Many websites have a robots.txt file which instructs (often unsuccessfully) bots and web crawlers on proper crawling etiquette. We have a robots.txt file along with several less common .txt files. I previously wrote about adding humans.txt, carbon.txt, and ads.txt (despite our lack of ads) to The New Leaf Journal. Today I continue our .txt file adding journey by introducing our trust.txt file.
What is trust.txt?
The trust.txt specification is developed and maintained by JournalList.
JournalList introduces trust.txt as follows on its homepage:
In short, trust.txt is a system of helping the digital robots of the world know about groups that have formed to express some trust in each other. It applies to anyone who wants to use it, but it’s especially designed for news publishers.
That “in short” is arguably “too short,” so let us turn to Version 1.5 of the trust.txt file specification (the current version as of the publication date of the instant article) to learn more.
Firstly, the specification notes the obvious inspirations for trust.txt:
The concept of a trust.txt file borrows heavily from two previous very successful efforts improving the overall experience of the internet: robots.txt and ads.txt. With both, website publishers are able to create a small and very manageable file that they have full control over that helps platforms and advertisers improve the overall ecosystem … So it will be with trust.txt.
(You can view our robots.txt file and read about how I implemented ads.txt on our ad-free website.)
For whatever it is worth, I think the trust.txt specification document struggles to explain concisely what trust.txt is and for. Version 1.5 of the trust.txt specification makes things a bit clearer where it lists what can be included in the trust.txt file (see pages 10-11 of V1.5):
- Organizations the website is a member of
- Organizations the website belongs to
- External domains controlled by the website
- External domains which control the website
- Website’s social media accounts
- Website’s customers
- Website’s disclosure statement (e.g., link to an ethics policy)
- Contact information for the website
- Whether the website allows AI/LLM data training
That is a very brief summary of the various trust.txt fields, I encourage anyone who is interested in implementing trust.txt to consult the official documentation.
Creating and Implementing Our trust.txt
Not every trust.txt field is applicable to every website. The trust.txt specification provides example files on pages 14-17 (referring to V1.5). I followed the examples and created a trust.txt file for The New Leaf Journal, which you can now find at https://thenewleafjournal.com/trust.txt. I may update it over time, but you can see the initial live version below:
# The New Leaf Journal trust.txt file by Admin N.A. Ferrell # N.A. Ferrell: https://thenewleafjournal.com/author/naferrell/ control=https://social.emucafe.org control=https://buttondown.com/newsletterleafjournal/ control=https://www.feedio.co/@newleafjournal datatrainingallowed=no social=https://www.facebook.com/TheNewLeafJournal/ social=https://x.com/newleafjournal contact=https://thenewleafjournal.com/contact/
I added an extra “commented” line with my profile link and then filled in fields for control, datatrainingallowed, social, and contact. I left out other fields since they are not applicable to my website. I also created a trust.txt file for The Emu Café Social (see https://social.emucafe.org/trust.txt).
I branched off from the specification recommendations in one respect. On pages 7-8 of V1.5, it is recommended that websites implementing trust.txt should add “in addition to a path to the [trust.txt] file residing at the root domain, an additional path or redirect should be included to the file that has the format: foo.com/.well-known/trust.txt”
I placed trust.txt at our root domain so it is accessible at https://thenewleafjournal.com/trust.txt, just like our other “.txt” files. I have not set up an additional path or redirect from /.well-known although I may do so in the future.
Additional WordPress Option
There is a plugin-based trust.txt option available for WordPress called Trust.txt Manager (developed by rtCamp). (Also see PluginTests page.) I did not test it since I have full file system access and took the time to study the trust.txt examples so I could make one without a template, but the plugin looks like it should provide an additional user-friendly method for creating a trust.txt file on WordPress.
Conclusion
I originally learned about trust.txt from our server logs, but I put implementing one on the back-burner. Despite the fact that bots have in the past searched for a trust.txt file on The New Leaf Journal, I doubt that our now having one will move the needle for us, not least because JournalList maintains a list of member sites with trust.txt files, and we are not a member (and I have no plans to change that, not least because membership is not free). But on the off-chance anyone is looking for our trust.txt file, it is now readily available and I will try to remember to keep it up to date in the event that changes are warranted. The most important thing of course is that we are now one step closer to collecting all of the website “.txt” files (regardless of “need”).
