The campuses of the tech industry are famous for their lavish cafeterias, cushy shuttles, and on-site laundry services. But on a muggy February afternoon, some of these companies’ most important work is being done 7,000 miles away, on the second floor of a former elementary school at the end of a row of auto mechanics’ stalls in Bacoor, a gritty Filipino town 13 miles southwest of Manila.
#travail #inégalités #réseaux_sociaux #surveillance #censure #philippines #silicon_valley
the number of content moderators scrubbing the world’s social media sites, mobile apps, and cloud storage services runs to “well over 100,000”—that is, about twice the total head count of #Google and nearly 14 times that of #Facebook.
A suicidal message posted by a whisper user and flagged for deletion by a TaskUs employee. MOISES SAMAN/MAGNUM
Whisper practices “active #moderation,” an especially labor-intensive process in which every single post is screened in real time; many other companies moderate content only if it’s been flagged as objectionable by users, which is known as reactive moderating.
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While a large amount of content moderation takes place overseas, much is still done in the US, often by young college graduates
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He also got a fascinating glimpse into the inner workings of #YouTube. For instance, in late 2010, Google’s legal team gave moderators the urgent task of deleting the violent sermons of American radical Islamist preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, after a British woman said she was inspired by them to stab a politician.
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In Manila, I meet Denise (not her real name), a psychologist who consults for two content-moderation firms in the Philippines. “It’s like PTSD,” she tells me as we sit in her office above one of the city’s perpetually snarled freeways. “There is a memory trace in their mind.”
#santé_mentale