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Tom Thorley

@tgthorley.bsky.social
1.1K followers 585 following 277 posts

Advocate, Speaker, Technologist

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Tom Thorley @tgthorley.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
And SpaceX will be launching their mission to Mars (planned by Grok) to Space Oddity.
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Tom Thorley @tgthorley.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
People really underestimate how much time, money and thought is needed to run a platform like this well and prevent it becoming a total wasteland of malware and crypto miners.
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Juliet Shen @julietshen.online · 09/06/2026
We've just cut the 1.0 release on Github, and Coop is here for all of your safety, moderation, and integrity needs. Everyone deserves safety and more options to choose from! Breakdown of features in the thread (and a loom recording too!)
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Tom Thorley @tgthorley.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
I’m not sure this is always bad. Should you use AI alone to do complex critical analysis that you can’t explain and later rely on… Bad… using AI to quickly itterate on ideas for analysis and build you repeatable ways to test ideas (that you will also validate and can explain)… probably ok
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Matthew Green @matthewdgreen.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
There’s something ominous about the speed with which the entire world has marched to require identification on platforms and, as I expected, begin the process of banning anonymous VPNs.
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ROOST @roost.tools · 28/04/2026
Spotlighting our TDC member Tom Thorley 👋 Tom (Senior Director of Safety & Integrity at GitHub) wrote a great piece on why shared architectural frameworks matter more than any single tool in Trust & Safety. tgthorley.com/blog/f/trust...
tgthorley.com
Trust & Safety Remotely: What Makes a Trust & Safety System?
Trust & Safety systems look different on the surface, but underneath, they are remarkably similar. Whether a platform is large or small, centralized or decentralized, social or transactional, the same...
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Tom Thorley @tgthorley.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Job Alert 🚨- Come work in my sister team @github.com managing our Threat Intel program: www.github.careers/careers-home...
github.careers
Staff Threat Intelligence Manager in United States | GitHub, Inc.
GitHub Careers Home is hiring a Staff Threat Intelligence Manager in United States. Review all of the job details and apply today!
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Tech Policy Press @techpolicypress.bsky.social · 05/04/2026
AI tools detect CSAM, grooming and self-harm, but nobody knows how well. Much of the AI industry has adopted 'model cards' for transparency—it's time the developers of child safety tools caught up, write Camille François, Margaret Mitchell, Yacine Jernite, Vinay Rao & J. Nathan Matias.
buff.ly
Why AI ‘Model Cards’ Are an Urgent Necessity for Child Safety
Children deserve to be protected as robustly as possible — and that requires tools we can actually understand, writes a team of experts.
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Tom Thorley @tgthorley.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
🎉🎉🎉
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Tom Thorley @tgthorley.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
This is normal and has been like this since the inception of CyberCom. Adm Rogers was Dual hatted, Gen Nakasone was, Gen Haugh was…
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Tom Thorley @tgthorley.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
This is a refrain I hear all the time from folks working on AI systems. That class of error is unlikely, that form of use is unlikely… At the scales these things are operating any ‘p’ may as well equal 1! … and you damn sure have to build that assumption into your system deciding life or death.
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Tom Thorley @tgthorley.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
I couldn’t agree more. In fact I fear the tipping point might have passed with semi-autonomous agentic AI systems being deployed now to adversarially test narratives at scale. We are beyond crisis point with the health of our information eco-system.
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Philip Fields @hax4libre.com · 13/03/2026
Yesterday, Mohammed Bailor Jalloh completed the attack he began planning in 2016. In doing so, his case joined a growing list of preventable counterterrorism failures. Learn more about how many of them intersected here: hax4libre.com/sisyphean-fa...
hax4libre.com
Sisyphean Failure at Old Dominion
In 2017, Jalloh's defense "presented reliable evidence to demonstrate that the chances of him re-offending in the future are very low."
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Tom Thorley @tgthorley.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
So what do we do - defenses need to evolved and to be layered dynamic and adaptive. We need to build the ethics and human-rights based approach into our security programs and technical expertise into safety.
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Tom Thorley @tgthorley.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
2/ High end capabilities evolving rapidly. Adaptive Malware and Semi-autonomous agents are probing networks already to find and exploit vulnerabilities at a pace no one is set up to defend from.
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Tom Thorley @tgthorley.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
Two very different threat types here to talk about! 1/ LLM backed applications making it easier than ever and more accessible to create harm … even creating the applications themselves is now accessible to a far wider pool of people with coding agents getting more and more effective
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Tom Thorley @tgthorley.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
I’ve worked in Trust & Safety long enough to know this: a platform’s culture is not what its brand deck says, it’s what its enforcement does. Every policy choice, shows customers who a company is. tgthorley.com/blog/f/trust...
tgthorley.com
Trust & Safety, Remotely: Culture at a Distance
I’ve worked in Trust & Safety long enough to know this: a platform’s culture is not what its brand deck says, it’s what its enforcement does. Every policy choice, every proportionality call, every “ye...
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Tom Thorley @tgthorley.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
Great so now let’s also have age verification and gating (which all evidence says makes kids less safe) for a specific set of types of content based on estimated location and estimated age… what could go wrong!
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hailey @hailey.at · 17/12/2025
First community labeler taking actions on atproto using @roost.tools’s Osprey. entire Ozone and Osprey stack running on a $50/m OVH machine, with up to seven days of full firehose backfill for investigating patterns and exploring the network.
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Tom Thorley @tgthorley.bsky.social · 07/02/2026
Love these suggestions - great blog post - Thank you. I’ve sent them to the relevant product teams to evaluate.
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Social Media Lab @socialmedialab.ca · 06/02/2026
"The case for letting kids stay on social media. America is banning more and more kids from social media. That's bad news for kids" www.businessinsider.com/kids-parenti...
businessinsider.com
What adults lose when kids are banned from social media
Banning kids on social media today will hurt tomorrow's internet.
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Tom Thorley @tgthorley.bsky.social · 02/02/2026
As we see images of violence and brutality in our streets, Moderators can burnout fast when it has impact to their communities and their lives. Making sure we are looking after them and their wellbeing is a responsibility we should not take lightly. tgthorley.com/blog/f/trust...
tgthorley.com
Trust & Safety, Remotely: Onboarding, Boundaries, and Wellbeing
High‑performing Remote Trust & Safety teams start solid foundations: clear governance, empowered experts who can operate independently, and a hiring pipeline that prioritizes aptitude over narrow prio...
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Pop Base @popbase.tv · 02/02/2026
Bad Bunny condemns ICE during his #GRAMMYs speech for Best Música Urbana Album: “Before I say thanks to god, I’m going to say, ICE out. We’re not savages, we’re not animals, we are humans and we are Americans.”
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John Pavlovitz @johnpavlovitz.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
Catherine O’Hara was a genius, a light, and a joy-maker. What a loss to the world.
media.tenor.com
a woman in a feathered dress says " im off to get ready "
ALT: a woman in a feathered dress says " im off to get ready "
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ROOST @roost.tools · 29/01/2026
Meet Osprey V1.0, a new open source online safety tool designed to help platforms investigate and address their priority threats at scale, without sacrificing data privacy or performance. roost.tools/blog/introdu...
roost.tools
Introducing Osprey V1.0: Open Source Infrastructure for Real-Time Abuse Mitigation
Robust Open Online Safety Tools or ROOST is a new non-profit entity designed to address the urgent need for accessible, high-quality safety tools in the rapidly evolving digital landscape.
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Tom Thorley @tgthorley.bsky.social · 25/01/2026
Definitions of terrorism are aways debated… but they generally contain: - Political Motivation - Violence - Intent to intimidate a population - Targetting civilians I wonder if there are any examples that come to mind…
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Cynthia Miller-Idriss @milleridriss.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
Every moment now, every day, more & more Americans realize they can no longer trust anything the federal government says. The blatant propaganda and lies about a legal observer they shot in cold blood will bring a new swell. To those of you who were not here before: Welcome. We need you.
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evacide @evacide.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
Do not store your Bitlocker encryption keys on Microsoft's servers if your threat model includes governments or law enforcement. As this article points out, this is the result of a design choice Microsoft made. It didn't have to be this way. www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...
forbes.com
Microsoft Gave FBI BitLocker Encryption Keys, Exposing Privacy Flaw
The tech giant said providing encryption keys was a standard response to a court order. But companies like Apple and Meta set up their systems so such a privacy violation isn’t possible.
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Bjørn Ihler @bjornih.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
As someone who at times watch execution videos professionally; don't watch execution videos if you can avoid it.
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Dr Yannick Veilleux-Lepage @yveilleuxlepage.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
🧵“How do seemingly ordinary people become agents of state murder?” This is one of the guiding questions I ask students in my graduate class on genocide/state violence. With recent events, it is a question many Americans are asking. I do not have a definitive answer, but here is a reading list: 1/
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Tom Thorley @tgthorley.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
What is happening on the streets of the US with “Law Enforcement” agents killing people is disgusting, horrific and outrageous. I don’t have a take. I don’t have words. I don’t have advice for how to fight back. I am just grieving.
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John Horgan @johnhorgan.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
Many things one can say about this outrage, but as a terrorism researcher, I want to say to current and future students that this is one reason you should never rely on government databases to tell you who or what is a 'terrorist', domestic or otherwise.
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Tom Thorley @tgthorley.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
For remote teams working in T&S hiring is one of the most important (and expensive things we do, good decisions pay massive dividends, mistakes cause massive headaches (for both employer and employee!) - and I've made plenty of both! tgthorley.com/blog/f/trust...
tgthorley.com
Trust & Safety, Remotely: Hire for Aptitude, Not Experience
One key challenge of building remote Trust & Safety teams is that very often, especially for smaller companies, individuals are working alone, independently and the immediate supervision that they get...
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Tom Thorley @tgthorley.bsky.social · 16/01/2026
🚨#Job ! Come and work for my Safety Engineering team at @github.com building agentic safety workflows and advanced malware detection infrastructure www.github.careers/careers-home...
github.careers
Software Engineer II, Safety in United States | GitHub, Inc.
GitHub Careers Home is hiring a Software Engineer II, Safety in United States. Review all of the job details and apply today!
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Tom Thorley @tgthorley.bsky.social · 10/01/2026
It’s literally just direct copy and paste from an AI model… these are classic Gen AI artifacts.
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Conflict Dispatch @conflictdispatch.bsky.social · 09/01/2026
🇮🇷 NEW: Real-time monitoring shows Iran is experiencing a nationwide internet blackout, following digital censorship linked to escalating protests in Tehran and other cities.
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Tom Thorley @tgthorley.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
WTF … this is basically the equivalent of we arent playing in the UN… I think the UN should look for new accommodation before Trump renames the UN HQ in New York…
whitehouse.gov
Withdrawing the United States from International Organizations, Conventions, and Treaties that Are Contrary to the Interests of the United States
MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United
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Tom Thorley @tgthorley.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
I've been thinking about #remoteworking and how to build teams and culture while working remotely, especially in #Trust&Safety - The proximity of in-person work environments is very often just making it easier for us to navigate ambiguity. tgthorley.com/blog/f/trust...
tgthorley.com
Trust & Safety, Remotely: Proximity, a Cure or a Coverup?
What two decades in digital safety, and five years fully remote, taught me about building remote teams to deliver trust and safety.
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Philip Fields @hax4libre.com · 29/12/2025
Check out our most recent episode to find some inspiration going into 2026.
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Tom Thorley @tgthorley.bsky.social · 27/12/2025
I’m going to say the @xcorail.bsky.social is probably the person best placed to have coherent thoughts about this
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Tom Thorley @tgthorley.bsky.social · 25/12/2025
And so many others fought back against the worst aspects of the human race
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Tom Thorley @tgthorley.bsky.social · 25/12/2025
@xcorail.bsky.social and team publish some truly ground breaking research
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Tom Thorley @tgthorley.bsky.social · 25/12/2025
@miasato.bsky.social wrote some amazing pieces
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Tom Thorley @tgthorley.bsky.social · 25/12/2025
@jonmagic.bsky.social stepped up to a new role and drove innovation
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Tom Thorley @tgthorley.bsky.social · 25/12/2025
#votemama got so many amazing moms elected to congress
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Tom Thorley @tgthorley.bsky.social · 25/12/2025
@vortexegg.com prioritized his health
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Tom Thorley @tgthorley.bsky.social · 25/12/2025
Despite the chaos, so may people I know have done things that I’m so proud of them for.
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Tom Thorley @tgthorley.bsky.social · 25/12/2025
#Merry #Christmas everyone. 2025 has been hard… almost from day one to day 365 for some many reasons. But I still feel optimistic about the future. I still feel that we can turn around the insanity and get back to treating people humanly, with dignity and respect. 2026 needs to be about community.
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