Ben Valentine, “Don’t Follow the Wind: Non-Visitor Center”, Hyperallergic , February 2016

The Stories of Content Moderators, Hosted on

the Darknet

by Ben Valentine on February 4, 2016

Screenshot from Eva and Franco Mattes, ‘Dark Content’ (2015) (all images courtesy the artists)

Eva and Franco Mattes’s latest work, Dark Content (2015–ongoing), is a series of videos only

viewable through the Tor Browser and hosted on the darknet. One new video is released

approximately every month. In its form of distribution and its content, the series — which

launched first as an exhibition at Essex Flowers — raises and grapples with a host of pressing

questions: Do we consider anonymous speech online and off a civil right? If so, how do we

defend that right, given invasive surveillance by the US, China, and England? What constitutes

illegal speech, and how do we protect ourselves from it in unmoderated spaces like Reddit or on

darknet platforms? While “terrorism” is used as a hammer to destroy protected speech, cyber-

libertarians too easily ignore the very real challenges free speech presents. DarkContent focuses on the people so often ignored in these discussions, yet integral to all of them:

the content moderators.

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Trailer for Eva and Franco Mattes, ‘Dark Content’

Moderators are the people who remove content deemed unsuitable by the platforms that hirethem. This can mean it violates a local law that, for instance, bans blasphemy or criticism of aleader; international laws regarding child pornography or copyrighted content; or rules that arecompletely platform-specific, such as Facebook and its nudity policy. More often than not,moderators are dealing with a complex interplay of guidelines, legalese, and guesswork doneby users with access to flagging and reporting buttons. Poring over troubling content for hours aday and making decisions about what’s acceptable is tough work. Many content moderators areexposed daily to videos and photographs that would make most of us sick.

In Dark Content, we hear the personal stories of moderators through computer-generatedvoices, matched with default avatars from video editing software. The stock images are crudelyphotoshopped to become puppets, mouthing the anonymized stories. In episode three, a voiceexplains the reasonable deletion of illegal content, then begins discussing the process ofcontrolling visitor experiences, something all private businesses have a right to do, to an extent.The voice admits, “There were times in which videos were removed that I believe were onlydone so to appeal to political reasons.” That these companies and their platforms hold so muchof our speech today, but have economic, social, and even political reasons that would causethem to limit that speech is a distressing reality. “An order to remove content based on a

political decision is just par for the course,” the voice continues. It’s alarming how little

transparency exists regarding what’s removed online, by whom, and why.

Eva and Franco Mattes, ‘Dark Content,’ episode 3 (2015), installation view at Essex Flowers, NewYork (photo by Kyle Khnodell)

Due to non-disclosure agreements and the nature of the work, the Matteses initially had trouble

finding subjects, until they decided to pose as a software company seeking to hire their own

content moderators. Ultimately, the artists anonymously interviewed over 100 moderators and

plan on releasing roughly 12 videos in total, with three available so far.

Over email, Matteses explained to me that a big part of the reason they wanted to talk to

content moderators is how vastly different their experience of the internet is from that of the

average browser. While much of our time online is spent on Web 2.0 platforms where we

publish, share, comment, and like things, “content moderators do the opposite: they remove. As

much as we strive for attention, they strive for invisibility. In a sense they are the anti-internet,”

Screenshot from Eva and Franco Mattes, ‘DarkContent,’ episode 3 (2015) (click to enlarge)

the Matteses wrote.

The lack of objectionable content in our dailyfeeds is only due to the hard work of contentmoderators. They look through posts — eitherall of them or only those flagged byusers — and manually delete whatevermaterial each platform has defined asunwanted. “They fascinate us becausethey’re caught in the middle of many differentforces: political, moral, ethical, and evenreligious,” the Matteses said. “In a sense

they’re a strange mix of a cop, a priest, an editor, an overzealous granny, and an exterminator.”

And although most popular social media platforms manage to keep their sites clean of illegal orotherwise violative content through moderation, that content generally doesn’t disappear —it ends up on the darknet. This has helped earn the darknet a reputation of illegality and danger,one that the Matteses want to complicate:

We wanted to invite people to browse anonymously into this side of the internet most ofus are not familiar with. The darknet is largely presented by mainstream media as amarketplace for drugs, weapons, and pornography, but it is also the platform that allowedfree speech for activists living in oppressive regimes, during the Arab Spring for example,or the revelations of whistle-blowers like Edward Snowden … The general thought is thatif you want to be anonymous, it means you’re doing something illegal. This is incrediblywrong. Anonymity is a fundamental right. It is at the base of democracy. Think aboutvoting, for example: it is expressed anonymously to avoid pressure, manipulation, or trade… There is no democracy without anonymity. 

Screenshot from Eva and Franco Mattes, ‘Dark Content,’ episode 1 (2015)

So the real question behind the work is: what kind of internet do we want to support: one whereany content deemed objectionable by a platform or government can simply disappear withoutdebate? Dark Content asks us to begin exploring the darknet and see for ourselves ifanonymity, free speech, and even dangerous speech are worth protecting. To learn how tosee the work, listen to the stories, and make your own decision, follow the instructionsto download the Tor Browser and visit Dark Content at this URL: http://5cqzpj5d6ljxqsj7.onion.