The Facebook of graphic deaths and child porn: Filipinos earning US$1 an hour filtering out the filth so you don’t have to see it
Movie to be shown at Hong Kong’s Human Rights Documentary Film Festival lifts lid on psychological toll taken on content moderators, some of whom see 25,000 disturbing images a day
For 10 hours or more every day, they look at thousands of photos and videos of child sexual abuse, terrorist attacks and acts of self-harm on their computers.
Sometimes it is a horrendous video of a terrorist chopping off the head of a captive. Sometimes it can be an elderly man sexually abusing a child.
On their computer screen are two buttons they can click on: delete or ignore. They decide what netizens across the world see, or do not see, on social media platforms.
They are content moderators, people hired by outsourcing companies to keep social media platforms such as Facebook clean by deleting content considered unsuitable for public viewing.
In The Cleaners, a documentary by German directors Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck, to be screened in Hong Kong in October, the secretive world of content moderating in the Philippines is exposed, as the directors looked at the ethical questions raised by the jobs, and how the work takes a toll on the moderators’ mental health.
“For most of them, it’s a job they are proud of. You have to consider many people have jobs that are much less prestigious than working in such nice looking buildings in one of the best parts of Manila,” Riesewieck said in an interview.
“The salary, compared to other jobs, is not that bad, at around US$1 to US$3 an hour. With this money they can care for the whole family of five, six, or seven persons. They are the breadwinners and they are happy to get this job.”