The Brave Souls

Last night, I wrote about how I think we should accept art, even offensive art, and not try to destroy it. I talked about how even I found some things offensive, but didn't believe the nature of me being unsettled was enough to justify the censorship or destruction of said art.  About two hours after that, I read this article in Wired about the brave people who wade through billions of horrible things that some assholes post online and remove them before they are seen by the general public.

The article is hard to read, and I can't even imagine what working in this field would be like. Every day, people go to places like Facebook and Twitter and do their best to post pictures of beheadings and child porn. The reason we don't see this stuff is because companies like FB and Twitter hire content moderators who spend their working hours seeing these horrendous images and removing them before anyone is forced to look at them.  In the comments following the article, some people who have worked in this field mentioned that they do their best to try to report the illegal things they see to the authorities.

In light of the post I did yesterday, do I consider this kind of work wrong? NO, NO I DO NOT. There is a difference, a very big difference, between art that one creates and documenting horrific things happening to other people. These are REAL PEOPLE getting their heads chopped off. These are REAL PEOPLE being tortured and raped and abused in all manner of ways. This isn't faked. This isn't scripted. This is really happening. It is horrible enough that it happened to the person in question. The fact that other people see fit to inflict this on others is almost as bad.

There is a long list of people I am thankful for, people who make my life easier and rather pleasant. I was not aware of the work that content moderators do until I read about it, but now they are very much on this list of people for whom I am grateful. I don't care how much you get paid (and they don't get paid THAT much), having to watch hours and hours of the worst of humanity is an awful job. If you have this job, know that I think you are very brave and I wish you wonderful things.