 In 2023, the nationality that spent the most time on Pornhub was, you guessed it, Filipinos. And we were also second in terms of traffic volume to the site, behind only the US. I don't think they surprised anyone. Pinoy's are not necessarily more Malibog, but I think we are certainly a lot more repressed than other nationalities. Having been brought up in a still very traditional conservative country. So when we get access to a free site with a cornucopia of girls, guys, positions and toys, of course it's only natural we collectively say, Uy, bold. And really, porn and the internet go together like Sagoan Gulaman, Soft Drink in Plastic, Public Money in Private Pockets. As the song from Avenue Q so eloquently puts it, The internet is for porn. Marky! The internet is for porn. What are you doing? Why you think the net was born? PORN! PORN! PORN! But the internet is also for a lot of other things too. Professional, business-like things. Our kids hangout on the internet for pity's sake. How do we make sure that respectable people and minors don't see the seedy underbelly of the internet? The porn, the scams, the stalking. Filipinos stepped up here too. And for this episode, we turn to the unsung hero of the modern internet, the Filipino content moderator. It was like some sort of a promotion for me. When I was already in the highest tier of technical assistance and support, this value-added service for the company was actually offered to me. The moderator we spoke to asked not to reveal his name or his pictures. We addressed him by the alias John and cannot also disclose the specific companies he worked for. But you've probably been on their sites. They are the big brands of the internet. As with any US outsourced labor, John's employer was a call center and John has the polished air of a very seasoned agent. Getting tapped to be a content moderator was a promotion for him. And it's a very competitive position. Lots of people want it. Like 200 people that probably ask for that particular job. There were only like seven people that were accepted. And I'm one of them. Why was it so appealing? Was the pay higher? Better working hours? One was probably the pay. Second is also access. Ha! Sorry. I can imagine. Yeah, you know, if you're in the BP industry, you're kind of restricted. So, most of the time you would want to have that pleasure of actually accessing everything. The pleasure of accessing everything. Moderators or super users who have unrestricted access. They can see everything you've given the site. They can see everything you've done on the site. As the moderator, you kind of have access to everything. Aside from, of course, the government IDs and stuff. That wouldn't be required to begin. So, if your phone numbers, yes. If it's like a website that needs phone numbers. But if it doesn't need that, the email address, the IP address. So, all of those can be tracked. And everything extends to my activity on the site. So, for example, I'm on a social media platform and I click on, oh, I crushed ko toh, then I click. I mean, that's invisible to other users. Only I would know na clinic ko tong person na toh. But that's also tracked. Yes, it's tracked and even the private messages. And they don't just view. They can also act as you. So, not only are your PMs not actually PMs. They are not private. Moderators can see them. They may not even be messages that you sent. Since the moderators can send messages from your account under your name. It doesn't mean that if it's a private message that the administrator would be able to read that. They can. And they can even act as you. So far, this sounds amazing. This is the superpower of the 21st century. Unrestricted access to hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of accounts. The power to sensor, the power to track, the power to speak in someone else's name. The power to know the real identity behind the anonymous names we use on the internet. In computer jargon, these moderators would be described as super users or users with admin privileges. And just like superheroes, they use these super powers to fight the evil of the internet. Or at least evil as defined by multi-billion, multinational tech corporations who are eager for their users to feel safe and unbothered by the scum and villainy of the internet. The regular users, the ones that were legitimately using the site or the product for what it was intended. So what kind of content would they post versus the bad actors? The ones that were abusing the site? And what kind of content were they trying to post? Okay, so it's pretty much varied. Just like any other website in the US. The good ones probably would be the ones interacting with other users. The ones that have a great idea, they share on the platform. Those are like the good ones. The bad ones, of course, are the ones that are interacting with other users differently. So they also post content like porn, child pornography, a lot of them. You kind of get the guess of like, whoa, I thought Americans were kind of sane on a good day. But the amount of really, really muddy, let's say that in a nice way, content is really huge. 40% porn, child pornography, most probably around 20%. Sorry, 9%? 10%? Like 10% would be a good amount. And then actions against users, spam and all that probably would get like the rest of it. So not too much like violence or women being beat up or terrorists beheading people and things like that? Not a large... Yeah, not so much. So there's a lot of porn and there's a sizable chunk of child porn which is horrible. But other than that, almost everything else the moderators have to weed out during their shifts falls into the very bland actions against users category. And I have to say, I'm disappointed in the internet. I thought it would serve up more fails than that. Again, don't get me wrong, child porn is terrible, but I thought the depravity would be much more varied. In the course of our conversation, John mentioned a Nadine Lustre movie from 2022 where she plays a content moderator haunted by what she's seen. Kaya kita ka na ba ng beheding video yung dahan-dahan pinumpungutan? Hindi any videos na. Mokas ako dyan. Pero lang mo depende pa rin yun eh. Minsan kapag mapurul yung kochil yung gagamitin, yun maalat yun. Minsan naman, isang hatak lang, panggal nakagad yung ulo. Pero minsan, dila lagare. Pag ganon, kadalasan, umo-ungul sila na parang hayo. The title of the film is The Leader and this is the kind of sick stuff I thought the moderators would be facing. I'm happy to know that it's not that the majority of the time it's boobies and even more than boobies, it's fangs. Users being nasty to other users. And we also have, of course, capability to edit things. So if there's profanity, no small things like that, small content that you can manage on your own, then we can do that as well. And if it's pretty much your site, your rules, so if ever there's someone doing anything other than what's allowed, then you can take care of it yourself. My impression now is that the moderator's job is just like a traditional offline moderator to encourage civility and ensure a conducive space for the sharing of thoughts. Very civilized and you can see that in the name itself, moderator. The moderator is to ensure an average amount of intensity, quality or degree to make sure things don't get too hot or too cold. That's not to say the job isn't tough. And if you're looking to be a content moderator, you have to have a strong stomach. We're like built like we've been raised by wolves, you know? Something to that extent. John was eventually promoted to setting up and running a team of moderators and he made hiring decisions. His ideal candidates were ones that didn't have overly sensitive sensibilities. It's not like I'm trying to like not give a chance to, you know, the snowflake generation, but that's not particularly what we're trying to find in people whenever they're going to be joining like the content moderation team. Look at a particular post like content and not see it as something that would degrade myself or something that would affect me. And you do have to deal with a lot of posts. On a single shift, you can have like six, for example, you have 600,000 or 600,000 or to 800,000 inquiries. One shift, one person. That's not going to be managed by one person. Sometimes we have three, four people on one shift and sometimes they overlap with other shifts because it's like a 24-7 operation. Not going to lie though. Everything so far has been the exact opposite of what I was expecting. For the content, I thought there would be really horrible stuff and there is, but not in the degree and quantity I was expecting. For the moderators themselves, I thought they would be shattered PTSD wrecks. For the work volume, I thought it would be an overwhelming mass of posts. Moderators always harried and frenzied during their shifts. I imagine the employer to be a cruel taskmaster, always rushing employees, demanding impossible things. But this isn't the case at all. Yes, it's a standard eight-hour shift. If it calls for them doing overtime, then we ask politely. If they don't accept, then the next chef actually covers for that. A turnover would usually give or take around 5-10% per annum. That's very high in terms of a smaller team. But it's like for 200 people in a team, which we kind of had in the later part of that program. That's relatively small already. Yeah, 10% churn after a year. That sounds pretty decent actually. I would imagine in the traditional BPO setting, isn't the attrition rate even higher than that? If you think about it, the work versus their previous positions most probably would be like a heck of a lot different. In technical support and customer support, we probably would handle like sometimes 40-60 calls per day. And if you transfer to the job that we have for most of these people, it's relatively small. There's no set goal for how many people you have to interact. Initially, I was disappointed by the reality of the clean-cut corporate approach to content moderation. But then I started to enjoy the idea of the chaotic internet meeting its exact opposite. A very structured, organized, calm, and efficient on-task operation where the net can be aimless, moderation is precise, where the net can be obnoxious, moderation can be tempered, where the net can be in your face, moderation can melt into the shadows. Ironically, the hyper-efficient clinical approach to moderation is where you can see moderation's teeth, where it allows itself a modicum of force because no one takes the job of moderator more seriously than the moderators. Or to put it another way, who watches the watchers? Spoof, basically, your account. Yeah, see how dangerous that can be if it gets into a bad person, I have to say, on what you can do. You can switch users. You can look at a profile, their activities and whatever community they post in. You can actually see all of that. No one ever questions the classic superhero. When Uncle Ben says, with great power comes great responsibility, we all just assume that of course Spider-Man will not abuse his power. But we don't live in that kind of world. We live in the world of Alan Moore heroes where they are flawed and can be tempted and corrupted. What prevents a super user from going rogue and abusing his power? John explained that fittingly, for the employees of monolithic tech companies, everything is tracked. So while yes, an admin may go rogue, it will be very quickly discovered and dealt with. And this is the part of the story that truly frightened me. I've had like a certain person use someone's access, but he kind of got caught in the CCTV camera. When he went home, there were already police. Ah, wow. Yes, so. And they kind of do everything already. Everything already. The only thing that they probably have to do is just deny it and nothing else. But everything was documented? Yes, properly documented. Everything is seen. This was a local. So he was working in one of your centers. He poofed somebody, but he abused his privileges. When he went home, the authorities were already waiting for him at his place. And he wasn't even, like he went home the morning. I think he drank a few bottles first before he went home around lunch, but the police were already there. So our police are on the ball, I mean, our local authorities are also very... Because there's like a certain procedure already for that. In place. In place. And I think that's part of like the, you know, foolproofing everything because the vendor needs to be assured that if that ever happens, you can secure it in place. You know what to do and like, you know, there are procedures in place and, yeah, ah, that's ano ah. That's both comforting and terrifying at the same time. Imagine the efficiency. May ginawakan kalokohansprabaho, call it a day and toss back a few. Pagbalik mo sa bahay, nagigintay na yung police. Planchado na lahat. There's a checklist in place for actions to take. A playbook to take down a superhero. Everything we've learned about the world of content moderators is about professionalism, organization, corporate guidance. So actually this lighting response to a transgression shouldn't surprise me. But just hearing about it in action, how quickly it acted when its roots were broken, how adroitly it utilized local law enforcement, the speed of the machine that sometimes I feel were all just cogs in, really stunned me. I came to this story expecting to hear about the absolute worst parts of the internet and how the people who have to deal with that feel drained and gutted after. That's not how it's like. It's a well-paid job with a caring organization behind you, at least for moderators in the Philippines. Did John ever resent the fact that he was outsourced labor? That while he did a crucial role for these tech giants, he was never really their employee? They're the normal employees and then there are the outsourced jobs that are here in the Philippines. Is there any kind of resentment na, hey, how come we don't have free food in the cafeteria and how come we don't have those kind of benefits? That's a little, you know, if you think about it, it's pretty elementary. If you think about those things like small perks because you can also get that whenever you're in that particular third party company that you work for. And then you can use the experience that you have coming from that third party company and use it to your advantage to work for the actual company itself. Later on. You leverage your experience then go straight to, yeah. Later on in your career, because that's what happened to me. So my assumptions were all wrong on this one which made the most startling thing about it even scarier for me. Moderation is about rule setting, but more importantly, it's about rule enforcement. And the way big tech companies halfway around the world can move almost instantly to ensure that even just one erring moderator can be apprehended as quickly as possible is a testament to the power of a well-oiled, well-funded organization. An organization that wants to make sure that you have the most innocuous, pleasant and some would call bland interactions on their sites. Makes me kind of miss the CD underbelly of the internet's younger days. Everything now is very safe. Everything now is very corporate. This was Tech Show but Friendly, hardware sugars podcast. I'm your host Anton and this was produced by Nana Nadal. Our next episode will be on January 28th where we explore the death of the internet cafe and wonder if it should be resurrected. Thanks for lending me your ear. Paming saan may nagtatanong kumikilala ba kaming computer shop na trusted yung hindi kalolo ko hin? Actually, meron kami. Full service PC store ang hardware sugar. Nagbabenta kami ng PC components. Nagbabenta rin kami ng fully assembled rigs. We clean computers. Kasama na rin yung excellent table management namin and CPU cooler repasting sa cleaning. We also clean and repaste GPUs. Nasamakati yung physical store namin and you can also buy from our site www.hwsugar.ph na 100% palaging up-to-date yung inventory dun. Kung instock yung item sa amin, available yun sa site. We also ship nationwide. Thanks for watching and maybe one of these days, magkita tayo sa shop.