Insider Q&A: Trust and safety exec talks about AI and content moderation

Alex Popken was a trust and safety executive at Twitter, leaving in 2023 after a decade at the social media company focusing on content moderation. Now, she serves as the vice president of trust and safety at WebPurify, a content moderation service provider that works with a broad range of businesses. Any consumer-facing company — from retailers to dating apps to news sites — need someone to weed out unwanted content, whether that’s hate speech, harassment or anything illegal. Increasingly, companies are using artificial intelligence to help with such efforts, but as Popken notes, humans are still essential to the process.