Stanford Trust and Safety (CS 152)

CS 152 (cross-listed as COMM 122 and INTLPOL 267) covers how consumer internet services and AI systems are abused to cause real harm: spam, fraud, account takeovers, terrorist use of social media, misinformation, child exploitation, harassment, bullying and self-harm, and how providers have responded. It is taught by a long-time practitioner (Alex Stamos in Spring 2026) with guest lecturers from companies. Students build a content moderation framework that works with the Discord API as a final project.

Stanford Online offers it to non-degree learners for three units of academic credit and a Stanford transcript, over 10 weeks at 9 to 15 hours a week. Applicants need a bachelor's degree with a 3.0 GPA and intermediate programming experience, preferably in Python.