A film by Hans Block & Moritz Riesewieck. 

Dive into a secret, third-world shadow indus­try of online con­tent mode­ra­ti­on. Here we meet five “digi­tal sca­ven­gers,” a handful of thou­sands of peo­p­le out­sour­ced from Silicon Valley who­se job is to dele­te “inap­pro­pria­te” con­tent off of the inter­net. 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 inten­se images every day, from war zone pho­to­gra­phy to por­no­gra­phy, lea­ding to las­ting psy­cho­lo­gi­cal impacts. Yet under­neath their work lies pro­found ques­ti­ons around what makes an image art or pro­pa­gan­da and what defi­nes journalism.

The Cleaners reve­als the bit­ter rea­li­ty that social media is as much a tool for expres­si­on as it is a plat­form for radi­cal­i­zed social and poli­ti­cal opi­ni­ons, the impacts of which are still unknown. Debut direc­tors Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck unpack an urgent con­ver­sa­ti­on sur­roun­ding Silicon Valley’s con­trol over our per­cep­ti­on of free speech that we must all grapp­le with as it threa­tens to unra­vel the fabric of our socie­ty: both online and IRL.

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