Social media as we know it depends on the work of tens of thousands of content moderators worldwide. Without this hidden army of key safety workers, there is no Facebook, no TikTok, no YouTube and no Google.
These platforms simply couldn’t exist without moderators working every day to remove millions of toxic posts from our feeds. They keep the internet safe for all of us. Yet despite their essential role, which comes at a terrible cost to their mental health, they remain underpaid and outsourced.
That’s why, on the March 9-10, we were proud to co-host a landmark content moderator summit in Berlin, in partnership with Superrr Lab, Foxglove, and German union ver.di.
The summit was the first step towards building an international network of moderators working across the world for the various social media companies. It was the culmination of years of effort and planning by workers, unions and civil society groups to establish and strengthen relationships of trust between tech workplaces and, eventually, across national borders.
Moderators discussed what needs to change to make moderation work safe, fair and valued. They also met with politicians and political parties in Germany and Europe to discuss what they can do to support them.
More details on the larger project can be found on Superrr's blog. Ongoing work includes a recent lawsuit filed by Foxglove against Meta in Kenya.
Press coverage on the Summit included Wired (EN) the Financial Times (EN) and Zeit online (DE), along with a post-Summit write-up by Superrr Lab (DE).