The Cleaners

Interesting PBS documentary, The Cleaners. These are the 10s of thousands of social media platform employees who delete inappropriate material. And "inappropriate" is a very mild word for what they see--beheadings, cruelty, rape, child abuse, torture, murder. One that I found particularly chilling was a beheading with a kitchen knife.

And then you have the folks who try to rescue things before they are deleted, working against the social platform standards. Scenes from the Syrian civil war, for instance, of the bodies of children mutilated in a bombing. For them, politically, these are things that need to be seen.

Additionally, you have government representatives who relentlessly lobby the platform CEOs to suppress 'negative' (ie, truthful) material on issues in their countries. And they do eventually get their way.

In any case, it's certainly not a job I could do. Imagine watching this sort of real-life horror day after day, being immersed in the very worst side of life. How can they sleep at night? How can they forget what they've seen?

The film also points up the public appetite for outrage, and how platforms like Facebook gravitate toward the extreme--because it is lucrative. Because it inspires the involvement of more subscribers. Is it any wonder that civility has so swiftly died out?

One can't help but conclude that while the internet was ideally an amazing and useful tool, people have in fact proven themselves not at all up to dealing with the technology in a healthy manner.

"There is real evil in the world," one cleaner said. "In my job, I watch it every day."