Transparency Is More Than a Blog Post with Cassie Coccaro
Cassie Coccaro, head of communications at Thorn, joins Matt to unpack why "we take safety seriously" isn't transparency, how to spot performative safety PR, and how to tell trust and safety stories without making practitioners the target. The best safety work is invisible: the harm that never happened, the content you never saw. Cassie and Matt dig into how platforms can prove a negative, what a genuinely good transparency report looks like, and why suspiciously timed safety announcements are a red flag. Plus, lessons from TikTok's earliest transparency reports and why brand safety might be the business case that finally gets trust and safety the resources it deserves.
About Cassie:
Cassie Coccaro is the Head of Communciations at Thorn, a nonprofit organization that transforms the way children are protected from sexual abuse and exploitation in the digital age. Her job is to make complicated, sensitive trust and safety work understandable, without sensationalizing it. She spends her days working with journalists, shaping how child safety gets talked about in the press, and thinking about what it takes to communicate responsibly in a space where the stakes are incredibly high. She also co-hosts Safer by Thorn’s Safe Space podcast, a show for and about trust and safety professionals.
Safer, Built by Thorn (CSAM detection)
Find Cassie on Linkedin
Listen to the Safe Space podcast:
Music by Robert Taylor Jr.