The Cleaners thrusts us into an almost pitch-black office space, with one worker diligently tabbing through photos and videos barely blinking as they alternate between saying “Delete” or “Ignore.” We quickly come to learn that with every delete, the content moderators are wiping something off a social platform, scrubbing away undesirable content that doesn’t fit the guidelines each online corporation enforces, be it Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. In the beginning, the main issue seems to be what is being erased and removed until slowly as the film drags us deeper into the mess that social media has made it’s even more horrifying to consider what is left up on the platform and how the things that are permitted to remain can help give visibility to specific narratives and cause uprisings. This documentary shares a very human-based story, though; instead of looking into the machinations of the corporations solely, we focus in on the people who are affected by this media cleaning and the lives of the content moderators who carry the work out.
Before we see the people directly affected by social media censorship, though, we are introduced to content moderators based in the Philippines. All of them work through an affiliate company but are an essential part of many of the tech giants of today. Some of them started their jobs without any idea what a moderator did, or what precisely they would be asked to do, and one in particular has a family who doesn’t understand what his work entails. As they walk around in public markets and the streets of their cities they are almost invisible, living quiet lives. Yet they hold so much power when they clock into their jobs, every decision they make influencing your feed. They also have a supervisor who oversees their work and only allows a slim margin of error. They all know their job is important, but when we find each of them, there is a schism in their lives that’s formed now that they’ve been in their positions for so long. The job has changed them, affecting their outlook and desensitizing them to much of the content on the internet.
Throughout the film we also see emails sent to the filmmakers by workers who did not wish to be identified but who echoed the same sentiments as those interviewed. The job is full of emotional turmoil as workers parse through highly violent and sexual content for hours. When one of the moderators says she cannot do the job anymore, she is rebuked and told to overcome her feelings and to continue working. Each of the workers that appear on camera recount an image or video that has so severely scarred them that they remember it to this day. Still they keep on because this is their job and they feel a duty to finish the work, some even calling the job a sacrifice. It’s a tragic situation, one that doesn’t seem to have an easy solution either. These international companies are pushing off this work into the Philippines and other non-Western countries because at the end of the day it’s far cheaper to employ third-party companies to do this unenviable job. We see a few investigation sessions where senators question these social media firms on their web-cleaning practices and are met with tallies of the amount of workers dedicated to only this task alone. A few talk about algorithms that help the system, but we later learn from a confidential email sent to the documentary team that this job can’t be done by a computer. The algorithms still haven’t caught up to the technology, and so there’s a human cost to keeping social media “safe.”
Much of the events in the film are set around 2016 to 2017 when the U.S. presidential election, Syrian war, and Rohingya genocide were driving online traffic and discourse. Several activists from Myanmar and Syria are featured as they struggle with the constraints of media platforms. The often gruesome accounts of what is going on in both countries are taken offline quickly after being posted, even as it provides a way for effective reporting on the conditions and treatment of the people in these countries. As journalists scour the web for information to report on the ground, the content moderators get to work quickly removing and restricting these images. Of course, the more frustrating aspect is that divisive rhetoric and even hate speech is left to capture likes and attention on the same platform. Even as these media companies are quick to claim no party affiliation or political bent by allowing certain voices to stay online, their position is clear. They are here to keep the status quo, even going as far as admitting to geo-restricting certain content based on foreign government’s restrictions in order to have more access to potential users.
I saw many parallels in the film to the 2020 documentary The Social Dilemma, which was widely consumed during the coronavirus lockdowns. In a time when so many people were staying in and relying more on their technology to deliver entertainment and news, the film sparked conversation around the apps and systems we’ve become attached to. Social media is a way for you to stay connected, seek out information, have conversations, but the companies who run them only have one objective: keeping you online. If you only see news sources you agree with, are only introduced to people with your same viewpoint, and have your opinions validated constantly, you’ll want to grow a community online. Echo chambers introduced online to drive engagement and clicks aren’t an accident, they are the major goal of these companies. What’s dangerous about this is the way online interactions cause humans to increase their tribalism and become more intolerant of any other beliefs. In The Cleaners, certain industry professionals extrapolate that humans have already gotten so divisive and that social media only expands the issue; in Dilemma, though, we can see it is these online forums that spawned the movements and domestic terrorism we’ve seen since then.
Towards the end of The Cleaners, we see the content moderators begin to further deteriorate over the stress of their job. Those that stay seem to be numb; those that leave come to a breaking point where they are unable to live this life anymore, becoming too affected by the toll of the work they are left with only one option: to walk away. At the end of the day the moderators are not the villains, they are the victims too in this game of corporate greed. While they wipe art, discourse, and war crimes offline they aren’t trying to obstruct a movement or a revolution – they’re just doing a job. Even as moderators leave, taking a stand against their companies and the system, their position is quickly filled by another worker and the cycle continues. The day-to-day workers are fulfilling a need, nothing more. They aren’t changing policy or effecting sweeping systemic issues – that’s left up to the companies and the CEOs in Silicon Valley who we hope will one day change their sites for the better instead of just for the clicks.
The Cleaners will be screened virtually in the IU Cinema Virtual Screening Room on March 22, followed by a discussion entitled “Delete, Ignore, Delete: What Happens When Silicon Valley ‘Cleans’ the Internet?” with Dr. Sarah Roberts. This event is our National Science on Screen Program, which is part of this semester’s Science on Screen series at IU Cinema.
Noni Ford is a freelance writer based in the Midwest and a graduate of the Indiana University Media School. She’s worked in voice coordination, independent film, and literary management, and primarily writes film criticism and short stories.