Hans Block, Moritz Riesewieck
Germany, Brasil
2018 | 1:28:00

Enter a hidden third world shadow industry of digital cleaning, where the Internet rids itself of what it doesn‘t like. Here we meet five “digital scavengers”, among thousands of people outsourced from Silicon Valley, whose job is to delete “inappropriate” content of the net. In a parallel struggle, we meet people around the globe whose lives are dramatically affected by online censorship. A typical “cleaner” must observe and rate thousands of often deeply disturbing images and videos every day, leading to lasting psychological impacts. Yet underneath their work lie profound questions around what makes an image art or propaganda and what defines journalism. Where exactly is the point of balance for social media to be neither an unlegislated space nor a forum rife with censorship? THE CLEANERS struggles to come to terms with this new and disconcerting paradigm. Evolving from a shared social vision of a global village to a web of fake news and radicalization, the film charts the rise and fall of social media’s utopian ideology. A typical “cleaner” must observe and rate thousands of often deeply disturbing images and videos every day, leading to lasting psychological impacts We already knew that fake news gets pumped around. And also that our online behaviour determines what gets shown on everyone’s timeline on social media. But that thousands of Filipino content moderators are actively deciding every day what actually gets seen on the web, so that our timelines are pleasant or at least non-violent? This fact was hidden until recently.

Propaganda or free newscast? With hardened eyes and continually learning about sex terms and jihadist flags, this immense workforce decide on thousands of newly placed videos and pictures. In their revealing debut documentary The Cleaners, Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck infiltrate this shadow industry.

The internet is not as neutral and democratic as it pretends. High-placed tech experts and (ex-)cleaners speak about the need for and practice of these actions. From conversations with victims of this censorship, it seems that cleaners help steer the course of history.