We Had to Remove This Post
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3.5 • 26 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
WHAT IS “NORMAL”?
WHAT IS “RIGHT”?
AND WHO GETS TO DECIDE?
To be a content moderator is to see humanity at its worst—but Kayleigh needs money. So she takes a job working for a social media platform whose name she isn’t allowed to mention. Her task: review offensive videos and pictures, rants and conspiracy theories, and decide which need to be removed. It’s grueling work. Kayleigh and her colleagues spend all day watching horrors and hate on their screens, evaluating them with the platform’s ever-changing moderating guidelines. Yet Kayleigh is good at her job, and she finds in her colleagues a group of friends—even a new girlfriend—and for the first time in her life, her future seems bright.
But soon the job seems to change them all, shifting their worlds in alarming ways. How long before the moderators’ own senses of right and wrong begin to bend and flex?
From one of the most acclaimed Dutch writers of her generation, We Had to Remove This Post is a chilling, powerful, and urgent literary masterpiece about who or what determines our worldview, who sets the boundaries, and just how much a person can be asked to accept.
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.
Customer Reviews
Much too short
I feel bad leaving only four stars, because what was there was very well written. It’s just that it feels like this is only half a book. It left me wanting more, but not in a good way. There is so much more potential with this story that was not capitalized on. Just as I was really getting into the book, it was over. I was dying to know what happened next, as Kaleigh’s mental state really devolved from that of normal society’s. Super promising premise, but not worth the money for what it was.
readddd
i personally really liked this. a good length and the writing is wonderful, it’s like a continuous stream of conscious and better yet it’s so REAL, the main character’s voice is something you’d actually say or hear someone say, not even in that pretentious way. and while others hate the ending apparently, i really liked it, and I’d say why I liked it but I can’t do it without making an analytical essay about this book (which I’d gladly do). if you like disturbing plots but not aimless gore and with perfect amounts of timely humor and realism, this is for you.
Fell Completely Flat
This gets two stars because of the voice the book is written in and the quality of the writing. However, the way this ended was just disappointing, puttering out. In a longer novel, one with more. Anything. This ending might have worked, but I hit the end of this book and thought, ‘That seriously can’t be it.’
The only lasting thing I’m taking away from this is how disappointing of an end this had.
Don’t bother buying it, a well written psychosocial horror fanfiction on Archive of Our Own will serve you better.