Every social platform (heck, the internet itself) has its share of disturbing content below the surface. You’ve probably heard of the proverbial “Iceberg”. All of the silly dances, cooking videos, and lip-syncs make up only a small fraction of the content that’s on the actual platform. The rest of the content is really disturbing and not for the faint of heart.
Former TikTok moderators are suing the company for disturbing content
The standard TikTok content can be problematic, but the two plaintiffs, Ashley Velez and Reece Young are after the company for stuff far worse than dance videos. The two had to watch a massive amount of TikTok videos. They would do this for sometimes 12 hours a day. Suffice to say, that’s a LOT of videos that passed their eyes. The main issue that Valez and Young brought up was the massive amount of graphic and disturbing content that they would need to watch. The content would either be violent, sexually explicit, or involve harm done to children. Valez told NPR that some of the content “made me cry for two hours straight.” Not only that but the two plaintiffs were explaining the deplorable working conditions they worked in. The company pushes the moderators to work long shifts without any breaks. That’s brutal if you’re talking about 12-hour shifts; and illegal.
This is a problem with many different sites
Valez and Young are still battling this out in court with TikTok, but the main problem here is much bigger than this case. The sad fact is that, along with people posting cat videos and tech reviews, there’s an army of people who get a ride out of posting disturbing content. The content is posted by people who are disturbed themselves. Video sharing sites like YouTube and TikTok are just too big to moderate the absolutely massive amount of content coming. This is why a lot of people get away with posting disturbing content on the web. Hopefully, TikTok can find a solution to help solve this issue.
