Okay it’s probably obvious/I’m over-thinking it, but I really like that every word in the @roost.tools acronym carries weight.
Here’s what ROOST stands for: (🧵)
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R is for Robust
The field of Trust & Safety needs strong, resilient, and healthy tooling to be effective. Not just pet projects, but tools that are designed for and used in production at scale. Tools that hold up to the harms of today AND emerging threats and harms.
O is for Open
We know that open source is a must for critical online infrastructure and tooling; this should include Trust & Safety! Platforms should be able to integrate core safety tools into their existing systems, customize them to fit their needs, and contribute back to make the entire Internet safer. Open source development and community brings transparency to the development and deployment of online safety tools.
O is for Online
We’re focused on Trust & Safety for online spaces, like social platforms and anywhere humans interact on the Web. Modern technology keeps accelerating and bringing more of the world online. Combined with new and emerging harms enabled by AI technologies, it’s more important than ever to keep people safe online and improve the trust of our interactions.
S is for Safety
This is at the core! We’re focused on improving safety for everyone, but especially children and other vulnerable groups. We enable platforms to combat CSAM, NCII, TVEC, and other harmful content. We focus on these extremes because they’re the most pressing and harmful.
Important note: we’re not an “AI safety” org focused directly on AI; we see AI as a set of technologies that is already accelerating both harms and solutions, and we recognize it as just one part of the domain.
T is for Tools
We build tools! We’re not a service provider or a consultancy; we focus on building and maintaining the actual open source tools that are needed by platforms so that those platforms are empowered and in control of their own T&S story. We categorize tools into detection, investigation, review, and enforcement—and generally each piece of that toolkit should be able to be plugged into other tools or platforms individually, or used together as a comprehensive T&S solution.
(I know, I know, ROOST.tools is redundant; I'm sorry 😭 but sometimes we have to take what we can get when it comes to cool domains!)