Every censored video clip and every comment flagged as spam goes back to simple binary thinking: appropriate/inappropriate. These decisions appear to be automated, while in fact thousands of workers in the back rooms of digital platforms are carrying out these tasks around the clock: so-called content moderators, who are the invisibilized labor force holding web services together. Doing a hard job under precarious conditions, their struggles in India’s IT sweatshops are the focus of Sana Ahmad’s research and her SILENT WORKS talk.
About SILENT WORKS: silentworks.info
About Sana Ahmad:
Sana Ahmad is a doctoral researcher writing her thesis on content moderation in social networking sites. Her project aims to analyze the lesser known industry of commercial content moderation, its practices and the work processes outsourced to India. She is part of the research group Working in Highly Automated Digital-Hybrid Processes.
