The Tech Policy Press Podcast Through to Thriving: Centering Young People with Vaishnavi J
Sep 7, 2025
Vaishnavi J, founder of Vyanams Strategies and a former safety leader at Meta, Twitter, and Google, joins the discussion on centering youth in tech policy. The conversation navigates the complex balance between child safety and privacy in digital spaces. They scrutinize current age verification methods and advocate for informed policymaking that incorporates young voices. Vaishnavi emphasizes the need to understand and respect children’s developmental needs, ensuring technology supports their safety and creativity.
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From Disney Imagineer To Child Safety Lead
- Vaishnavi began her career as a Disney Imagineer, which taught her how to design safe, magical experiences for children.
- She then led child safety roles at Google, Twitter, and Instagram before founding Vyanams Strategies to scale that expertise.
Expertise Asymmetry Drives Poor Policy Choices
- Vaishnavi highlights an expertise asymmetry: technical trust-and-safety knowledge sits mainly inside companies, not regulators or civil society.
- That gap causes simplistic fixes like breaking encryption instead of upstream, nuanced interventions.
Age Assurance Is Nuanced, Not Binary
- Age assurance debates show how partial views produce extremes: regulators fear access loss while platforms point to hacks and call the tech useless.
- Vaishnavi argues data shows age assurance can work broadly and should be used with a range of remediations instead of binary blocking.