Integrity Institute Releases 2024 Annual Report
Report celebrates the Institute’s impact and achievements in 2024
2024 was a year of transition and transformation not only for the Integrity Institute, but also for the tech industry and the Trust & Safety profession as a whole. Tech layoffs evolved from a temporary trend into what feels like the new status quo. A historic year of elections around the world tested platforms’ ability to manage risk, and while the most extreme risks were largely avoided, we’ve seen platforms pull back from the investments and activities that made such risk management possible. At the Integrity Institute, we recognized the need to grow from a “scrappy startup” into a durable nonprofit capable of advancing our vision of a social internet that helps people, societies, and democracies thrive long-term.
It is certainly easy and tempting to be pessimistic about a lot of these broader trends – and at moments, I have been. But, I am not pessimistic about where the integrity profession stands or where we are headed as a community. While we have certainly encountered challenges, integrity professionals have been hard at work to both mitigate the harm caused by such setbacks and lay the groundwork for a safer and more sustainable social internet.
Helping integrity workers share their expertise
There was a time when nearly all the world’s Trust & Safety expertise was locked in a handful of large platform companies, because when an integrity worker left one company, they would usually hop to another. We founded the Integrity Institute, in part, to address this siloing. While the series of tech layoffs and industry upheavals over the past several years has been incredibly challenging for our community, one silver lining has been the diffusion of talented integrity professionals across a diverse group of organizations throughout the world. Some are helping civil society and advocacy groups strengthen their platform expertise, others are helping regulatory bodies implement long-overdue policy improvements, and others are stepping into startup and consulting spaces, ensuring that every small, mid-sized, and large platform can have access to Trust & Safety expertise.
These have been great developments. At the Integrity Institute, we wanted to accelerate the spread of insights from our community throughout society. When the tech industry layoffs began, several of the Institute’s supporters wanted to find a way to help smart and uniquely experienced integrity workers stay in the field and share their knowledge with the public. In late 2023, we launched the Integrity Institute resident fellows program, which gave integrity professionals the ability to publish their insights and contribute directly to our mission as part of our core team through fellowships ranging from a few months to a full year.
In 2024, our amazing fellows, including Laure X Cast, Alexis Crews, Jenn Louie, Matt Motyl, and Nicholas Shen, published 20 reports and briefings – for the Integrity Institute, for other organizations in the responsible tech and pro-democracy spaces, and for their own platforms. I am incredibly proud of the work that they produced, which consolidated their decades of experience in critical areas – like child safety, election integrity, and the future of the profession – into materials for tech workers, policy makers, and the public.
Their work is now a major part of the emerging canon, or curriculum, on responsible platform design. As a result, it has never been easier for the public to hear directly from integrity workers. A proliferation of newsletters, podcasts, blogs, and public reports written by people who have first-hand experience building the social internet has made Trust & Safety expertise widely available. I only wish these insights were available 10 years ago when I started working in this field!
Shaping better policy
2024 was a pivotal year for tech policy, and our community played a key role in crafting one of the EU’s most significant tech regulations. As regulators were considering proposals for what would eventually become rules under the EU Digital Services Act and UK Online Safety Act, our community brought together 45 Trust & Safety experts to provide feedback on nine proposed pieces of regulation. This effort has helped strengthen the Integrity Institute community’s credibility with lawmakers and deepened our ties to other advocates, organizations, and academics that are similarly working to shape better regulation. Now, as governments transition from drafting laws to implementing them, our community continues to be among the most trusted sources of critical expertise.
Strengthening the Institute
Of course, 2024 was an important year for the Integrity Institute itself as we transitioned from a “scrappy startup” to a mature organization built for long-term success. Following Sahar’s departure, we were thrilled to welcome Karin Sabey as our Interim Executive Director. Karin’s proven ability to guide organizations through transitions has been invaluable. Additionally, our board grew from three members at the start of 2024 to five by year’s end – and now seven after onboarding two community members. These changes have allowed us to better support our community, become a more established workplace, and meet key opportunities for impact, all while preparing for continued impact in the years ahead.
Looking Ahead
Over the past year, there has been no shortage of changes and challenges thrown at both the integrity profession and the Integrity Institute itself. While some of the broader trends we’re observing are certainly discouraging, they are not entirely unfamiliar. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen social internet platforms pivot away from prioritizing safety. For users in the global majority, it is a common experience to observe a surge of interest in online safety, only for those gains to diminish once that attention fades.
But that’s why our work is more important than ever. In times like these, it's crucial to mitigate potential setbacks while consistently striving for progress. That’s exactly what we’re doing at the Integrity Institute and what we see within the Trust & Safety community at large. I’m extremely proud to be a member of the integrity professional community, and proud of the work that the Integrity Institute does every day to ensure that the social internet of the future is one that helps people, societies, and democracies thrive.
