Streaming platforms pivot to third-party vendors for critical Trust and Safety

The transition to third-party Trust and Safety vendors shifts the technical and legal burden of content moderation away from platforms, but it introduces a 'black box' risk for industry accountability. As streaming video services integrate more social and interactive features, they become increasingly reliant on external automated systems to manage complex editorial decisions. This fragmentation of responsibility could lead to inconsistent enforcement and higher legal exposure under emerging regulations like the EU's Digital Services Act. Watch for the rise of standardized 'Moderation-as-a-Service' (MaaS) contracts that include human rights impact assessments as a core feature.

The 'vendorization' trend is accelerating as major tech firms slash internal safety personnel. In early 2024, Snap conducted mass layoffs affecting its trust and safety and content curation teams, per Business Insider. Similarly, ByteDance's TikTok began cutting hundreds of human moderation roles in 2024, specifically in Europe and Asia, to transition toward more heavy-duty AI-driven systems, as reported by The Guardian in August. These internal cuts coincide with a growing market for automated content moderation services, which Research and Markets projected would grow at a compound annual growth rate of 20.1% to reach $1.48 billion by 2026.

Simultaneously, regulatory pressure is forcing platforms to find scalable solutions for transparency and risk mitigation. The European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which became fully applicable in February 2024, mandates that platforms implement robust content moderation and transparency mechanisms or face fines of up to 6% of global revenue. This legal environment has spurred a wave of consolidation and growth among vendors; for instance, IntouchCX acquired WebPurify in January 2024 to bolster its automated moderation capabilities, per Research and Markets.

Industry groups are now responding to the lack of oversight cited by the CDT. In July 2025, during the annual TrustCon event, practitioners highlighted that as work shifts to Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) firms, the focus has moved toward systematization and AI wellness tools for human moderators, according to Tech Policy Press. However, critics argue that the reliance on these external systems—often used by hundreds of client organizations simultaneously—creates a systemic vulnerability where a single algorithmic failure can impact the safety and speech rights of millions across multiple platforms.