The Cleaners

Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck's 2018 German documentary is about the invisible labour behind social media. Silicon Valley companies have moved content moderation largely to Manila, and the film follows five people working there. A moderator views thousands of posts a day and decides in seconds whether each one is deleted or left. What reaches them is pornography, terrorist propaganda, child abuse, animal cruelty and recordings of self-harm. While showing what the work does to people, the documentary opens a second question: by whose standards are these decisions made, and who decides what counts as news, as art, as propaganda. It screened at Sundance. Who it's for: viewers who follow technology, labour and censorship. Who it's not for: anyone who cannot tolerate even the description of the content involved; the film does not conceal it.