Together with all the good things that the internet offers us, there is a virtual underworld full of wickedness and bad things, where offensive content related to violence, pornography, pedophilia, animal maltreatment, terrorism and the like are highlighted.
This type of offensive content usually does not reach the large mass of users of the internet and especially social networks. But for this to happen there is a lot of investment in systems with complex computational algorithms and a lot of dedication from professionals acting to identify and moderate this type of content.
In order to show how this content moderation is made by professionals in India, journalist Adrian Chen and director Ciaran Cassidy created the documentary "The Moderators" . The documentary portrays the daily life of the online service content moderation industry and social media, where they work more than 150,000 professionals, in companies that provide service to Google, Facebook and hundreds of other services on the internet.
When a user opens Facebook or searching Google, generally no content with pornography and violence is displayed. Why? With this simple question the instructor of a session begins training with his team.
This is the objective of the work of these professionals who work with content moderation, identifying offensive content and defining which photos, videos, audios or texts should be removed or categorized as explicit, as well as trying to identify false network profiles.
However, the main objective of the documentary is to identify and present the effects that continuous exposure to content with violence, animal maltreatment, pornography and pedophilia cause in professionals. We can see that the routine of these professionals can become quite dark because they continually come across disturbing images or videos. This is why it is important to follow up very close to the team to detect any negative impact these activities may be causing.
Watch the documentary The Moderators:
Even if there is all this concern of companies like Google and Facebook and so many other online services, it is important to take steps so that you, colleagues, friends and family are not exposed to this type of explicit and offensive content, as just as professionals who work with content moderation, any user can suffer some kind of negative influence, which can even cause trauma and even lead to harmful actions to oneself and others.
A quite simple way to restrict access to explicit content is to activate the search engine service called safesearch , which makes offensive content not displayed in the results on internet searches.
In another article we demonstrate how it is possible to configure the safesearch on your computer or on the network of your company, school or residence .
The use of internet use management services is also recommended in both companies and homes. That allow you to control the use of the network and avoid navigation to sites 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 kind of interaction with these contents. And as active internet users, let us enjoy the multitude of services that make it easier and make our lives better, avoiding any kind of negative content on the network.
