Aaron Rodericks speaking with animated hand gestures on a Dublin street

From 3M to 45M

Designing trust and safety for hypergrowth

Guardrails, policies, and 24/7 operations that keep AI products and social platforms safe, credible, and governable.

Scale is the ultimate stress test

Most safety frameworks work in small settings; very few survive a million-user-per-day growth surge. I help platforms and AI products move beyond reactive moderation to build the infrastructure most users never see — policy guardrails, automated systems, and global operations — that keeps products governable at scale.

I know what breaks, what bends, and what actually scales. Whether you’re navigating the EU DSA or still chasing product-market fit, I’ve spent two decades doing this across government, Big Tech, and hypergrowth startups.

01

Hypergrowth Operations

Building 24/7 moderation teams and infrastructure from scratch while navigating 250,000+ reports a day. Engagements: surge planning, vendor selection, KPI design, T&S leadership recruiting.

02

AI Guardrails & Policy

Safety frameworks for LLMs and generative systems — preventing high-harm content before it reaches the user. Engagements: AI moderation architecture, proactive detection design, human-in-the-loop frameworks.

03

Regulation for Challengers

Navigating the EU DSA, UK Online Safety Act, and Australia’s regime — without incumbent budgets. Engagements: compliance architecture, age-assurance design, transparency reporting, regulator engagement.

Sessions are tailored for conferences, leadership teams, and policy audiences — from mainstage keynotes to closed-door briefings.

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Selected engagements

Recent keynotes, panels, and briefings. I also sit on the advisory board of the UK Trust & Safety Summit — the largest T&S conference outside TrustCon.

  • May 2026SWGfL & StopNCII.org — Panel — “Protecting Adults from Intimate Abuse Across the World” (AI-generated NCII)
  • May 2026Digital Trust & Safety Partnership, Dublin — Panel on proportionate, rights-based online-safety regulation
  • Mar 2026Trust & Safety Summit 2026, London — Speaker — scaling moderation and self-moderation
  • Mar 2026Digital Platform Regulation & Compliance Summit, London — Speaker — platform compliance across the DSA, OSA, DMA & AI Act
  • Jan 2026Dublin Social Media Conference — Keynote: “Building Trust in a Broken Internet”
  • Dec 2025PlatGovNet 2025 — Keynote conversation
  • Aug 2025Congressional Staffers Briefing — US government briefing on Bluesky
  • Jul 2025TrustCon 2025 (Roost) — “Open Source Safety Stack” panel
  • Jul 2025TrustCon 2025 (Tremau) — “Decentralized but Not Deregulated” panel
  • Jun 2025BetaKit Most Ambitious Launch — Keynote interview
  • Jun 2025Deloitte Digital Compliance Forum — “Trust and Safety: Your Regulatory Super Power”
  • Mar 2025Trust & Safety Summit (IQPC) — Keynote + “Hyperscaling T&S” panel
  • Feb 2025Cornell Tech — Guest lecture
  • Sept 2024Stanford T&S Research Conference — Decentralized T&S panel

Podcasts & media

Recent conversations, interviews, and features on trust & safety at scale.

  • How Bluesky is redefining trust & safety

    Trust Issues · WebPurify · Feb 2026

  • In conversation with the Reddit Mod Council

    Akaash Maharaj · Nov 2025

  • Track, Measure, Report (webinar)

    Tremau · Oct 2025

  • What keeps Bluesky’s Head of Trust & Safety up at night?

    BetaKit · Jun 2025

  • Scaling safety during rapid growth

    Safe Space · John Starr (Thorn) · May 2025

  • Bluesky at the crossroads: trust, tech, and building tomorrow’s social web

    Winging It · Blue Owl Group · Feb 2025

  • Trust & safety at Bluesky — T&S Talks interview

    IQPC R&D · Jan 2025

  • Bluesky’s approach to trust & safety

    Impossible Tradeoffs · Katie Harbath · Dec 2024

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