Along with all the good things that the internet offers us, there is a virtual underworld full of evil and bad things, where offensive content related to violence, pornography, pedophilia, animal abuse, terrorism and the like are highlighted.
This type of offensive content generally does not reach the mass of internet users and especially social media users. But for this to happen there is a lot of investment in systems with complex computational algorithms and a lot of dedication from professionals working to identify and moderate this type of content.
With the aim of showing how content moderation is done by professionals in India, journalist Adrian Chen and director Ciaran Cassidy created the documentary “The Moderators” . The documentary portrays the day-to-day life of the content moderation industry for online services and social media, where more than 150,000 professionals work in companies that provide services to Google, Facebook and hundreds of other services on the internet.
When a user opens Facebook or searches on Google, content containing pornography and violence is generally not displayed. Why? With this simple question, a session instructor begins training with his team.
This is the objective of the work of these professionals who work with content moderation, to identify offensive content and define which photos, videos, audios or texts should be removed or categorized as explicit, in addition to trying to identify fake profiles on the network.
However, the main objective of the documentary is to identify and present the effects that continuous exposure to content containing violence, animal abuse, pornography and pedophilia causes on professionals. We can see that the routine of these professionals can become quite dark , as they continually come across disturbing images or videos. Therefore, it is important to closely monitor the team to detect any negative impact that these activities may be causing.
Watch the documentary The Moderators:
Even though there is all this concern from companies like Google and Facebook and many other online services, it is important to take measures so that you, colleagues, friends and family are not exposed to this type of explicit and offensive content, as for professionals who work with content moderation, any user can suffer some type of negative influence, which can even cause trauma and even lead to harmful actions towards themselves and other people.
A very simple way to restrict access to explicit content is to activate the search engine service called SafeSearch , which prevents offensive content from being displayed in internet search results.
In another article we demonstrate how you can configure SafeSearch on your computer or on your company, school or home network .
It is also recommended to use internet usage management services, both in companies and homes. That allow you to control the use of the network and avoid browsing websites that display content related to violence, pornography and the like.
To conclude, it is important to remember that the internet also has many negative things and we need to avoid any type of interaction with this content. And as active internet users, let us know how to take advantage of the multitude of services that make our lives easier and better, avoiding any type of negative content on the internet.
