T&S #3: People-driven Enforcement of UGVC Spam

Published: 2026 May 20
Disclaimer: The following is an educational analysis based on the author's interpretation of publicly available data using the frameworks, methodologies and/or approaches written about in this post. It constitutes the author's opinion and is not a definitive assertion of fact.

Why Write This Blogpost?

Previously, this blogpost focused on the spam on 3 platforms that best deliver delightful experiences in the UGVC space: Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Following that, a second blogpost focused on rationale as to why not all spam is caught. As a follow-up to the first two blogposts, this third blogpost presents a person-driven UGVC spam enforcement framework to assess if an account, video or comment is spam1.

What is the Enforcement Framework’s Purpose?

The enforcement framework’s purpose is to guide a spam analyst to make 4 enforcement-related decisions:

  1. Policy coverage
  2. Programmatic enforcement coverage
  3. People enforcement action
  4. Recommendations for improvement

When is the Enforcement Framework Applied?

The enforcement framework is applied when a spam analyst works on a case for evaluation in one of two categories:

  1. Proactively found cases
  2. Reactively received cases

Proactively found cases may be defined as potentially spam accounts, videos or comments which were detected before a report was received from a non-working-group individual. In this case, a working group refers to the folks with the responsibility of minimizing UGVC spam. Folks in this group may include, and is not limited to, people in enforcement, policy, product, engineering, analytics and legal.

For an example of a proactively found case, an enforcement analyst might have stumbled upon this video from a post in a social connections platform. After seeing the video, the analyst may investigate the YouTube channel account, and then discover that there are other similar videos. Moving forward, let the video be referred to as “Video 1”, and the YouTube channel be referred to as “Account 1”.

Reactively received cases may be defined as potentially spam accounts, videos or comments which were detected and reported by a non-working-group individual.

For an example of a reactively found case, a civilian like me might have stumbled upon “Video 1”, and then look further into “Account 1” because of the nature of the video, and the nature of the account information available to users who are on the video’s webpage URL.

What is the outline of the Enforcement Framework?

  1. Classify the applicable policies.
    1. If there is at least one applicable possible, then proceed to step 2.
    2. Otherwise, proceed to step 4.
  2. Classify the applicable, existing programmatic enforcement methods to enforce those policies.
    1. If there is at least one applicable, existing method, then investigate the reasons for enforcement actions not working as intended. After investigation, proceed to step 3.
    2. If there are zero applicable, existing methods, then proceed to step 3.
  3. Classify applicable people-driven enforcement methods such as restriction, blocking and/or removal tools.
    1. If there is at least one applicable, existing method, then use the tool to restrict/block/remove the account/video/comment.
    2. If there are zero applicable, existing methods, then proceed to step 4.
  4. Create a summary of areas of improvement for policy, programmatic enforcement methods, people-driven enforcement methods and monitoring methods such that T&S metrics are positively impacted.
Disclosures:
  1. I worked in the Trust & Safety ecosystem for 7 years as an analyst working by enforcing a range of product policies and community guidelines.
  2. I interview for open roles and positions, occasionally, with some of the companies written about in my blogposts and/or their parent companies.
  3. I own equity in some of the companies written about in my blogposts and/or their parent companies.

Footnotes:
  1. Also, this third blogpost presents an artifact for any potential employers to assess my expertise and capabilities in the Trust & Safety space.