Birds of a Feather: Safety & Wellbeing in Gaming
Welcome to the Safety & Wellbeing in Gaming Birds of a Feather at TrustCon 2025!
Join Discord and the Thriving in Games Group (TIGG) for a dynamic happy hour focused on fostering safer, more positive gaming and esports communities. Connect with industry leaders, trust and safety professionals, and gaming experts as we explore innovative approaches to amplifying what makes gaming great while addressing emerging challenges.
Share insights on everything from AI-powered moderation and community-driven safety initiatives to celebrating positive player behavior and building thriving esports ecosystems. Whether you're creating inclusive multiplayer experiences or scaling trust systems, collaborate with peers who understand gaming culture's unique opportunities and complexities.
Space is limited, so register early to secure your spot! Only gaming and gaming-adjacent T&S employees allowed.
Join Discord at TrustCon!
Please join one of our 12 sessions at this year's TrustCon.
Monday, July 21st
Navigating the Trust & Safety Ecosystem: Cross-Departmental Impacts and Insights
1:30 PM-2:20 PT
A Trust & Safety is an interdisciplinary industry, requiring joint efforts from multiple departments and people with different expertise. To do this work well, it is important for T&S professionals to not only hone their own domain-specific skills, but also to establish understanding of what role they play in the T&S ecosystem. This panel intentionally includes T&S professionals from a variety of backgrounds (e.g., Policy, Engineering, UX, Operations, Wellness) across a range of industries (e.g., Social Media, Gaming, GenAI, Business Process Outsourcing). After this panel, the audience will be able to (1) articulate how their functional area might interact with others, including intended or unintended upstream and downstream impact; and (2) identify common goals and use language that resonates with other departments to increase effectiveness and impact. This panel may be especially beneficial for companies new to T&S and are looking to set up their T&S ecosystem.
Scarcity Mindset in Trust and Safety: Breaking Free from the Cycle
2:50 PM-3:15 PM
Trust and Safety teams face constant pressure to do more with less, creating conditions ripe for what economists and social psychologists call "scarcity mindset". Originally developed as a framework to understand cycles of poverty, this presentation applies scarcity thinking to trust and safety work, exploring how the both the realityandeven the perception of limited resources shape team behavior and decision-making. This presentation will introduce key scarcity behaviors, such as "tunneling", "bargaining", and "borrowing", and explain how they manifest in trust and safety teams. While engaging in these behaviors may feel like they will alleviate resource constraints, they actually reduce cognitive capacity and perpetuate the cycle of scarcity thinking, creating what's known as the "scarcity trap". This presentation concludes with practical strategies for recognizing these patterns and breaking free from this mindset, ultimately fostering greater creativity, resilience, and growth in safety teams.
Boys, Gaming, and Online Safety: Rethinking Risk and Protection Strategies
2:50 PM-3:40 PM
Child safety in online games is often designed as a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach, but research shows that gender influences how risks are experienced and mitigated. Boys, in particular, face unique challenges in online spaces—pressure to engage in aggressive or toxic behaviour to fit in, stigma around expressing vulnerability or seeking help, and increased exposure to risky or exploitative communities. These challenges are often overlooked, leading to gaps in safety strategies.
This panel, led by ECPAT International in collaboration with GamerSafer, Equimundo, and Discord, equips Trust & Safety teams with gender-sensitive tools to improve child protection. Drawing from industry consultations, research, and case studies, this session equips Trust & Safety professionals with gender-sensitive safety strategies to design effective, inclusive child safety solutions in online gaming. Participants will learn how to:
· Implement tailored intervention techniques that improve safety for all child players, account for how boys experience risks, and seek help online.
· Identify gendered reporting gaps and adjust moderation strategies.
· Balance business goals with scalable and effective child safety protections.
· By the end of this panel, participants will have a framework for integrating gender-sensitive child protection measures into Trust & Safety processes, leading to safer, more inclusive gaming experiences.
Next Level Safety: New Frontiers in Gaming Policy
4:10 PM-5:00 PM
The safety and policy challenges in the gaming ecosystem are often unique in the broader Trust and Safety space, and the platforms doing this work are both interconnected and (at times) at odds with each other. In addition to the standard policy areas - Discrimination, Bullying and Harassment, etc. - we also deal with cheating and exploits, business disputes between game developer studios, first and third party game design and curation, and myriad other gaming-specific issues. Our policy enforcement is made even more complicated by the nature of gaming itself - is saying “I’m going to kill you!!” a credible threat if you're playing a First Person Shooter game? How can we incorporate that context into policy and enforcement procedures? In this talk, a diverse set of gaming safety and policy experts will talk about how we tackle these challenges individually, what we see as the next steps in tool, tech, and policy development, and how we can work together as a Trust and Safety community to keep our gamers safe.
Building for real teens: Designing spaces for protection rather than exclusion.
4:10 PM-5:00 PM
This session examines the risky gap between platform safety policies and actual adolescent online behaviors, particularly regarding social and sexual interactions. The panel brings together trust and safety experts, including survivor advocacy perspectives, to explore how digital platforms can better align their safety approaches with developmental realities of teen users.
Adolescent risk-taking is a normal part of development, but online environments can elevate the stakes of these behaviors in concerning ways. Platform policies often rely on restriction and exclusion, yet teens regularly find ways around these barriers—potentially exposing themselves to greater risks. Through discussion of specific experiences - such as sexting, grooming, and emerging risks related to content monetization - the panel will explore innovative policy and feature designs that move beyond simple prohibition to create more effective protection strategies. Attendees will learn about early intervention approaches, policy adaptations that acknowledge developmental behaviors, and product design strategies that can help disrupt risky situations before they escalate.
Tuesday, July 22nd
Building a Safe & Thriving Developer Ecosystem
1:00 PM-2:30 PM
Developer platforms powered by APIs enable a diverse range of third-party integrations—from apps and activities to chatbots and games—that often function as “platforms within platforms.” This nested ecosystem raises important questions about the balance of responsibility between the overarching platform and its developers in keeping users safe. How can platforms help developers build trust with a shared user base, while enforcing policies that guard against malicious actors? In this 90-minute roundtable, we will explore how businesses can empower developers to innovate responsibly, ensuring safety for users and organizations alike.
Open Source Software for T&S: Unlocking Collaboration and Innovation
2:50 PM-3:40 PM
Open-source software is transforming trust and safety (T&S) operations, enabling greater transparency, interoperability, and accessibility. However, challenges remain in adoption, sustainability, and industry collaboration. This panel will bring together experts across engineering, trust and safety operations, policy, and legal fields to discuss how open-source tools can enhance T&S efforts, what incentivizes organizations to transition proprietary technology into open source software, and how organizations can effectively integrate them into their workflows.
Panelists will explore real-world use cases, funding models, and the policy landscape shaping open-source development for T&S. The discussion will also address how open-source initiatives, such as Roost.tools, can drive innovation while mitigating risks related to security, compliance, and long-term maintenance.
Trauma-Informed Leadership in Trust & Safety: Why Knowing Your Story Makes You a Better Leader
2:50 PM-3:40 PM
Trust & Safety work, by its nature, involves regular exposure to trauma and harm. Every person, by virtue of living in this world, has experienced or witnessed trauma and harm—whether it is 'big T' Trauma, which meets clinical definitions, or 'small t' trauma. To effectively lead a resilient workforce composed of individuals who have experienced harm in the past and are exposed to harm as part of their job, it is critical for leaders to adopt a trauma-informed approach. Being mindful of the impact of trauma on individuals is important to prevent re-traumatization and promote healing. Trauma-informed leadership also fosters positive changes in company culture, thereby empowering and elevating employees. This panel aims to demystify trauma-informed leadership by providing concrete definitions of this approach, personal stories of adopting this approach, and tangible ways that the audience can implement this approach and create positive changes in their own org.
Building Fair and Scalable Enforcement Systems: Beyond Three Strikes
3:00 PM-5:00 PM
In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, trust and safety teams face a critical challenge: designing enforcement systems that effectively balance scalability with nuanced policy application. While many platforms default to simplified three-strikes approaches, such systems often fall short in addressing the complex realities of online user behavior. This hands-on workshop empowers participants to reimagine enforcement system design through a guided simulation experience.
Drawing insights from Discord's Warning System implementation, participants will collaborate to develop theoretical enforcement frameworks and graduated enforcement paths (or “ladders”) that support diverse content policies and incorporate enforcement actions beyond the standard content removals and account suspensions. Through guided exercises, attendees will create foundational principles of an enforcement system, craft ladders that speak to those principles, and then adapt their ladders to real-world case studies and constraints to bridge the philosophical to the practical.
This workshop is designed for policy specialists or product managers seeking to enhance existing enforcement systems or build new ones from the ground up. Individuals from other roles who wish to deepen their understanding of enforcement systems are also welcome. Participants will leave with new ideas and a “playbook” of design considerations for creating enforcement systems that achieve both scalability and user fairness.
Wednesday, July 23rd
Plenary Session - Day 3
" Moments of Impact: Navigating Defining Decisions in Child Safety" will feature Sean Litton, Josh Parecki, Courtney Gregoire, and Jud Hoffman.
“Sandboxing a Regulatory Sandbox for Child Online Safety: Join Us!”
1:00 PM-2:30 PM - Join TIGG for an exciting workshop!
In more than 50 countries there are regulatory sandboxes in operation in fields such as fintech, healthcare and AI. This workshop's organizers are developing the first regulatory sandbox for child online safety. We propose introducing it at TrustCon to introduce and simulate the concept – in effect, sandbox the sandbox –so we can draw in wisdom from the Trust and Safety field.
What’s different about this sandbox is that…
It innovates regulatory processes as well as product and service design
It is as global as the services children and young people use
It is rights-based, with youth as foundational a participant group as regulators, businesses and experts
Its youth participants are not advisers but full participants with equally valued expertise
It has evidence-based methodology that affords representative, non-tokenized youth participation
We argue that this sandbox – offering regulatory reprieve for regulated services to engage not only with regulators but also with youth and other experts – can improve child online safety by affording the kind of collective understanding never possible through public awareness-raising, lobbying and legislative hearings. The sandbox’s aim is informed, workable regulation. We invite you to join us in a 90-min. workshop designed to sandbox this tool for advancing child online safety while upholding children’s rights.
Facilitated by Dr Ioanna Noula, Anne Collier, and Matthew Soeth.
Policy & Profit: Ensuring Safety in Digital Ads
2:50 PM-3:40 PM
This panel brings together Ads Policy experts to explore the intersection of brand safety, user safety, and business growth. Digital advertising is often an integral part of platform revenue and revenue policy teams must balance the pressure to monetize while safe guarding users. Our discussion will examine the complexities of developing and enforcing ads policies that prevent harmful content, misinformation, and exploitation, while also ensuring that legitimate businesses can thrive in a brand safe environment. Panelists will share insights into emerging trends in advertising harms, measuring the ROI of trust & safety, and implementing product mitigations that help safeguard users. Through expert perspectives from leading digital platforms, this session will provide attendees with a deeper understanding of how Trust & Safety teams are shaping the future of digital advertising.