Changed in the AI CSAM Landscape, 2025.
- NCMEC Letter to LIBE Committee on anti-grooming tech
- NCMEC, Spike in Online Crimes Against Children: A Wake-Up Call, 2025.
- Thorn / All Tech Is Human, Safety by Design for Generative AI: Preventing Child Sexual Abuse, 2024.
- 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, 2024.
- Keller and Dance, The Internet Is Overrun with Images of Child Sexual Abuse. What Went Wrong?, The New York Times, Sept. 29, 2019.
Thursday, April 30 — 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
Tuesday, May 5 — Terrorism and Violent Extremism
TBD
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/