Social media platforms moderate user-posted content to protect
us from offensive, disturbing and sometimes criminal content. This
process, however, is not always automatic. It often relies upon the
efforts of individual workers to act as gatekeepers, keeping
undesirable content at bay.
Facebook engages approximately 15,000 workers to moderate the
content being uploaded onto its platform. Many of these workers are
not employed by Facebook. Rather, the company outsources this
critical function to low-wage contractors engaged through
temporary-help agencies.
A report by The Verge in late February 2019 has
shed some light on the conditions in which Facebook moderators
work, and the material impact their work can have. The report
suggests that contractors: work in call centre-like conditions; get
only short and rigorously-enforced breaks; are subject to
oppressive work oversight; are denied prayer breaks; live in fear
of being fired or former colleagues returning to
