http://www.lis.illinois.edu/people/phd-students/sarah-t-roberts
http://www.lis.illinois.edu/articles/2013/11/roberts-interviewed-npr-regarding-online-content-moderation

Caleris
the work is often performed at sites very removed from the area in which the site operates
companies tend to treat their moderation practices as trade secrets for a variety of reasons, including it'san unpleasant job, unpleasant side of user-generated content in general
part of the problem was finding ppl to talk to
small piece in the NYT on Caleris brought the idea to her attention
PTSD-like symptoms among the Caleris workers
had worked at places like WalMart warehouses
likely on family farms a few generations prior
"outsource to Iowa, not India"
the company doesn't see themselves as sompeting with other US companies, but with companies in India
she was unsuccessful in getting ppl to talk with at Caleris, likely due to stigma associated with the NYT article

Community Guideline Tips screenshot from YouTube
gives a sense of the content disallowed by YouTube, therefore that is the stuff social media moderators are hired to remove

Users may be involved in starting the moderation process as flaggers to route it through the content moderation process
Other automated flagging mechanisms like "skin" and copyright

Understanding CCM
hard to find the workers, and they tend to be under NDAs
leveraged the IRB to convince them to talk

Google, FB, Microsoft all stonewall access to these workers to researchers on CCM

What is the nature of commercial content moderation?
Who are the workers involved in this practice?
What can be gleaned about new kinds of work and working environments engendered by a globally connected world?
What does this work elucidate about the nature of the Internet and social/digital media?

ID and situate CCM of user-generated material in an historical & contemporary cultural context
Map & describe this practice and nascent industry, both geospatioally as well as theoretically (political, etc)
Interact with CCM workers, thru the process tktktk

CCM in context

Pol econ of digital info & media
Schiller, Mosco, Fuchs, Dyer-Witheford....
Critiquing the post-industrial society
questioning embedded values of "neutral" platforms
Tracing systems of tktk

Work sites of CCM
in-house
boutique
call centers (already have beautiful infrastructurs; employees can work on all shifts, rather than when calls are not allowed) [Caleris, MicroSourcing] geospatial and geopolitical reconfigurations in this context [Virtual captives service at MicroSourcing] microlabor websites: "digital piecework" mTurk, oDesk, etc.->the most disconnected and disjointed, least accountability in terms of harm that could come to the laborer (MT: "the snapchat of employment") others have called this "cognitive piecework"

Key points for discussion

• CCM is a central and mission-critical activity in the workflow of online digital media production, yet it is little known, frequently low-wage/low-status, and outsourced.
• It reflects and relies upon new labor forms.
• It is a globalized outsourced labor practice.(nuanced breaking up of work across different strata according to various things like working hours, etc.)
• It troubles notions of the Internet as a free-speech zone.

Often a sense of altruism associated with being the one who makes online experiences better for the general public

"There is no free speech on a commercial site." ~RR, content moderator and manager

CCM puts workers in difficult and even dangerous conditions.

MT: What about those types of problems in other contexts like beef production, chicken, etc.