During TrustCon, trust and safety professionals from around the world came together to share insights on the latest trends in the field of online trust and safety.
The Tech Coalition were proud to sponsor, for the fifth consecutive year, the Child safety track at TrustCon 2026. Our members contributed across the agenda while our team led and joined sessions focused on practical approaches to strengthening child safety.
Alongside TrustCon, we hosted our third annual TC Connect. This one-day, industry-only event brought Tech Coalition members and invited companies together for candid exchange focused specifically on tackling online child sexual exploitation and abuse (OCSEA).
Child safety conversations at TrustCon
The Child safety track created dedicated space within TrustCon’s broader program for participants to examine how companies and their partners can strengthen systems, respond to evolving threats and coordinate across the child safety ecosystem.
Tech Coalition staff led five sessions and brought together perspectives from member companies and partners across the ecosystem:
- From first steps to stronger systems: How early-stage companies built child safety in practice
Speakers from Stability AI, Substack, and VRChat shared how companies can establish strong operational foundations, prioritize the capabilities that address their most significant risks and translate policies into practice as they grow. - Turning insights into action: Tackling AI-generated OCSEA
Representatives from Google, NCMEC, the Wisconsin Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force and Safe Online discussed how generative AI is reshaping the online child safety landscape across sectors and what actions are needed to strengthen OCSEA response. - When abuse becomes a business: Disrupting CSAM and sextortion monetization
Yahoo, Block and Patreon representatives explored how teams can connect behavioral, financial, content and cross-platform signals, and how tech companies, financial institutions and other partners can work together to disrupt financially motivated abuse. - It takes a stack: Coordinating infrastructure to combat OCSEA
Speakers from Amazon Web Services, Public Interest Registry and Verisign discussed the different roles and control points across the internet infrastructure ecosystem, and how clearer requests, shared approaches and coordination between providers can support faster and more effective responses. - Transparency reporting and OCSEA prevalence in the AI era
Drawing on the Trust framework and an upcoming resource on industry transparency and OCSEA prevalence, a Tech Coalition presentation examined what transparency reports can and cannot reveal about prevalence, where figures are commonly misinterpreted, and where companies and stakeholders need clearer guidance.
Across these sessions, speakers shared how teams are implementing safeguards, where operational gaps remain and how companies and partners can coordinate more effectively when no single organization holds all the information or control points needed to address a threat.
TC Connect: a space for deeper industry collaboration
TC Connect built on these wider conversations by giving industry participants a closed-door space to examine operational challenges in greater depth.
The event brought together 200 experts working across trust and safety, engineering, product, policy, legal, investigations and other functions. Representing different products, business models and stages of maturity, participants came together to connect with peers and exchange practical approaches to help strengthen the industry’s response to OCSEA.
Through working sessions and peer discussions, participants discussed topics surrounding layered detection, investigative workflows, information sharing and cross-functional implementation.
A dedicated Lantern session considered how companies can strengthen collaboration in responding to OCSEA. Participants explored opportunities to better coordinate and how industry partnerships can help improve investigations.
Another session explored how companies, NCMEC and law enforcement, contribute to the CyberTipline process. Through a practical discussion of operational practices, reporting policies and stakeholder roles, attendees focused on what can make reports more actionable downstream.
Hearing from regulators across jurisdictions
TC Connect also gave members an opportunity to hear directly from a guest panel of regulators from Singapore, the UK and the EU. Panelists outlined their priorities, compared approaches to online child safety and discussed how regulators and industry can maintain constructive dialogue as technologies, risks and expectations evolve.
The conversation highlighted how regular exchange can support a stronger shared understanding of the challenges companies face across an increasingly complex global landscape.
Evolving threats and technology
Participants also examined how generative AI is changing the child safety threat landscape and how organizations across the AI ecosystem can contribute to the response.
Discussions covered emerging abuse patterns and practical considerations for detecting, investigating, reporting and responding to AI-enabled OCSEA. Participants considered the roles of model developers, deployers, platforms and infrastructure providers, as well as the points where stronger coordination can reduce gaps between them.
Another session examined the workflows and operational challenges facing child safety investigators and intelligence analysts. Speakers discussed how AI tools may help with prioritizing cases, reducing repetitive tasks and managing increasing volumes of information, alongside implementation considerations and safeguards.
Together, these sessions delved into the respective roles of organizations across the AI ecosystem, potential points of connection, and the practical and responsible use of AI in child safety as technologies and risks continue to evolve.
Turning relationships into year-round progress
People drive effective collaboration. They need trusted relationships that allow them to share practices, challenge assumptions and work through difficult operational questions.
Through Tech Coalition knowledge sharing groups, Lantern and other collaborative initiatives, members will continue turning those connections into shared solutions, stronger practices and coordinated action.
The momentum from San Francisco will carry into the year ahead as companies continue to test new approaches, strengthen systems and work together to turn shared challenges into coordinated action against OCSEA.
