In the shadow of the web world – The Cleaners
Documentary by Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck ARTE / WDR 2018, 90 min

THE CLEANERS unveils a gigantic shadow industry of digital censorship in Manila, the world’s largest outsourcing location for content moderation. There tens of thousands of people on behalf of the large Silicon Valley companies delete incriminating photos and videos from Facebook, YouTube, Twitter & Co. Complex decisions about censorship or visibility of content are thus outsourced to the “content moderators”. The cruelty and the continuous burden of this traumatic work changes the perception and personality of the content moderators.