A British daily’s report highlights the traumatised experiences of content moderators who are exposed to violence, sexual assault, child trafficking, and other disturbing contents
Team Clarion
NEW DELHI — The review of harmful content including videos uploaded on social media is taking a heavy toll on the content moderators leaving a deep impact on their mental well-being, revealed a report published in The Guardian. The report added that the USA, UK and European companies have outsourced the challenging task to countries like India in order to cut costs by offering low payments.
The report gave the account of the traumatised experiences of the moderators as they encountered content related to violence, sexual assault, child trafficking, and other disturbing things. These moderators, who spoke with the English daily on the condition of anonymity, are being paid less than $8 a day. When they are in stressful situations, they are asked to seek help.
According to the content moderators, the work left them emotionally distressed, depressed and struggling to sleep.
“I had to watch every frame of a recent stabbing video … It will never leave me,” said Harun (name changed), a moderator who worked with such a company based in Hyderabad. Notably, companies in the content monitoring business mostly moved to India and the Philippines.
“You may have seen the video in its blurred version, but I had to watch it completely and clearly. It will never leave me,” he said.
Harun said the presence of wellness coaches is merely a formality as the companies need to tick off a legal clause probably. When the content moderators get overwhelmed after reviewing sensitive videos, they simply move us to a less sensitive queue until they feel better.
Twenty-one-year disabled youth Akash (name changed) was elated when he got one such job. But now he said that he regretted coming into this field.
“No one would hire me because I’m disabled. I was desperate to be independent and earn a living,” he said. “When I was told by a headhunter for disabled people that there was a vacancy for a moderator, I applied, expecting a rejection. I found the job. But realize this is not what I signed up for. It feels as if I log into a torture chamber each day”.
One of the issues which he has been facing while doing the job is the moderation of content related to semi-naked pictures of minors. He flagged such contents but the supervisors asked him not to do so.
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Graphic courtesy: The Washington Post.