Faces of Deathbook

Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant interviewed an ex-Facebook moderator about how the moderation process worked and it was shocking:

De haat, dat is wat hem meteen raakt. ‘Ik schrok daarvan.’ De intense haat, tegen asielzoekers, Marokkaanse Nederlanders, zwarte mensen. Erik: ‘En alles in Nederland is kanker. Kankerjongen, kankerneger, kankerhoer.’ In Vlaanderen krijgen de ‘makakken’ de schuld, in Nederland de ‘Marokkanen’. Elk gebied heeft zo zijn eigen ‘overlast’: gewelddadige foto’s en video’s van bendes in Latijns-Amerika, porno en geweld tegen vrouwen in het Midden-Oosten. De Portugese en Griekse moderatoren hebben het relatief rustig. Zij kunnen nog weleens Netflix aanzetten. Nederlanders niet: Nederland is het land van de haat, zegt Erik.

First, it turns out the Netherlands is about the most racist, hateful European country on Facebook, with the most complaints per day, lots of it racially motivated. Most of this occurs below the radar, but we saw the tip of the iceberg last year, when Dutch politician and media personality Sylvana Simons who had become the target of racial hatred on Facebook, reported this to the public prosecutor and examples of this hatred were given in the resulting lawsuits. To hear that this is indeed a common occurrence for Dutch people of colour on Facebook is disappointing, but not unsurprising. There is a huge amount of resentment hiding behind the white Dutch liberal pretence.

But second, there’s also the way Facebook treats its moderators, who turn out to have no support whatsoever except from a dodgy “feelgoodmanager”. Barely trained people working for little more than minimum wage are supposed to review material that goes beyond “just” racist comments, but includes snuff videos, child porn and other traumatic material even experts are supposed to only see in moderation, not eight hours a day, five days a week. No wonder so many moderators either quit or self medicate with alcohol or drugs.

But of course moderation is only a cost to Facebook and their real interest is to get as many people as possible posting and who cares what they’re posting. As long as ad revenue keeps coming, Facebook don’t give a fuck.