Building trust in a suspicious network: findings from a one-year digital ethnography of five online sperm donation platforms

Online sperm donation (OSD) connects prospective parents (‘recipients’) with donors via digital platforms. While prior research has focused on motivations and experiences, little attention has been given to the norms, identities, and relational dynamics shaping interactions on OSD platforms. Drawing on a year-long digital ethnography of five OSD platforms, this paper reports on a thematic analysis of multi-modal data that show that mistrust was pervasive. Users engaged in ongoing surveillance and scrutiny to ‘stay safe’ and protect others and future donor-conceived children. Norms about who was ‘safe’ or a ‘good’ donor or recipient influenced self-presentation and selection. Experienced donors were often constructed as knowledgeable, legitimising their authority to define what was ‘normal’. Platform architectures, including user-driven safety features and gamification, shaped interactions, sometimes paradoxically contributing to harm rather than preventing it. These findings are situated within broader literature on digital sharing economies and connection platforms.