eBook, 160 pages
English language
Published May 31, 2022 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
WHAT IS "NORMAL"?
WHAT IS "RIGHT"?
AND WHO GETS TO DECIDE?
To be a content moderator is to see humanity at its worst--but Kayleigh needs money. So she takes a job working for a social media platform whose name she isn't allowed to mention. Her review offensive videos and pictures, rants and conspiracy theories, and decide which need to be removed. It's grueling 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 she finds in her colleagues a group of friends--even a new girlfriend--and for the first time in her life, her future seems bright.
But soon the job seems to change them all, shifting their worlds in alarming ways. How long before the moderators' own senses of right and wrong begin to bend …
WHAT IS "NORMAL"?
WHAT IS "RIGHT"?
AND WHO GETS TO DECIDE?
To be a content moderator is to see humanity at its worst--but Kayleigh needs money. So she takes a job working for a social media platform whose name she isn't allowed to mention. Her review offensive videos and pictures, rants and conspiracy theories, and decide which need to be removed. It's grueling 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 she finds in her colleagues a group of friends--even a new girlfriend--and for the first time in her life, her future seems bright.
But soon the job seems to change them all, shifting their worlds in alarming ways. How long before the moderators' own senses of right and wrong begin to bend and flex?
From one of the most acclaimed Dutch writers of her generation, We Had to Remove This Post is a chilling, powerful, and urgent literary masterpiece about who or what determines our worldview, who sets the boundaries, and just how much a person can be asked to accept.
It just read as a low-effort pamphlet that mistakes echoing popular internet consensus for actual writing. It tried unsuccessfully to show how the online world changes your real-life world and attitudes/values, but spends most of its brief page count on softcore porn and crowd-pleasing platitudes about technology and society in the 2020s.
Content warning Contains CW related to the plot
I read this book because I saw a news article saying it was thought provoking about modern technology, but it largely came off like a modern Black Mirror episode with a very basic "technology bad" theme. Also there is a incidence of sexual assault which stood out compared to the other events discussed in the book. I see how that could potentially upsetting.
