Governments around the world are passing sweeping legislation in the name of online safety, aimed at regulating digital platforms, with important implications for cultural production and online speech. The practical effect of these laws will depend on the compliance norms that emerge in the teams at platform companies often known as “trust and safety” and the market for compliance vendors that is already developing to support this work. In this presentation, I will share findings on my research on the markets for compliance services that regulations of digital technology produce and how these service providers alter the law in practice: briefly discussing examples in copyright and algorithm bias laws and then focusing primarily on my dissertation research on trust and safety vendors.

Lucas Wright is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Communication at Cornell University. He researches the practice of online safety and security professionals, with a focus on how it is shaped by the law, discourses of harm and security, and markets for solutions, as well as the effect this practice has on individual and collective rights.