Trust and safety · 2026-03-18 · 7 min
Trust and safety that does not chew through people
You cannot hold a 12-minute harm SLA on a queue with 80% attrition. Wellness is a production system.
Platforms still buy moderation as if it were a cheap, endless labor pool. It is not. High-harm review is skilled, regulated, and psychologically costly. If you do not design for that, you will miss SLAs and you will miss harm.
Our production system is unglamorous: queue rotation, caps on high-harm hours, on-site clinicians at scale sites, the right to step off, and a separate appeals pod so the same reviewer is not marking their own homework.
Models belong on the obvious inventory. Humans belong on the edge. Gold sets are how you know the difference. If a vendor cannot show you reviewer tenure and wellness metrics next to the SLA, they are not showing you the real cost.