INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
In 2017, Facebook ever so slightly adjusted its mission statement
'Open' means open to hate speech, child abuse, violence, sex and the kind of illegal acts Facebook would rather have nothing to do with
And yet the company now finds itself having to clean up such messes every hour of every day.Or rather, it employs outsiders to do said dirty
In The Cleaners, a documentary by Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck, contractors from the Philippines candidly discuss the steady stream of
sex, violence and hate speech they have to sift through every day.Former Facebook moderator Chris Gray and filmmaker Moritz Riesewieck at
a direct quote from the training materials, such as they are
And yet, so far, the problem just continues to grow
There are now over two billion people on the platform and around 15,000 moderators
different to what it was a decade ago, when the Like button was the latest innovation, and Facebook Live was still years away."The worst of
Mozilla fellow and expert in countering online disinformation
That inevitably takes a sledgehammer to nuance, before you even get onto the cultural differences inevitable between countries separated by
an eight-hour time zone gap.Facebook moderators have to monitor vast amounts of content from around the world, and may be required to assess
conversations in a language they don't speak(Image credit: Shutterstock)Facebook moderators aren't only located in the Philippines
There are offices around the world, and it was in Dublin where Chris Gray found himself after a spell teaching in Asia
Over a nine-month spell at the company (in Ireland, most workers are on 11-month contracts, he says but most leave early), Gray was dealing
with 500-600 bits of content a night, usually in the 6pm to 2am slot
non-stop gore, child exploitation and sex
In the Irish office, Gray had 30 seconds to pass verdict on content whether it was a one-line insult or a 30-minute video
Despite this, the target for the office was a nigh-on impossible 98% accuracy.SuperheroesFinding people to talk about their moderation
experience is tough, as Block and Riesewieck found when looking for subjects
documentary: many of their interview subjects took real pride in the role, seeing it as less of a job and more of a duty.Filipino Facebook
moderators told filmmakers Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck they felt it was their ethical duty to clean up the internet(Image credit:
This, in turn, might make people feel reluctant to walk away, seeing it as their ethical duty rather than just a job.But there are limits to
In some cases, people are having to protect speech they think should be banned, or ban speech they think should be protected, something that
Ivens sees as an obvious problem for wellbeing
iterative changes, gradually responding to crises as they emerge, and trying to make the subjective more objective.Keeping content online
the nipple' campaign? In short, Facebook guidelines originally said that any photograph with breasts in should be banned as pornographic,
which meant the internet was deprived of proud mothers breastfeeding on the platform
Facebook gradually shifted its rules and accepted that context matters
conspiracy theories, if something becomes a public health epidemic, then it has a duty to step up."Some platforms say certain content might
inertia in moderation guidelines lets internet trolls thrive
So in that instance, it feels reasonable not to take the post down, even if a curmudgeonly homophobe complains about it.Morality isn't a
being judged for their objective responses to subjective posts
responsibility doesn't lie entirely with an individual(Image credit: Shutterstock)That, Tsao believes, is in part because the decision
from the University of Lincoln, has his own perspectives when we reach out to him
must be seen to have done everything reasonable to reduce risks to staff.Nobody should be doing this kind of work alone
be doing this kind of work alone
able to relax after work, maybe being unduly preoccupied with certain images
And to be particularly watchful of whether sleep is adversely affected: with an accumulation of poor sleep, everything else feels much
Given people want to make the internet a better place, perhaps Facebook could tap into that sense of meaning?Even Gray remembers feeling
positive, recalling a text message he sent in the early days
I don't know if anything was ever done
really are having an impact, Gray fairly interjects
