Who exactly is performing the thankless task of poring over the photos that eager American singles upload to dating sites, and that people all over the world upload to Facebook?
The Moderators, a new documentary short by filmmakers Adrian Chen and Ciaran Cassidy, shows us who these usually faceless moderators are, and shows us in somewhat graphic detail what their day-to-day life is like staring at millions of images and making judgements about them.
As Wired explains, the film is inspired by some earlier reporting by Chen about content moderation firms in the Philippines, and it centers on Bangalore-based firm Foiwe Info Global Solutions. Their clients apparently include a "handful of dating sites in the US, Europe, and India," and these moderators, who are shown undertaking their first training session, are tasked with the soul-crushing job of filtering 2,000 photos per hour, or one every 1.8 seconds. Additionally, they have to screen profiles which sometimes show evidence of prostitution or sex trafficking.
The moderators are trained to recognize both nudity and questionably objectionable stuff, like a man in underwear turned away from the camera and possibly urinating. As the trainer tells them, "This is our job," and he explains that they shouldn't take the offensive things personally, even if it offends their religious sensibilities. (And, by minute 15, we seem them having to moderate child porn.)
The entire 19-minute film is now available to view on Vimeo, and it's already become a Vimeo Staff Pick.