We Had to Remove This Post
Author: Hanna Bervoets, translated by Emma Rault
Published by: Picador
Pages: 137
Format: Hardback
My Rating ★★★1/2
Published by: Picador
Pages: 137
Format: Hardback
My Rating ★★★1/2
To be a content moderator is to see humanity at its worst - but Kayleigh needs money. That's why she takes a job working for a social media platform whose name she isn't allowed to mention. Her job: reviewing offensive videos and pictures, rants and conspiracy theories, and deciding which need to be removed.
It's gruelling work. Kayleigh and her colleagues spend all day watching horrors and hate on their screens, evaluating them with the platform's ever-changing moderating guidelines. Yet Kayleigh is good at her job, and in her colleagues she finds a group of friends, even a new girlfriend - and for the first time in her life, Kayleigh's future seems bright.
But soon the job seems to change them all, shifting their worlds in alarming ways. How long before the moderators own morals bend and flex under the weight of what they see?
It's gruelling work. Kayleigh and her colleagues spend all day watching horrors and hate on their screens, evaluating them with the platform's ever-changing moderating guidelines. Yet Kayleigh is good at her job, and in her colleagues she finds a group of friends, even a new girlfriend - and for the first time in her life, Kayleigh's future seems bright.
But soon the job seems to change them all, shifting their worlds in alarming ways. How long before the moderators own morals bend and flex under the weight of what they see?
My thoughts:
Hanna Bervoets’s slim, compelling novel We Had to Remove This Post examines the toxic world of social media and content moderation. The book tells a gripping story about who or what determines our world view.
The book is framed as a confessional letter to a lawyer, written by its protagonist, Kayleigh. Until 16 months ago, Kayleigh was a ‘quality assurance worker’ at Hexa, a company contracted by an unnamed social media platform to review user posts for disturbing or inappropriate content.
It is, for example, fine for viewers to watch footage of a woman knocked off a scooter, but only if they can’t see blood, and only if the situation is ‘clearly comical’. A discussion about a video of ‘some nutjob’ playing with two dead kittens is particularly gruesome. As Kayleigh and her co-workers begin to internalise the horrors they see each day, the line between the virtual and the physical world grows blurry.
Eventually, some of the content moderators begin endorsing the kind of material they should be taking down, and the narrative shows how easily misinformation is spread on social media. She and her co-workers mistake a roof repairman for a suicidal jumper, try to contact users who livestream self-harm, and join flat-earther cults.
I felt this novella spent too much time on the relationships in the story and not enough time surrounding the job as a content moderator. I understand the job itself was a reason the main character became so desensitized, but readers never really get to see this desensitization happen, it seems to be just implied or rushed over. This was odd to me as the prolonged effect of monitoring such content is the main crux of the book. The impact of the characters actions and decisions didn’t feel as heavy as one might expect.
For the most part, I felt the writing was sharp and captured the stifling atmosphere of working at Hexa, although I wanted more detail and depth about the gradual chipping away of these characters’ humanity. Kayleigh gives us an idea of the kind of toxic work environment and emotionally draining workload, but she does so in broad strokes, so I never got a sense of who she really was, let alone the kind of people her colleagues were. She becomes girlfriends with one of her colleagues, and their relationship is supposedly a central aspect of the narrative, but I found their dynamic under-developed and difficult to interpret.
The synopsis sounded so interesting, but this book just fell a bit flat for me which is a shame because the subject matter has so much potential for a very dark, very tense book. It is nauseating in exactly the way it means to be and has a brilliant concept, but I wanted much more from this story.
Overall reaction:
Hanna Bervoets’s slim, compelling novel We Had to Remove This Post examines the toxic world of social media and content moderation. The book tells a gripping story about who or what determines our world view.
The book is framed as a confessional letter to a lawyer, written by its protagonist, Kayleigh. Until 16 months ago, Kayleigh was a ‘quality assurance worker’ at Hexa, a company contracted by an unnamed social media platform to review user posts for disturbing or inappropriate content.
It is, for example, fine for viewers to watch footage of a woman knocked off a scooter, but only if they can’t see blood, and only if the situation is ‘clearly comical’. A discussion about a video of ‘some nutjob’ playing with two dead kittens is particularly gruesome. As Kayleigh and her co-workers begin to internalise the horrors they see each day, the line between the virtual and the physical world grows blurry.
Eventually, some of the content moderators begin endorsing the kind of material they should be taking down, and the narrative shows how easily misinformation is spread on social media. She and her co-workers mistake a roof repairman for a suicidal jumper, try to contact users who livestream self-harm, and join flat-earther cults.
I felt this novella spent too much time on the relationships in the story and not enough time surrounding the job as a content moderator. I understand the job itself was a reason the main character became so desensitized, but readers never really get to see this desensitization happen, it seems to be just implied or rushed over. This was odd to me as the prolonged effect of monitoring such content is the main crux of the book. The impact of the characters actions and decisions didn’t feel as heavy as one might expect.
For the most part, I felt the writing was sharp and captured the stifling atmosphere of working at Hexa, although I wanted more detail and depth about the gradual chipping away of these characters’ humanity. Kayleigh gives us an idea of the kind of toxic work environment and emotionally draining workload, but she does so in broad strokes, so I never got a sense of who she really was, let alone the kind of people her colleagues were. She becomes girlfriends with one of her colleagues, and their relationship is supposedly a central aspect of the narrative, but I found their dynamic under-developed and difficult to interpret.
The synopsis sounded so interesting, but this book just fell a bit flat for me which is a shame because the subject matter has so much potential for a very dark, very tense book. It is nauseating in exactly the way it means to be and has a brilliant concept, but I wanted much more from this story.
Overall reaction: