Case Studies
Case studies are real-life examples of trust and safety issues. Each case study demonstrates how difficult it is to make a trust and safety decision and discusses the associated trade-offs, prompting readers to think about the questions raised by the case and consider both intended and unintended outcomes.
TSF publishes case studies in an effort to form an ongoing repository of trust and safety examples providing deeper insight for the broader public. These case studies may also be helpful as a training tool as they examine past examples that resonate with current challenges.
Case studies are written by trust and safety professionals, researchers, and the Copia Institute.
Featured Case Studies
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AI-Generated Disinformation Campaigns Surrounding COVID-19 in the DRC
Summary: Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the Democratic Republic of Congo faced a surge in AI-driven disinformation campaigns across social media. These sophisticated misinformation endeavors aimed to undermine confidence in COVID-19 […]
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The Challenges of Moderating Livestreamed Violent Extremist Content
Summary: In 2022, an 18-year-old man committed a racist attack at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, murdering ten people and injuring three others. The perpetrator of the attack […]
All Case Studies
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Twitter’s self-deleting tweets feature creates new moderation problems (2020)
Summary: In its 15 years as a micro-blogging service, Twitter has given users more characters per tweet, reaction GIFs, multiple UI options, and the occasional random resorting of their timelines. […]
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Coca Cola realizes custom bottle labels involve moderation issues (2021)
Summary: Content moderation questions can come from all sorts of unexpected places — including custom soda bottle labels. Over the years, Coca Cola has experimented with a variety of different […]
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Bing search results erases images of ‘Tank Man’ on anniversary of Tiananmen Square crackdown (2021)
Summary: On the 32nd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests, internet users noticed Microsoft’s Bing search engine was producing some interesting results. Or, rather, it wasn’t producing expected search results for […]
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Twitter removes “verified” badge in response to policy violations (2017)
Summary: Many social networks have enabled users to use a pseudonym as their identity on that network. Since users could use whatever name they wanted, they could pretend to be […]
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Spam “Hacks” in Among Us (2020)
Summary: From August to October of 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic had no end in sight and plenty of people were still stuck at home, on lockdown, unable to gather […]
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YouTube deals with disturbing content disguised as videos for kids (2017)
Summary: YouTube offers an endless stream of videos that cater to the preferences of users, no matter their age and has become a go-to content provider for kids and their […]
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BoingBoing Begins Disemvoweling The Trolls (2007)
Summary: One of the challenges for any website that allows for user content — no matter the size of the website — is how to deal with trollish behavior. There […]
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Twitter temporarily locks account of Indian Technology Minister (2021)
Summary: In late June 2021, Twitter briefly suspended the account of Ravi Shankar Prasad, the Indian government’s Technology Minister because his content violated copyright. Although Prasad was given a copy […]
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Spotify comes under fire for hosting Joe Rogan’s podcast (2020)
Summary: In May of 2020 Joe Rogan, whose podcast was considered one of the most popular in the world, signed an exclusive deal to host the podcast on Spotify. Rogan, who has […]
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Twitter experiences problems moderating audio tweets (2020)
Summary: Since its debut in 2007, Twitter hasn’t changed much about its formula, except for expanding its character limit from 140 to 280 in 2007 and adding useful features such […]
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Dealing with “Cheap Fake” modified political videos (2020)
Summary: For years now there have been concerns raised about the possibility of “deep fake” videos impacting an election. Deep fakes are videos that have been digitally altered, often to insert […]
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Facebook removes image of two men kissing (2011)
Summary: In the spring of 2011, two men were on a first date at the John Snow pub in London. They were apparently thrown out of the pub after another patron at […]