Film Screening: “The Cleaners

Event time: 
Wednesday, February 20, 2019 - 6:30pm to 8:00pm
Location: 
Henry R. Luce Hall (LUCE ), 202 See map
34 Hillhouse Avenue
New Haven, CT 06511
Event description: 

THIS EVENT WILL BE RE-SCHEDULED FOR
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 25
6:00 PM
LUCE HALL ROOM 202

SYNOPSIS:
A look at the shadow industry of digital cleaning, where the Internet rids itself of what it doesn‘t like.

While the policies on permissible content are written in Silicon Valley, the global headquarters for content moderation is in the city of Manila in the Philippines. Tens of thousands of young people are employed here as “digital scavengers,” paid to sift through thousands of troubling images and videos a day, leading to lasting psychological impacts. The Cleaners delves into the lives of five of these content moderators, uncovering the complexities and nuances of their often-traumatic working lives.

In a parallel struggle, we meet people around the globe whose lives are dramatically affected by online censorship. Terrorist propaganda and radicalized opinions are rife on social media sites to the extent
that they are now fueling systemic political change and sporadic acts of genocide around the world.

Evolving from a shared social vision of a global village to a web of fake news and radicalization, the film charts the rise and fall of social media’s utopian ideology. – from Gebrueder Beetz films – press kit

Hosted by Eve Zucker, Yale Department of Anthropology