The secret trust & safety listening tool you’re probably not using: Reddit

Your company might have a top-tier content moderation strategy. You might run quarterly sentiment surveys, publish transparency reports, and track every flag and escalation with precision. But there’s a good chance you’re missing one of the most revealing sources of trust and safety intel out there: Reddit.

“Reddit is the best place to get customer feedback,” says Deniz Alkan, Head of Reviews at Trustpilot. “Just search your company’s name – you’ll see hundreds of threads. People who’ve had issues. People praising your team. Or just general chatter. It gives you a really good sense of sentiment.”

Reddit is unfiltered, unsponsored, and – for better or worse – brutally honest. And for trust and safety professionals trying to understand how users really feel about platform decisions, content enforcement, or safety policies, it’s a goldmine.

Let’s talk about why.

Reddit is where the real reviews live

We all know that what users say to your face (or in a customer satisfaction survey) is only part of the story. The rest of it lives in subreddits.

These aren’t just product complaints. They’re conversations about whether your platform takes harassment seriously. Threads dissecting a banned account or a deleted review. Users offering workarounds for your worst UX blind spots. Ex-employees weighing in on your moderation backlog.

“You’ll get feedback you didn’t even know you needed,” Alkan says. “Like: there’s a bug in one of your contact forms, and people are just screaming into a black hole.”

This isn’t a PR crisis – yet. But it’s a trust and safety issue in the making. And it’s the kind of early warning signal that Reddit surfaces constantly – if you’re listening.

No one is tagging your brand on Reddit

Reddit is public, but it doesn’t behave like other social media. There are no @mentions, no quote tweets, no alerts when you’re being discussed. That means your users are probably talking about you – they just don’t expect you to be reading.

And while that might sound scary, it’s also what makes Reddit so useful for trust and safety teams. The feedback is raw, unfiltered, and often more actionable than the stuff you get through official channels.

Looking at your subreddit – or adjacent ones in your space – gives you a rare window into how users interpret your safety policies, what makes users feel protected vs censored, where your enforcement decisions seem inconsistent and what kinds of harm people are experiencing (and not reporting).

Not just listening – learning

Of course, Reddit isn’t always the final word. Posts can be biased, brigaded, or taken out of context. But that’s true of any feedback channel.

The value isn’t in taking every thread as gospel. It’s in spotting patterns. Comparing what’s being said externally with what your internal data tells you. Asking, ‘Does this complaint have legs? Could this become a trust issue at scale?’

“Even if we don’t change our decision, just hopping on a call and explaining it can make a huge difference,” says Alkan. “Sometimes, users come away from those calls with a better perception of us – because they feel heard.”

Reddit gives you the chance to hear people before they ever reach out. Before they churn. Before the sentiment turns into something you have to explain to the board.

How to start using Reddit for trust and safety intelligence

You don’t need to spin up a Reddit war room or start moderating threads in real-time. Start small:

• Search your brand name regularly on Reddit (with and without spaces)
• Look at r/[yourcompany] — or if that doesn’t exist, try r/[yourindustry] or r/[yourcompetitors]
• Track comments over time. Are you seeing recurring pain points? Misinformation about your policies?
• Consider setting up Google Alerts with site:reddit.com for key terms (your brand, product names, etc.)
• Flag useful threads internally and ask: is this something we should address?

And yes, your marketing and CX teams should be doing this too. But trust and safety teams are uniquely positioned to interpret what this kind of chatter means for user trust.

Bonus tip: other hidden listening posts

Reddit isn’t the only place users speak freely. Depending on your sector and audience, you might also want to keep an eye on:

• Trustpilot (obviously): especially if your team handles review moderation
• Glassdoor: for insider feedback on how trust and safety is resourced and valued
• Discord servers or Telegram groups: common for gaming, crypto, or high-risk spaces
• Twitter/X: still valuable for reactions to major enforcement or policy announcements

Wherever your users go to vent, share, or crowdsource workarounds – that’s where your trust and safety strategy should be listening.

If you’re not listening, someone else is

Your most honest feedback won’t come through your feedback form. It’ll come through forums, threads, and memes. The companies that survive future trust and safety challenges won’t be the ones with the most polished policies, they’ll be the ones who understand what users expect before those expectations become headlines.

And sometimes, that starts with a quiet Reddit search and an open mind.