[Themaintainers] The Cleaners

Wed Sep 26 09:42:15 EDT 2018

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
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Themaintainers mailing list
>> Themaintainers at lists.stevens.edu
>> https://lists.stevens.edu/mailman/listinfo/themaintainers
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Assistant Professor
>> Department of Science, Technology, and Society
>>
>> Virginia Tech
>>
>> leevinsel.com
>> Twitter: @STS_News
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Themaintainers mailing list
>> Themaintainers at lists.stevens.edu
>> https://lists.stevens.edu/mailman/listinfo/themaintainers
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Themaintainers mailing list
>> Themaintainers at lists.stevens.edu
>> https://lists.stevens.edu/mailman/listinfo/themaintainers
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Themaintainers mailing list
> Themaintainers at lists.stevens.edu
> https://lists.stevens.edu/mailman/listinfo/themaintainers
>
-- 
Assistant Professor
Department of Science, Technology, and Society
Virginia Tech
leevinsel.com
Twitter: @STS_News
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.stevens.edu/pipermail/themaintainers/attachments/20180926/9ef5bc4b/attachment-0001.html>