The Most Important Trust & Safety Issues that Every Marketplace Should be Aware of

Of all the considerations that a marketplace should be aware of, trust and safety is among the most important. This is largely because it’s a moving target, and marketplace and sharing economy founders must keep up with developing trends and legislation in order to continue to grow and scale, successfully and safely.

The problem, of course, is that we can’t all be experts in trust and safety, and if you’re busy trying to develop your marketplace business, it can be easy to fall behind or let important trust and safety developments slip through the cracks.

Don’t worry though, because we’ve asked a few of our speakers and sponsors from this year’s Marketplace Risk Management Conference to give their top tips for staying ahead of the game when it comes to the tricky world of trust and safety. Follow their advice, and you can’t go far wrong!

“What is the most important trust and safety issue that every marketplace should be aware of?”

	Kevin Lee, VP Trust and Safety, Sift "Trust is earned and drops and lost in buckets. Having a marketplace that all users feel safe on is vitally important to creating and maintaining a sustainable business. That’s why limiting fake accounts and account takeovers on the platform is so important."
	Kathryn Kosmides, CEO, Garbo "For so long, marketplaces have focused on ensuring user safety by providing background checking services. However, service provider safety is equally important."
	Trisha Kothari, CEO & Co-Founder, Unit21 "I’d say they should invest in trust & safety early. This is 2022, not 2005. Even if your platform is new, users have come to expect a positive experience which means developing and enforcing terms of service, and depending on your policy monitoring behavior and content. You may need to take action like suspending spammy/scammy users, bots, phishing attempts, or protect users from fraud by keeping transactions on the platform itself. Too often we see platforms delay investing in trust & safety until there is a significant incident – and at that point, a lot of damage has been done."
	Jeffrey Chugg, Global Head, Risk + Response, TaskUs "Human trafficking remains a huge problem in many places in the world, and few marketplaces have robust operations to safeguard against it. I hope to see the industry devote more resources and attention to this problem in the near future."
	Sara Mauskopf, CEO & Founder, Winnie "Even if you are not legally responsible for certain actions that happen on or as a result of your marketplace, that does not relinquish your obligation to keep your users safe and deliver a high-quality service."