We Had to Remove This Post

Hanna Bervoets

• Publisher: Harper
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9780063271616
• eBook ISBN:
  9780358622345
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

“A superbly poised, psychologically astute, and subtle novel of mental unraveling.”—Ian McEwan

"A brilliant peek behind the curtain at what happens when we put our trust in social media. Believe me when I say you’ve never read anything like it.”—Kristen Arnett, New York Times bestselling author of Mostly Dead Things and With Teeth

For readers of Leila Slimani’s The Perfect Nanny or Ling Ma's Severance: a tight, propulsive, chilling novel by a rising international star about a group of young colleagues working as social media content monitors—reviewers of violent or illegal videos for an unnamed megacorporation—who convince themselves they’re in control . . . until the violence strikes closer to home.

WHAT IS “NORMAL”?

WHAT IS “RIGHT”?

AND WHO GETS TO DECIDE?

To be a content moderator is to see humanity at its worst—but Kayleigh needs money. So she takes a job working for a social media platform whose name she isn’t allowed to mention. Her task: review offensive videos and pictures, rants and conspiracy theories, and decide which need to be removed. It’s grueling work. Kayleigh and her colleagues spend all day watching horrors and hate on their screens, evaluating them with the platform’s ever-changing moderating guidelines. Yet Kayleigh is good at her job, and she finds in her colleagues a group of friends—even a new girlfriend—and for the first time in her life, her future seems bright.

But soon the job seems to change them all, shifting their worlds in alarming ways. How long before the moderators’ own senses of right and wrong begin to bend and flex?

From one of the most acclaimed Dutch writers of her generation, We Had to Remove This Post is a chilling, powerful, and urgent literary masterpiece about who or what determines our worldview, who sets the boundaries, and just how much a person can be asked to accept.

So what kinds of things did you see?

It’s crazy how often people still ask me that, even though it’s been sixteen months since I left Hexa. People just won’t stop trying, and if my answer doesn’t live up to their expectations—too vague, not shocking enough—they simply repeat the question, putting it slightly differently. “But what’s the worst thing you ever saw?” Gregory, my new colleague at the museum, asks me.

“So what exactly are we talking about here?” That’s my Aunt Meredith, who for years I would only see on the anniversary of Mom’s death, but who has suddenly gotten into the habit of calling me on the first Sunday of every month to ask how I’m doing, and oh yeah, what exactly it was that I saw.

“Why don’t you choose one video, one image, or one post that really affected you.” And there’s Dr. Ana. “Tell me what you thought and felt at the time. Go ahead and make it into an image in your head . . . Yes, a mental image of yourself sitting there and seeing that upsetting image”—and then she pulls out some sort of rod with a light flashing back and forth inside of it.

And now you’ve joined in too, Mr. Stitic. You call me almost every day now. “Please get in touch when you have a moment, Ms. Kayleigh.” Do you even realize that Kayleigh is my first name? You don’t, do you? Of course you got a hold of my details from my former colleagues, who don’t know my last name, and now you’re asking me: “So, Ms. Kayleigh, what kinds of things did you see?”

People act like it’s a perfectly normal question, but how normal is a question when you’re expecting the answer to be gruesome? And it’s not like any of those people are asking out of concern for my well-being. Maybe that’s not so strange—maybe questions don’t stem from interest in the other person so much as curiosity about the lives we might have led (“Gosh, Mr. Stitic, civil law . . . what’s that like?”), but with Gregory and Aunt Meredith, and even with Dr. Ana, I can’t help but suspect a certain amount of lurid fascination, an urge that compels them to ask but that can never be fully satisfied.

I saw a livestream of a girl sticking a much-too-dull pocketknife into her own arm—she really had to jam it in there before a decent amount of blood would come out. I saw a man kicking his German shepherd so hard that the poor animal slammed into the fridge, whimpering. I saw kids daring each other to eat dangerously large amounts of cinnamon in one go. I saw people singing Hitler’s praises to their neighbors, colleagues, and vague acquaintances, publicly, unabashedly, out there for potential partners and employers to see: “Hitler should have finished what he started” below a picture of a group of immigrants crammed into a small boat.

But those are all cop-out examples—you know that, don’t you? Those things have all been in the papers, culled from accounts by other former moderators, though that doesn’t mean I didn’t encounter them too: the abused dogs, the Nazi salutes—and the girl with the knives is a classic, there are thousands of them, one on every street, or at least that’s how I picture it: That house where the bathroom light is still on at night, that’s where she’s sitting alone on the cold, hard floor. But that’s not what people want to hear. They want me to give them something new, things they’d never dare look at, things that are far beyond their imagination, which is why Gregory asks, “But what’s the worst thing you ever saw?” rather than “How is that girl doing now? Were you able to help her, by any chance?” God no, people have no idea what my previous job actually entailed, and that’s partly your fault, Mr. Stitic. After all the news about the lawsuit you’re filing on behalf of my former colleagues, people believe that we all sat there in front of our screens like zombies, that we didn’t know what we were doing, had no idea what we’d gotten ourselves into, that out of the blue we were bombarded with thousands of sickening images that short-circuited the synapses in our brains almost instantly—well, it wasn’t like that. At least not entirely, and not for everyone.

I knew what I was getting myself into. I knew what I was doing, and I was pretty damn good at it. I still remember all the rules from back then and I still apply them sometimes, it happens automatically, an occupational hazard—whether it’s TV shows, video clips, or just things I see in my everyday life. That woman getting knocked off her scooter—can you put that up online? Not if you can see blood. If the situation is clearly comical, then yes. If there’s sadism involved, no. If what’s being shown serves an educational purpose, yes, and ding ding ding, we have a winner, because that exit to the museum parking lot is a hot mess. “They really need to fix that,” as long as I put that in the caption, it’s allowed—see, that’s the kind of thing I’m thinking about as I tear off four tickets for a visitor. And no, it’s not always pleasant having those rules rattling around in my head, but you know what? Part of me is still proud of how well I knew the guidelines. That’s just not what you want to hear, is it?

I haven’t replied to any of your emails. I haven’t returned any of your calls, either—I thought you would have gotten the message by now. I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to join the other plaintiffs. I don’t want to be involved in your lawsuit. But you just keep calling and calling, and today I received your second letter (very elegant handwriting you have, Mr. Stitic).

It’s not that I don’t understand. You’re a lawyer, it’s your job to keep insisting, and you’re pretty well versed in the art of persuasion—don’t think I haven’t noticed how your tone has gotten a little chummier with each message. You know I’m listening, you know I’m getting used to the sound of your voice, so you’ve stopped calling me “Ms. Kayleigh” and are suddenly talking about “the prospect of a decent sum of money,” and to be honest I think it’s pretty creepy that you know how badly I could use a decent sum of money. I’m sure my former colleagues have told you about my debts, and I wonder how that comports with the applicable privacy regulations, but hey, I’m sure you know that better than me.

Two more years at the museum and I will have paid it all off. That is, if I work overtime during the holidays, when the pay’s better, so here’s hoping I get shifts on Easter and Boxing Day too, because no, there’s no way I’m going to join in with this thing, though I understand why my former colleagues have.

I read that Robert sleeps with his taser these days, afraid that terrorists will come and kidnap him at night (the names in that newspaper article had been changed, but “Timothy” can only be Robert, I’m sure of it). That “Nataly” can’t handle loud noises, bright lights, or sudden movement in her peripheral vision (there were a bunch of people who struggled with that, so I’m not sure who Nataly is). I know that many of my former colleagues flinch when someone comes up behind them in the supermarket, that they lie in bed until after dark and then stay up till it’s light—too exhausted to start a new job, they see things, day and night, the same things I don’t like to talk about either, and I’m sorry to say that some of those symptoms aren’t exactly foreign to me. And yes, just like many of my former colleagues, I left Hexa of my own accord—so again, I understand why you’ve come knocking on my door.

But for you to understand why I won’t be taking you up on your offer, there’s something you need to know about me first. The images that keep me up at night, Mr. Stitic, aren’t the gruesome pictures of bleeding teenagers, or the videos of stabbings or decapitations. No, what keeps me awake are images of Sigrid, my dearest former colleague. Sigrid held up against a wall, limp and gasping for air—those are the images that I would like to forget.

So I’m writing to you with a proposal. See it as a deal—a settlement. I’ll tell you about my months at Hexa, about my duties, the rules, the famously deplorable working conditions—things, in short, that are sure to interest you.

And then I will explain why I left Hexa. I’ve never told anyone that, but I will be honest, completely honest. Once you know, you will understand why I won’t become one of your clients, Mr. Stitic—in fact, you probably won’t even want to help me anymore.

All I want in return is for you to keep quiet and leave me alone for good. No emails, no phone calls, no showing up at my door. If my former colleagues ask about me, just tell them I moved abroad, make something up, I’m sure you won’t have any trouble with that.

Be aware, however, that this letter is not an official testimony. I won’t be mentioning the name of the defendant at any point—you know that doing so would be a violation of my contract, I’ve sought advice on the subject, I’m aware of my legal position—so once again: I’m not accusing anyone of anything. I’m only telling you my story, just this once.

There were nineteen people in the October cohort. Before we started we all attended a mandatory training, and what I remember most from that week is Alice, a blond woman on crutches who I’d guess was at least thirty years older than most of us. During a cigarette break, Alice said that before this she’d been a social worker. I remember thinking, What is someone like that doing here? (Later, Sigrid told me that’s exactly what she’d thought about me: What on earth is that Kayleigh doing here? She’d noticed me right away, she said, she thought I was intriguing, with my short hair and wrinkled NOFX T-shirt, I looked like I didn’t care what anyone else thought about me and she found that extremely sexy.) Whenever I peered past my computer screen that week, I’d look at Alice, who always seemed to be completely absorbed in her work, her crutches leaning at an angle against her desk. In the breaks I usually went up to her. She was old enough to be my mother, and I felt attracted to her in a strange, not necessarily erotic way. Alice didn’t say much—she was hard to read—but on day three I heard her say that she thought people who chewed gum were gross (“It’s the texture, like a booger in someone’s mouth”) and I immediately swallowed my Stimorol.

I didn’t talk to anyone else from our cohort. I wasn’t here to make friends, I told myself—after all, wasn’t that how things had gone south at my last job? Thanks to my having been so, shall we say, sociable, I was now stuck with a blocked credit card. The main reason I’d applied for a job at Hexa was because their hourly rate was twenty percent higher than at the call center I was working in at the time.

The ad hadn’t said much else—apart from a salary indication, it only offered a succinct job description: Hexa was looking for “quality assurance workers”—I had to look up what that meant, but for twenty percent more pay I would have been happy to pick up garbage. At the interview, which wasn’t particularly in-depth, I was told that Hexa was just a subcontractor. In actuality, I would be “evaluating content” for a large and powerful tech company whose name, they told me before I’d so much as touched a contract, I was not ever, under any circumstances, allowed to mention. I soon learned that this platform—your defendant—determined all of our rules, working hours, and guidelines. And all of the posts, images, and videos we’d be reviewing had been reported as “offensive” by users or bots on this specific platform and its subsidiaries. On the first day of our weeklong training, we, the October cohort, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and eager to please, did our very best not to mention this actual employer, until we discovered that our trainers, a guy and a girl who, they told us, had started out as moderators themselves—thereby suggesting, whether they meant to or not, that this kind of ascent was within the realm of possibility for all of us (a motivating prospect that I think compelled some of the people from our cohort to stay with Hexa longer than was good for them)—both used the name of the platform freely. The platform feels this, they said, The platform allows that, and we soon began to understand that we were mainly supposed to maintain secrecy from the outside world. Here, in the office tower where Hexa was based, safely tucked away in a business park with its own bus stop, we were among equals, brethren in a secret society. This training was an initiation, a hazing ritual to make sure we were fit for admission. At least, that’s what I believed back then.

We were given two manuals that first day, one with the terms and conditions of the platform and one with the guidelines for moderators. We didn’t know at the time that those guidelines changed constantly and that the tome we received was already outdated when it was put into our hands. We weren’t allowed to take the manuals home with us, so we learned by doing. On the first day of training, a series of text-only posts appeared on our screens, and then, from day three, photos, videos, and livestreams. Each time, the question was: Is it okay to leave this up on the platform? And if not, why not? That last part was the trickiest. The platform doesn’t allow people to post things like “All Muslims are terrorists,” because Muslims are a PC, a “protected category,” just like women, gay people, and, believe it or not, Mr. Stitic, heterosexuals. “All terrorists are Muslims,” on the other hand, is allowed, because terrorists are not a PC and besides, Muslim isn’t an offensive term. A video of someone flinging their cat out the window is only allowed if cruelty is not a motive; a photo of someone flinging their cat out the window is always allowed; a video of people kissing in bed is allowed as long as we don’t see any genitalia or female nipples; male nipples are permitted at all times. A hand-drawn penis in a vagina is allowed; digital drawings of vulvas are not allowed; a naked child can only be shown if the image pertains to a news story, unless it’s about the Holocaust; pictures of underage Holocaust victims with no clothes on are forbidden. A picture of a gun meets the standards, but not if the gun is being offered for sale. Death threats against a pedophile are allowed; death threats against a politician are not; a video of a religious zealot blowing themselves up in a daycare center should be removed, on the grounds that it’s terrorist propaganda, not because it depicts violence or child abuse. If we selected the wrong category, our assessment was considered incorrect, regardless of whether or not the post needed to be taken down. We reviewed two hundred posts a day that first week (yes, once we’d been hired we would have to do a fair amount more than that), and at the end of each day we were shown our accuracy scores. Hexa aimed for an accuracy score of 97 percent, and initially I was frustrated when I didn’t get above 85. Until I started sneaking peeks at Kyo’s screen. Kyo, who may have been ten years younger than me—the ballpoint doodles on his backpack told me he’d probably only just finished high school—often sat next to me, and his score was never over 75 percent, which was somewhat encouraging. But when Alice told me at the bus stop on day four that she’d correctly evaluated a whopping 98 percent of her “tickets,” I decided to lay off the beer that night to see if I’d do any better the next day.

I don’t know how Sigrid fared during those first few days. If you asked me when I truly noticed her for the first time, I would say it was on the last day of our training, during our exam. It ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• We Had to Remove This Post
• Selected Sources
• About the Author
• Copyright
• About the Publisher