[Themaintainers] The Cleaners

Wed Sep 26 10:24:51 EDT 2018

If anyone has a need to interview someone who does this kind of content
cleaning for a living, @maidoftin via Twitter is a good contact.

-Angela

Angela Galvan
Eresources Manager
Brown University Library
asgalvan at brown.edu

On Wed, Sep 26, 2018 at 9:42 AM Lee Vinsel <lee.vinsel at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hey, everyone.
>
> Sorry if someone already posted this and I missed it.
>
> I think it may have been Sarah T. Roberts who coined the term Commercial
> Content Moderation, and we had a good discussion of this essay of hers in
> my Maintainers grad seminar last semester:
> https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1012&context=commpub
>
> Tarleton Gillespie also has a new book out on the topic. Several people
> have told me it is excellent, approachable, and useful for undergrad
> courses.
> https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300173130/custodians-internet
>
> Not sure about your question re: availability, Camille.
>
> Best to all,
>
> Lee
>
> On Wed, Sep 26, 2018 at 9:26 AM Camille E. Acey <connect at camilleacey.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Does anyone know if The Cleaners is available to view in the US?
>>
>>
>>
>> Camille E. Acey
>>
>> "Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and
>> that is an act of political warfare." - Audre Lorde
>>
>> -------- Original message --------
>> From: misha rabinovich <mishawagon at gmail.com>
>> Date: 9/26/18 9:05 AM (GMT-05:00)
>> To: p.y.georgiadou at utwente.nl
>> Cc: themaintainers at lists.stevens.edu
>> Subject: Re: [Themaintainers] The Cleaners
>>
>> Hello Folks,
>>
>> There is an artist team Eva and Eva Mattes who have a series of artworks
>> & installations about the dark content moderators on YouTube. These are in
>> the forms of installation and even a short video trailer (if you scroll
>> down) where they use the actual words of the moderators but anonymize the
>> voice & visuals. Anyway I'm not necessarily an advocate of their projects
>> in general but this installation is quite interesting and topical to this
>> thread. http://0100101110101101.org/dark-content/
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Misha
>> __
>>
>> Misha Rabinovich
>> Assistant Professor of Interactive Media
>> University of Massachusetts Lowell
>> Art & Design Department Mahoney Hall
>> 870 Broadway St., Suite 1, Office 216B
>> Lowell, MA 01854-3088
>> p: (978) 934 - 5792
>> misharabinovich.com
>>
>> On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 12:26 AM <p.y.georgiadou at utwente.nl> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Jérôme
>>>
>>> Thank you for the link to The Moderators. Indeed, much more telling with
>>> regard to working conditions and conveniently short  for discussing with
>>> students. I wonder whether the protocols of inappropriate content
>>> categories are available somewhere, or are kept completely under wraps. Or
>>> are the protocols themselves inappropriate content?!
>>>
>>> Regards
>>>
>>> Yola
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *From:* Jérôme Denis <jerome.denis at mines-paristech.fr>
>>> *Sent:* Sunday, September 23, 2018 3:51 PM
>>> *To:* Georgiadou, P.Y. (ITC) <p.y.georgiadou at utwente.nl>
>>> *Cc:* lee.vinsel at gmail.com; themaintainers at lists.stevens.edu
>>> *Subject:* Re: [Themaintainers] The Cleaners
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Hi everybody, thank you for the links!
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> “The Cleaners” was broadcast on French TV a few weeks ago. A great film
>>> indeed, though the setting is a bit disturbing, since most of the footage
>>> is a reconstitution, as well as the ‘cases’ that we follow from one side of
>>> the Web (agencies, social networks) to the other (the cleaners).
>>>
>>> It does tackle interesting issues, though, such as the commitment of
>>> these workers who strive to keep the Web free of trash. And the nightmarish
>>> balance between moderation and censorship.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Before this one, about a year ago, another documentary, which was shot
>>> in a real “moderation factory”, was published on Vimeo : The Moderators
>>> <https://vimeo.com/239108604>. It’s shorter (which is great if you want
>>> to show it to your students), doesn’t address all aspects of the problem,
>>> but is somehow more “telling”, especially in regards to the work conditions
>>> (it notably shows a few training sessions). A nice addition to explore what
>>> some of the maintenance of the Web takes…
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Jérôme
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Le 23 sept. 2018 à 15:08, <p.y.georgiadou at utwente.nl> <
>>> p.y.georgiadou at utwente.nl> a écrit :
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Dear all
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> This is an extraordinary documentary on *The Cleaners* of internet
>>> content :
>>> https://www.cnet.com/news/the-cleaners-sundance-documentary-review-dirt-on-social-media/
>>>  , I assume of great  interest to all maintainers.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> “The "cleaners" of the title are the internet's content moderators: the
>>> men and women employed to analyse your videos, photos and social media
>>> posts and decide if they're offensive or A-OK. In the past few years, the
>>> rise of fake news
>>> <https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-google-twitter-2018-election-prevent-fake-news-senate/>,
>>> social media bubbles and increasingly polarised discourse around the world
>>> have led to hard questions for Facebook, Twitter and Google
>>> <https://www.cnet.com/news/the-honeymoon-is-over-in-silicon-valley-facebook-google-twitter/>.
>>> So you might assume these internet giants employ armies of highly trained
>>> experts to act as guardians of our delicate sensibilities.”
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> YG
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *From:* themaintainers-bounces at lists.stevens.edu <
>>> themaintainers-bounces at lists.stevens.edu> *On Behalf Of *Lee Vinsel
>>> *Sent:* Sunday, September 23, 2018 1:45 PM
>>> *To:* Camille E. Acey <connect at camilleacey.com>
>>> *Cc:* Themaintainers <themaintainers at lists.stevens.edu>
>>> *Subject:* Re: [Themaintainers] $1m to pay open source maintainers on
>>> Tidelift
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks for sending this out, Camille!
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Andy, I, and others have been talking a lot about issues related to
>>> this. We believe that humans have a deep need for recognition, but
>>> ultimately good feelings aren't enough, and real recognition must also
>>> involve actually valuing the work in the sense of $$$$.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> As David Edgerton and others have pointed out, Maintainers are sometimes
>>> quite well paid, and if we can look back into the quickly retreating past
>>> when there were strong unions in the USA, Maintainers were frequently union
>>> leaders.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> But we are also aware and interested in the many cases where Maintainers
>>> aren't well rewarded today. Andy and I are really inspired by Stephanie
>>> Hoopes and her United Way project called ALICE, which stands for Asset
>>> Limited Income Constrained Employed and focuses on the working poor
>>> <https://www.unitedwayalice.org/>. In some work we did with Stephanie,
>>> we saw that there was a large overlap between ALICE households and what we
>>> might call Maintainer occupations.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> A final thought: we should also pay attention to the large amount of
>>> human effort, like open source maintainer work, that falls largely outside
>>> of traditional markets, including the kind of domestic labor examined
>>> in the literature on social reproduction
>>> <https://www.plutobooks.com/blog/social-reproduction-theory-ferguson/>.
>>> This includes a lot of care work obviously. And on that front, I've been
>>> inspired not only by Nancy Fraser's recent writings on care but also by Evelyn
>>> Nakano Glenn's book, Forced to Care: Coercion and Caregiving in America
>>> <https://www.amazon.com/Forced-Care-Coercion-Caregiving-America/dp/0674064151>,
>>> which does a great job especially with the gendered and racialized nature
>>> of the topic.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks again for the post and for continuing to take interest in
>>> maintenance/Maintainers.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Lee
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, Sep 22, 2018 at 8:50 PM Camille E. Acey <connect at camilleacey.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> https://blog.tidelift.com/1m-to-pay-open-source-maintainers-on-tidelift
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> "How can we ensure that the open source software we rely on continues
>>> to get even more awesome and more dependable?
>>>
>>> At Tidelift, we believe the solution is hiding in plain sight: pay the
>>> maintainers."
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Camille E. Acey
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> "Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and
>>> that is an act of political warfare." - Audre Lorde
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> Assistant Professor
>>> Department of Science, Technology, and Society
>>>
>>> Virginia Tech
>>>
>>> leevinsel.com
>>> Twitter: @STS_News
>>>
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> --
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Science, Technology, and Society
> Virginia Tech
> leevinsel.com
> Twitter: @STS_News
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