We Had To Remove This Post – Bervoets Hanna (2022)

To be a content moderator is to see humanity at its worst - but Kayleigh needs money. That's why she takes a job working for a social media platform whose name she isn't allowed to mention. Her job: reviewing offensive videos and pictures, rants and conspiracy theories, and deciding which need to be removed. It's gruelling work. Kayleigh and her colleagues spend all day watching horrors and hate on their screens, evaluating them with the platform's ever-changing moderating guidelines. Yet Kayleigh is good at her job, and in her colleagues she finds a group of friends, even a new girlfriend - and for the first time in her life, Kayleigh's future seems bright. But soon the job seems to change them all, shifting their worlds in alarming ways. How long before the moderators' own morals bend and flex under the weight of what they see? We Had To Remove This Post by Hanna Bervoets is a chilling, powerful and gripping story about who or what determines our world view. Examining the toxic world of content moderation, the novel forces us to ask: what is right? What is real? What is normal? And who gets to decide? Translated by Emma Rault.