John Starr

Aaron Rodericks: Scaling Safety During Rapid Growth Podcast Episode · Safe Space - Talking Trust and Safety · 05/28/2025 · 42m

Our first Safe Space episode of the year is live!

Check out my conversation with Bluesky’s Head of T&S, @aaron.bsky.team

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s...

While other industry podcasts dive specifically into policy issues and the latest T&S hot topics, this podcast is most interested in exploring the humanity of the field, showcasing the people who do this work with passion, creativity, principle, and care.

More insight into season two coming soon!

Safe Space is back!

As you can see, we’re putting the finishing touches on the home studio.

We kick off our season next week by sitting down with @aaron.bsky.team, Head of Trust & Safety @bsky.app!

We’ll touch on his T&S journey, lessons learned along the way, and much more.

How Thorn’s Safer helps Bluesky scale CSAM detection As Bluesky welcomes 7M+ new users, Thorn's Safer technology helps protect its growing community from CSAM. Learn how safety by design enables responsible platform growth.

Excited to share this piece authored by Thorn’s @jstarr.bsky.social and @bsky.app’s @aaron.bsky.team about how Bluesky is committed to safety as it grows, incl thru its use of @saferbythorn.bsky.social! 🙌 Read it here and share thoughts ⬇️ #trustandsafety #contentmoderation #childsafety

This conversation was a lot of fun and truly had a little bit of everything!

@bsky.app’s journey to scale T&S as they grow
The scale and impact of @saferbythorn.bsky.social
@caseynewton.bsky.social
Bluesky’s Head of T&S, @aaron.bsky.team
And, an alleged 9,000 year old dragon

Safer is now on Bluesky! Celebrating with a HUGE thanks to @caseynewton.bsky.social for highlighting the critical work happening behind the scenes at @bsky.app to keep its platform safer for everyone. We're proud to play a role in tackling child sexual abuse material (CSAM) as this community grows.

At least one item on his wishlist has been granted: Bluesky has decided to quadruple the size of its contract workforce of content moderators from 25 to 100, the company told Platformer. The move comes in response to Bluesky’s rapid growth since this month’s US presidential election, which triggered a fresh exodus of users away from Elon Musk’s X and over the weekend took the platform past 22 million total users.

Some news: amid rapid growth and some over-enforcement of its community guidelines, Bluesky trust and safety chief @aaron.bsky.team tells me the company will quadruple the size of its content moderation team www.platformer.news/bluesky-grow...

👋

YouTube video by Thorn Safe Space: Talking Trust & Safety with Yoel Roth

Good interview with Yoel by John Starr on the challenges and opportunities within trust and safety youtu.be/v14ySyJhbwo

Specifically, “Work faster and work publicly...If you care about shaping what technology looks like, if you care about influencing policy discussions, if you want to make the products you use better, think faster and think scrappier. Publish your work now. Publish it open access.”

Aside from learning that Yoel wanted to be a Paleontologist 🦖 when he was growing up, I found his advice for academics looking to get into T&S to be among my favorite portions of our conversation.

Safe Space: Talking Trust & Safety with Yoel Roth Transcript John Starr 0:00 I am super excited to be joined by my friend and the current VP of Trust and Safety at Match Group. Yoel Roth, we are here for TrustCon.

👋 Bluesky! I sat down with @yoyoel.com at TrustCon to talk T&S. Specifically, his journey, what he has learned along the way and thoughts on the future.

Perhaps you’ll find it interesting.

www.linkedin.com/pulse/safe-s...

👋SF

Been a minute.