'The Cleaners' Who Scrub Social Media

Social media platforms say they want to scrub fake news and inappropriate content off their platforms. Find out who's doing some of the work of actually cleaning it up. (Credit: Blue Ice Docs)
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[billmcgregor]

The number of people commenting about censorship are missing the point here! Try watching the whole clip, or even the doc itself before you comment! This documentary isn't about censoring political content on the left or right, its about social media conglomerates outsourcing the job of removing the worst and sickest stuff posted on social media to companies in the Philippines
who pay lousy wages and offer little support to their employees. This isn't about Trump or Putin or ISIS, its about the poor people who sit there for 8 hours a day weeding out the videos of cats being lit on fire.

[ConstantThrowing]

Really well done to these guys. True investigative journalists... a rare breed nowadays.

[ZZCelestial]

There are "cleaners" all over the world. These filmmakers just focused on the Filipino Cleaners' disadvantages because some or most of their employers do not give rightful compensation and professional counseling.

[Youtzushka]

We should be happy that certain contents never reach us....

[skyscraper]

A Filipino horror film about content moderator was just recently released in the Philippines

[AlexMacsim]

People should upload photos and videos of flowers and cats and nice things, and then report them. Maybe they can make somebody's day a little less nightmarish :)

[adamsaaid]

I work as a content moderator for 2 years. Most of the content what we were moderating about naive lives between people, bullying, hate speech and slur. What I suffered from was the repetitive work

[trilbysmith]

Pretty sure the purpose in this documentary is the mental health of the cleaners bc of the things they see.

[TheNeurotichi]

This shows how resources are not being focused on actually preventing crimes. So they are complicit with the violations to innocence.

[glaizaolase]

I live in the Philippines. While content moderation is a booming career in my country (and despite the seemingly enticing pay it offers), and despite having the skills required to be a content moderator (or in other words, a "deleter"), I opted not to venture into this type of job after considering its effects to my mental health. Especially since this issue is something that is yet to be properly addressed in my country and the proper medical/ psychologicalinterventions to issues related to this gruelling job aren't well-established yet.

[DanahReyes]

where can i watch the full documentary?

[DeepByteDigger]

Well i can be a facebook cleaner tho. Nowadays people doesn't care about how there job would affect them selves as long as they have job in philippines this is what life is.I see it as opportunity.

[nicklang]

It seems like if you need an algorithm to remove disturbing sexual and hateful material (or other banned content), there may be a problem with who is making that material how it is getting made and maybe where it is made. I think instead of hitting a button to say upload a video, Facebook and google (or other companies) should require some real information before someone is allowed to share any material. I am just saying it is so easy to share information these days on social networking and some of these people who share material that is just going to be deleted are probably going to do so again.

[mirthepeeters]

Im confused about this. Does this content gets forwarded to the police also? Or do they remove it and thats it?

[allwaizeright]

The trouble with the cleaners is they are cleaning with dirty rags

[villajj]

Do they need to finish the video or once it's bad they can delete it already?

[fiucikmiselfo]

Not just Philippines. When one publishes something in Ukrainian it takes a while for it to get censored.

[stevenzilmar]

I'm here because of Deleter. Hahaha

[cj]

If the cleaners experience PTSD, how is therapy supposed to help? It won't over the long term.

[evieleach]

Gee, I wonder why YOU TUBE won’t publish this film?