Launching ROOST: a letter of gratitude

Friends, fresh from the Paris AI Action Summit, what a joy to share that Robust Open Online Safety Tools (ROOST) is finally launched! Backed by $28 million in initial funding and a historic coalition of industry, open source and civil society partners, ROOST hopefully represents a turning point in online safety.

ROOST is a new non-profit creating a shared commons of open source safety tooling for digital platforms and developers. At a time when AI is reshaping the online landscape, we work to ensure that organizations of all sizes can access essential safety infrastructure.

In a recent edition of Platformer, journalist Casey Newton called ROOST an “overdue idea” with the potential to “revolutionize trust and safety,” in the same way that open source tools made cybersecurity accessible and accelerated innovation in the 90s.

The vision for ROOST emerged from our diverse community of experts, whose in-depth research and safety experiences led us to a handful of guiding principles. For instance:

This launch would not have been possible without Eli Sugarman and Juliet Shen's many talents and entrepreneurial tenacity. Going forward, Eli will serve as Vice-Chair of the ROOST board, and Juliet will take on the role of ROOST's first Head of Product. Chris DiBona was instrumental as a technical advisor as we launched the organization, and will be co-chairing the ROOST Technical Advisory Committee going forward. And I'm especially grateful to Yoel Roth, Dave Willner, John Redgrave, and Kat Duffy whose belief in this project and crucial guidance helped make it real.

We will be scaling up the ROOST team to deliver on our ambitious roadmap; please don’t hesitate to reach out on hello@roost.tools if you’re interested in joining the coop.

A heartfelt merci to all our launch partners; starting with Columbia University’s Institute of Global Politics where we've been incubating this work (more about that here, and an immense thank you to my dear colleague Maria Ressa for her support throughout).

Read on to meet the ROOSTers across industry, philanthropy, the open source movement, research labs, and civil society.

ROOST Launch Reception (Feb. 9th 2025)

Each brings their own unique perspective and enthusiasm to this project, which I’m sharing excerpts of below.

First, founding partners, without whom this organization could not have hatched:

Tech companies are fundamental partners in this effort, but ROOST is not a corporate membership organization. It’s a non-profit, and we count among our founding partners a number of remarkable philanthropic leaders who are joining forces to address a market failure around safety technology:

Joining our founding partners is a remarkable set of launch partners. They are:

And last but certainly not least, un grand merci to President Macron and his team for making ROOST a key outcome of the AI Action Summit, and to the Summit Envoys Anne Bouverot, Martin Tisné (+ the fabulous duo of Alix Dunn and Claire-Marie Foulquier-Gazagnes), Guillaume Poupard, Henri Verdier and team for hosting us!

We’ve been overwhelmed by the enthusiasm from so many amazing indie developers, platform builders, and other small teams who have reached out since ROOST’s launch. The tide is rising – let’s get to work! ❣️