(TR09) (T&S) Building a Common Language for Abuse Reporting: The Case for Global Standardization in Trust & Safety

As online abuse evolves at machine speed, the trust and safety industry faces a challenge: fragmented approaches to categorizing and reporting abuse that slow cross-platform response and hinder automated detection. This session examines two complementary layers of standardization essential for effective abuse response such as INHOPE's Universal Classification Schema, which establishes a shared taxonomy for naming and categorizing harms across jurisdictions, and XARFv4, which provides a standardized, machine-readable format for structuring and exchanging abuse reports across organizational boundaries. Panelists will explore how active industry participation in standards development directly enhances detection capabilities and enables faster, and more effective threat mitigation. The session will feature perspectives from Abusix, INHOPE, and Law Enforcement on practical implementation challenges, lessons learned from early adopters, and how standardized frameworks enable organizations to operate more effectively across different regulatory environments without prescribing specific compliance interpretations.