We Had To Remove This Post
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- 7,99 €
Publisher Description
Does what you see change who you are?
Kayleigh is broke. Out of options, she takes a job as a content moderator, reviewing horrors and hate online and deciding which posts need to be removed. Kayleigh is good at her job, and in her colleagues she finds a group of friends, even a new girlfriend. For the first time in her life, the future seems bright . . . But soon the job begins to shift Kayleigh’s world in alarming ways. In the glare of the screen, how long can Kayleigh hold on to her humanity?
Hanna Bervoets' stunning novel We Had To Remove This Post is translated from the Dutch by Emma Rault.
‘This novel gives us an acid glimpse into a new form of labor existing today . . . Fascinating and disturbing’ - Ling Ma, author of Severance
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bervoet's fleeting yet magnetic English-language debut offers a glimpse into the world of social media content moderators. Kayleigh, in need of cash to pay off credit card debt, takes a job at Hexa, a subcontractor for an unnamed video platform. Along with a ragtag team, she spends her days watching disturbing videos and flagging those that break the platform's guidelines. While adjusting to the job, she meets Sigrid, a fellow moderator, and the pair start dating, but as weeks pass, exposure to thousands of horrifying videos—among them graphically described clips of self-harm, animal abuse, and praise of the Holocaust—takes its toll, pushing some moderators to their mental edges and inspiring others to subscribe to "flat Earther" conspiracy theories. After Kayleigh quits, a lawyer hounds her to join a lawsuit against the platform along with other former employees, and Bervoets frames the story like a mystery, slowly revealing the fractured relationships and circumstances that drove Kayleigh away from her job. Whether carefully dissecting ever-evolving corporate rules or chronicling a night at the bar with her workmates ("we pour our leftovers into each other's half-empty glasses"), Kayleigh is an engaging narrator. The story is brief, but it packs a wallop.
