ABOUT

There are tens of thousands of social media content moderators worldwide. Their job is to sift through suspected violations of platform policy, including gore, hate speech, and the most disturbing content humanity has to offer. They make minimum wage, have little to no access to quality mental health services, and often leave with severe stress and anxiety disorders. Forced to sign an NDA and keep what they’ve seen to themselves, the job of the social media content moderator is rarely discussed, and has never been portrayed on screen.

Moderator tells the story of Eliza, a single mother who works the night shift at a company employed to moderate a popular social media platform. She tucks her daughter into bed, heads to work, and sits at her desk, where she is bombarded with her daily onslaught of disturbing images, videos, and text posts. We watch her decide what content should remain on the platform, while also seeing how this job has affected her and her desensitized colleagues who often resort to heartbreaking measures to cope with what they’ve seen.

Most of the disturbing content in Moderator is offscreen, heard, or implied, creating an unsettling atmosphere that responsibly and effectively puts the audience in the shoes of those who have this harrowing job. Moderator exposes these inhumane conditions, while adding to the conversation about the harms of social media as a whole.

LEARN MORE about the plight of social media content moderators HERE.