The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) has announced the launch of the Robust Online Safety Tooling (ROOST) initiative at the AI Action Summit in Paris. This initiative aims to address the challenges faced by Trust & Safety teams in building and accessing tools necessary for maintaining online safety. ROOST seeks to create a repository of open-source, interoperable tools that can help platforms of all sizes manage harmful content effectively.
According to CDT, "Trust & Safety teams need robust tools to keep users and communities safe online, but building these tools is often costly, time-consuming, and requires technical expertise that not all platforms have." This issue is particularly prevalent among smaller or non-profit platforms with decentralized infrastructures.
ROOST is designed to leverage the expertise of larger online entities and existing open-source projects. It aims to provide essential trust and safety tools that are accessible to all online services, regardless of their size or business model. The initiative focuses on creating automated content moderation toolkits that include hash-matching tools for detecting illegal content, text classifiers for applying content policies at scale, and signal-sharing programs for sharing information about bad actors across platforms.
Currently, many services encounter significant barriers when trying to implement reliable Trust & Safety infrastructure due to proprietary, closed-source, or expensive solutions. Open-source initiatives like ROOST aim to bridge this gap by making critical safety tools available for everyone. Moreover, they enhance transparency in companies' trust and safety practices.
However, CDT emphasizes that collaboration remains essential in Trust & Safety work. "Making tooling open sourced and widely available makes the work of Trust & Safety easier," they note, while also acknowledging that automated tools can misinterpret nuances such as sarcasm or context found online. Thus, discussions and collaborations regarding these technologies are crucial.
Engagement from multiple stakeholders is expected to strengthen this effort by examining best practices for deploying these tools. Collaboration with civil society and subject matter experts will ensure that content detection tools are transparent, rights-respecting, and well-understood.
CDT concludes by expressing support for ROOST's mission: "We welcome this dedicated effort to expand the availability and openness of trust & safety tooling— and look forward to working with ROOST and others in the ecosystem."