"The hidden shadow industry of digital cleaning, where the internet rids itself of what it doesn't like, such as violence, pornography and some political content."
This documentary takes a look at social media content moderators and the effects of the job on themselves and the world around them. The idea itself sounds innocent enough, but when you start looking at removing "inappropriate" content, the first questions are, what is inappropriate? who decides what is appropriate? and that leads you down a rabbit hole of moral and ethical questions towards censorship, controlled content, and corruption.
Following a number of moderators from Manila, Philipines, we are met by workers in a company that is outsourced. These workers do not directly work for the social media platforms that they are moderating, which means there are several levels of oversight between the worker making the decision and the media platform themselves. While oversight to some means greater control, every additional layer actually reduces the level of awareness and control that you have.
So who are the people making these decisions around whether your post is appropriate or not? These are people that live in a country that is 94% Christian. A country that is okay with media blackouts and supports a leader that has publicly said Hitler had a good idea and he wished he could execute 3 million drug users. It really begs the question whether these are the correct people to moderate content for the western world globally. Of course, they do have quality controls in place, but who stipulates those quality controls, and how are they enforced, when only 3% of all decisions are checked? When each worker may have a daily target of 25,000 images, assuming they do an 8 hour day, that gives them around a second per post to decide. That requires the decision to become instinctual, so political, and religious beliefs would be key to effecting that choice.
Ugh, I'm getting too into the questions that the documentary raises rather than talking about the documentary itself. Let's get back on track. The side that is often forgotten about content moderating is that the moderator must view it in its entirety to determine what it is. This means they are frequently the victim of having to view inappropriate content. With reporting becoming more specific nowadays it has allowed the moderators to be specialised, which could be good for quality standards, but is incredibly hazardous to the moderator themselves. Can you imagine having to watch video after video of child abuse, pornography, graphic violence and beheadings, or self-mutilation and suicides? The effect that this could have on a person's mental health is clear, but these workers often come from poverty and are contractually obligated to complete the work.
The ability to control who sees what is a very effective measure of censoring communities that have over 2 billion monthly users (that is more than the population of China). With that level of control, one can remove any sign of antigovernmental content, it can promote racism against a minority group, it can reshape public perceptions on laws, and can hide illegal operations. The power of social media comes from the number of people that have access to it, and The Cleaners does ask the question of whether enough is being done by the companies involved to prevent the promotion of racism, terrorism, child trafficking and porn.
Due to the strict confidentiality of the content, there is very little to see. Most scenes consist of emails or interviews that are done in unrelated areas, so visually there is not much to look at, which is why the documentary relies so heavily on being an engaging topic.
The documentary itself provides a wide variety of perspectives, but with all these different sources it reduces the overall strength of the argument by convoluting their own aims and objectives; the audience is left with no conclusion as to why the documentary was made. Whether it be about the living conditions of the moderators, the ineffective mental health strategies in place, questioning who controls the content, or who has the right to control the content, or the effects on social media and advertising in promoting outrage, racism and violence. The Cleaners spreads itself thin, and with some odd pacing that almost stops dead halfway through, it doesn't go deep enough to thoroughly engage the audience. The Cleaners is all about asking questions, but provides no answers.