Hacker Cinema
The Cleaners
Im Schatten der Netzwelt
2018 · Film · documentary · 85 min
Directed by Hans Block, Moritz Riesewick
A deep dive into the hidden industry of digital cleaning, which rids the Internet of unwanted violence, porn and political content.
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1 comment on Hacker News
> They can say "no", tell these regressive regimes
The US has made pretty similar demands from Google and Twitter and Facebook not too long ago, in the context of "Russian election interference" and even before that on the basis of "terrorist radicalization".
The big difference here is that if the US demands it, it becomes the de-facto global standard. The results of this are subtle, but creeping. [0]
At this point, the aforementioned three are subcontracting a whole little industry of "content moderators" in places like Manila in the Philippines. Where hundreds of people do nothing but "moderate" social media content, they literally "okay" or "delete" videos and pictures on social media.
French channel ARTE made a really interesting, and quite creepy, documentary about it called "The Cleaners" [1]. Sadly it's only been available in French/German, and has been depublished by now, but an English version was shown at Sundance, so that should exist.
[0] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/wnxdv5/the-artist-behind-baby-dick-trump-pic-is-now-banned-from-facebook
[1]https://www.arte.tv/de/videos/069881-000-A/im-schatten-der-netzwelt-the-cleaners/