Trust and Safety: Moderation in Marketplaces

How we create environments where people can confidently connect

A structured framework helps ensure a safe, respectful, and positive experience for everyone who participates in a marketplace.

These guidelines define how both sides of the marketplace are expected to show up. They set clear standards for interaction, participation, and organisation. By outlining responsibilities, best practices, and enforcement approaches, the framework maintains trust, reduces misconduct, and supports a community where people can build real and meaningful relationships.

Why Trust and Safety Cannot Be Optional

Marketplaces are online platforms that connect members and groups together, which means risks for safety and moderation can happen online on the platform, but also in real life as members come together. Below we outline a proposed strategy, philosophy and executional tactics to ensure marketplace communities can thrive.

As a marketplace platform, the role is to connect parties together using technology. It empowers group leaders to create and host group activities, and attract members using the platform.

Marketplaces usually do not run the individual sides of the marketplace itself, nor are they responsible for the running or management of each of the supply and demand nodes.

Cultivating a Thriving and Positive Community

Marketplaces usually do make decisions on the types of members they allow on the platform, and the content that gets created. The goal is to cultivate a thriving community that enables local members to come together to meet and be active. This means putting together a set of clear guidelines that enable these interactions, and providing leaders a code of conduct on how they can run successful groups.

Person-Based Profiles Over Aliases

As marketplace platforms are often based on in-person social interactions, we want the people represented on the platform as they would be if you were to meet them in real life. Users should be heavily prompted and encouraged to create an account with their real name, and the expectation should be that members use their real name in their profile or a name that they would use in real life.

We expect that users upload clear face photos of themselves. We also encourage users to create a bio and upload more information on their profile page. All of this information ensures that interactions feel real and human on the marketplace, as well as introducing a level of transparency and accountability.

Research Note: Research on online anonymity shows mixed effects on user behaviour. While anonymous users may be more likely to engage in negative behaviours like trolling, the relationship is not straightforward. Real name policies can increase accountability but may also create privacy and safety concerns.

Further reading:

• Study on Anonymity and Online Trolling
• The Real Name Fallacy
• Forcing Real Names Online Increases Discrimination

Transparency About Role, Beliefs, and Values

It is important to be transparent about the role of the marketplace with all stakeholders. Clear terms and conditions, member and leader guidelines should be published and shared with members before they interact with the marketplace. This sets the expectations of how people should interact, and what is not accepted on the platform.

Key Deliverables

Marketplace Values

Describing the spirit in which the marketplace operates, establishing a guiding philosophy that aligns with the mission, community, and trust principles of the platform. This could include core principles such as safety, inclusivity, transparency, and user empowerment.

Member Guidelines

How members are expected to behave to access the marketplace. These guidelines outline respectful interactions, fair participation, and community behaviour.

Core User Guidelines

Often one side of the marketplace carries greater responsibility. Usually this is the more engaged or revenue earning side. These participants should provide accurate information, communicate promptly, and ensure event safety.

Penalties and Actions Guidelines

Ensuring fair and consistent treatment of community members. Admin members should have clear frameworks for warnings, suspensions, content moderation, and escalation procedures.

Solving for Large Scale Usage

As marketplaces grow to thousands of interactions, moderation systems must scale efficiently without building disproportionately large teams.

• In app prompting of guidelines
• User flagging and reporting of content
• User flagging and reporting of users
• Leader member management tools
• Content filters and AI detection
• Email and phone verification
• Moderation of new inventory
• ID verification for suppliers
• API rate limiting
• IP detection and banning
• Admin tooling for reporting, fraud detection, and content management

Risk Matrix

Making Marketplace Fulfilment Safer as a Service

Marketplaces could introduce a protection program that provides event liability or accident coverage for members. This builds trust, reduces disintermediation, and increases marketplace lock in by ensuring users feel secure engaging through the platform.

By embedding protections into the ecosystem, marketplaces can strengthen brand loyalty, drive engagement, and differentiate themselves from other ways of engaging and commerce.

Learning From Established Platforms

• Meta Commerce Policies
• Meta Community Standards
• Strava Community Standards
• Etsy Community Guidelines
• LinkedIn Professional Community Policies
• eBay Community Guidelines
• Stack Overflow Code of Conduct
• GitHub Community Guidelines
• Kickstarter Rules
• Airtasker Community Guidelines
• Airbnb Community Standards

References and Further Reading

• How Fraudsters Misuse and Abuse Marketplaces (Sift)
• Facebook Name Policy Guidelines