PHILIPPA KOWARSKY

THE CLEANERS (2018)
Starring Illma Gore. Directed by Hans Block and Moritz Riesewick.

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.

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? Evolving from a shared social vision of a global village to a web of fake news and radicalisation, 'The Cleaners' charts the rise and fall of social media’s utopian ideology.

REVIEWS The Cleaners - Gruelling but engrossing