[Themaintainers] The Cleaners

Sun Sep 23 09:51:00 EDT 2018

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/ <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 <mailto:themaintainers-bounces at lists.stevens.edu> <themaintainers-bounces at lists.stevens.edu <mailto: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 <mailto:connect at camilleacey.com>>
> Cc: Themaintainers <themaintainers at lists.stevens.edu <mailto: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 <mailto:connect at camilleacey.com>> wrote:
> https://blog.tidelift.com/1m-to-pay-open-source-maintainers-on-tidelift <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
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