can you imagine what it looks like when worlds are boiled alive when a person is decapitated someone abuses videos like this are uploaded to youtube but most of us never see them because content moderators remove them from us [music] tik tok twitter youtube facebook all the Big platforms need content moderators, but they outsource this task and with it the psychological burden [music] there are also content moderators in Germany in Berlin Essen or Hamburg and they are not allowed to talk about their job what else do my parents tell my family close friends so i mustn't hurt anyone it takes more than half a year for these three people to find each other who tell me about their [music] in front of the camera i would like to know how it feels for content moderators the collected waste of the internet every day to sift like the working conditions here in germany are and what the big platforms do to make your job easier we would have liked to have accompanied content moderators to their workplace but what happened there is top secret we came up with this setup here with the climate to give you a feeling for conveying the job the principle is always the same you are shown a video or a photo like this one of a confrontation with the police within a very short time you have to decide whether it violates the guidelines or not on facebook you have nine seconds per content and now you can see here real gap 89 what is he doing with the cats is that cruelty to animals and do you still remember this photo it shows the drowned island co which of the elements hardly differs from this photo is a small child on the beach and but the meaning of saying it is completely different and then you have to understand within nine seconds that this is a dead child and decide whether internet users should sow the seeds or not and artificial intelligence can't do that yet that's why it needs people [music] worldwide an estimated 100,000 people work as content moderators more than 1000 of them in Germany me I spoke to ten during my research but finding someone who would come in front of the camera was extremely difficult three times I was told and canceled again, also out of fear because the contracts forbid you to talk about your job traffic reich laura her name is not loose because we should you learn how to stay anonymous too she worked for a few months for all platforms and watched videos and we had already called on the phone beforehand and we could already guess that she was not doing well herself said the work was destroying her life i'll just give it to you I found out more about Laura to I can't protect it but tell you I know which company she worked for I didn't respond to my inquiries there so I wasn't able to check statements for a long time as I would normally have but I spoke to a colleague of mine on it seems credible to me so when a video is reported it shows up in my crew and it usually says what it is about so where it is being taken care of is reported exactly then I click on the video we all shouldn’t really tilt so I had to go actually by looking and an end i then decide exactly and there are i decide according to policies i decide according to my own will so if i make a video myself too extreme for right too gross disgusting disgusting so simply violent then i can't erase if that's not against you knew what you were getting yourself into, so you were told exactly what your work will be before you started knew what i was getting into but i also have to say awareness works differently than down awareness and i was just like that i thought i could do it and i think most people think and i can handle that and most people do n't take it that way because you can't control it you see these pictures you go to sleep and dream of these pictures i think you can't delete these pictures they are on this platform just like that it's just for inside you can talk about what that is a lot of the pictures are the ones that got stuck everything is more disgusting what a person can do all disgusting child pornography be it the worst so a lot of heart for children they also just ca n’t describe it but i have seen children who rape China like this i think it is there you will when we see something like that you can't even imagine and there too g then it matures that you mustn't tip over, nothing must break, you have to look at it all the way and you must n't show any emotions either.
So you could go away and relax if something was going on or something, but if you celebrated it a bit every day, what do you want with it they do it that's the basic problem the work is stressful they can take breaks get psychological help but the work stays the same someone has to get the dirt out of the net core that's what everyone I talk to tells me they just deal with it differently because many of them didn't dare to be in front of the camera i asked my colleagues from white to collectively read out a few quotes i think my work is morally important to the videos so that others don't have to see it anymore i'm someone i don't take that with me when i walk over the threshold is the way employees are seen as machines that are interchangeable and simply thrown away w earth when they stop working content moderators need to suppress their emotions so they don't lose their job i've gotten into the habit of looking at the corner of my monitor to give my eyes and brain a break laura tells me that her company offers psychological help there was a telephone number that she could call at any time .
In her introductory training course, how to deal with the psychological stress was not an issue, however, that you little puppies are being cooked or something like that not so you will be shown and then what decision to make now but we are humans not robots if i see something that hurts me as a human being then i react like that it is quite normal and then wanting to trust me all my human emotions by letting them say I'm not allowed to react to anything and just have to h is supposed to work it 's not clear so it's bad you don't even work there anymore maybe you can tell me briefly how it came to an end so to speak I got sick at some point so I couldn't do it anymore I didn't know exactly why I also recognized myself at the time, of course, wurster, I just ca n't live like that I can't get out of the experience I want to die I knew I was having suicidal thoughts but I was so and then I was sick and found out how important it was from the start with this one research also to show the perspective of the companies but no one wanted to give me an interview about the working conditions of content moderators in germany I still insist on asking these exact questions I will now write to various agencies and ask them exactly that they work who do you work for and how do you protect your workers what do you do to prevent stress disorders et cetera pp exactly that will now be a small mail session on the computer four of six companies I wrote to answered me majorelle from berlin ccc from essen youtube and twitter all assure that the well-being of the content moderator is important to him and you a quote ensure extensive support from psychologists do not leave these mails frustrated anyway the answers are vague most passages i am not allowed to quote and in practice the concepts do not seem to give up [music] not all content moderators in germany have psychological freely refer that depends on the person but also from the platform and its contents i meet another content moderator she also wants to remain anonymous because she signed a non- disclosure agreement she would like to be pixelated we should repeat her voice i should say her caro ne Well, how do you like the job, so you like doing what you do, so it's definitely fun to work, especially for a large platform that is very well known and that many people use and yes, watching videos is also fun, it seems to me that you find things you yourself disturbing or that you would describe as violent well sometimes come shared torment which I then also find a little yes how should I put it borderline or also violence between people but that is really rare and yes that will happen then also far from us, however, we have a psychologist who was employed especially so that, as I said, if someone needs to talk or has seen something that doesn’t let go of you, he can then talk to someone professionally about it, it can lead to something like that luckily never happens how do you find your general working conditions under which the project work then i see i think the conditions are not bad i just think that you could be paid a bit better for what you do according to my research, content moderators in germany get around 2000 euros gross per month carus motivation to talk to me she wants users to know exactly what her job is so i can't show you exactly how i work, everything is tracked, who logs in when and how long it takes for a video and i'm not allowed to tell anything so i'm actually allowed to tell you something again , or my parents, my family, your friends I'm not allowed to tell anyone about it if it's better for us then if that so if people that will definitely be so I think this secret journey should stop or what does it mean stop but you should draw more attention to the fact that other people are still looking at everything and it is checked and that there are real people behind it because you hear de n name of the platform and you imagine a million companies under it but yes , small people like me also work there small people like karo says can change something about the working conditions of large platforms chris gray tries it he has between 2017 and 2018 as content moderator ireland checked facebook content and was appalled by the working conditions he is one of the few who have gone public this is on the island i ask him if he is not afraid to speak out against facebook publicly he says his anger is bigger chris has himself a lawsuit was filed against facebook and the agency he worked for the court hearing will take at least two more years but there could be a president for europe he demands, among other things, compensation for pain and suffering besides a post-traumatic stress disorder of the fas was cited [music] and just such a systematic one dealing with the consequences of the psychisc there was stress in laura's case we went outside again to get some air i felt bad like that and then it just turned into a burnout so no one really sits down with me now i've seen mr don't have a psychologist then get pills but they keep saying no idea you are depressed so do sport you will be happy so do you have the feeling that you have somehow understood what happened to you or do you still have a lot of question marks in the meantime I already understand what is happening to me, that I know that it is somehow a trauma, that I have to work through that, actually, I know that I just need rest, people who are not, because I saw a bad person, that we are just nice to see some people now so for one may and want one thinks protected from it and broken me and new youngest don't give a [ __ ] so it's e no [ __ ] did you even know that there are content moderators in germany write in the comments and subscribe to our channel by the way not only content moderators from big platforms are confronted with violent content but also police investigators and they even create videos of child abuse show why the colleagues from rhi present in this video