In the Philippines, content moderators at YouTube, Facebook and Twitter see some of the web’s darkest content
- In the last couple of years, social media companies have created tens of thousands of jobs around the world to vet and delete violent or offensive content
A year after quitting his job reviewing some of the most gruesome content the internet has to offer, Lester prays every week that the images he saw can be erased from his mind.
First as a contractor for YouTube and then for Twitter, he worked on a high-up floor of a mall in the Philippine capital, Manila, where he spent up to nine hours each day weighing questions about the details in those images.
He made decisions about whether a child’s genitals were being touched accidentally or on purpose, or whether a knife slashing someone’s neck depicted a real-life killing – and if such content should be allowed online.
He’s still haunted by what he saw. Today, entering a tall building triggers flashbacks to the suicides he reviewed, causing him to entertain the possibility of jumping. At night, he Googles footage of bestiality and incest – material he was never exposed to before but now is ashamed that he is drawn to.
For the last year, he has visited a mall chapel every week, where he works with a church brother to ask God to “white out” those images from his memory.
“I know it’s not normal, but now everything is normalised,” said the 33-year-old, using only his first name because of a confidentiality agreement he signed when he took the job.