Modern Painters

sure I work for Google.”EVA MATTES: That makes this a labor issueas well. They work from home most of thetime. The jobs are usually either outsourced orcrowdsourced—to Asia, to the Philippines, buta lot of workers are actually American.FM: It’s an unregulated form of work: reallytaxing, but there’s no psychological support.We found a way to interview some contentmoderators. Each resulting video representsone worker and his or her story, told in theirwords, but with the moderator representedby cheap-looking digital avatars, because wehad no idea who we were talking with—theirage, gender, nationality, nothing. Everythingwas done through anonymous chats or e-mails.TB: The sort of morality that would lead one todecide whether or not to take down, say, aSRUQRJUDSKLFYLGHRLVFXOWXUDOO\VSHFLÀF³WKHVHpeople are shaping culture.EM: Yeah, exactly. In fact, most of the workersare based in the Philippines. Because of colonial-ism, they speak English and have absorbedAmerican cultural values. It would be harderto outsource the job to a country that is totallydifferent culturally and economically. Butwe were shocked when we stumbled upon othermoderation requests that didn’t seem to comefrom a corporation, but from a government.FM: It started with a content moderatorrecounting how one of the tasks he was givenwas to remove photos of Osama bin Ladenafter he was killed, around the beginning of2EDPD·VUHHOHFWLRQFDPSDLJQ1RWVSHFLÀFimages of him dead, just any image or videosfeaturing him. I thought, “That has nothingto do with moral issues, these images are notgraphic or pornographic or violent, that soundslike a political decision.” It turns out that a lotof moderators received similar requests fromtheir companies, to remove things based on``````political decisions, not moral orethical ones.EM: We collected information aboutvideos of Buddhist monks settingWKHPVHOYHVRQÀUHEHLQJUHPRYHGfrom Facebook. We tracked down theVSHFLÀFYLGHRWKDWZDVUHPRYHGDQGyou could hardly see that there’ssmoke; it wasn’t removed because it’sgruesome or violent, so there must beanother reason. Facebook is reallypushing hard to get into the ChinesePDUNHWZKLFKVHHPVWRKDYHKDGDQLQÁXHQFHTB: And how did the interviewees respond tothat shift into more political territory?FM: Most of them said almost the same thing:“This is not censorship because they workfor a private company.” Which is a problematicposition. The New York Times is a privatecompany, and yet it has some kind ofaccountability for what itdoes or does not publishbecause it’s consideredan editorial platform.Social media doesn’t fallinto that; we consider itto be neutral, a mirrorof society. But if it’sa mirror, it’s a verydistorted one, and itaffects the way we live.Let’s say you remove allsame-sex kisses fromFacebook. That’s goingWRLQÁXHQFHWKHZD\\RXperceive the world.TB: Right. There’s thebasic tenet of mediatheory, which is thatmedia doesn’t justUHÁHFWRXUFXOWXUHLWalso produces it.FM: We’re more aware``````of that with TV, newspapers, ormagazines. But why don’t weperceive social media as having thatkind of power? We’re not aware ofthe agendas. You know more or lesswhat Fox News’s agenda is, so youtake everything they say with agrain of salt. You don’t perceiveYouTube as having a political agendaor even a moral agenda, but it does.TB: You started releasing the videosyou made on the dark web.EM: They’re shown as installations in a galleryor museum, and then the same works aredistributed online. There are two reasons weGHFLGHGWRXVHWKHGDUNZHE7KHÀUVWLVYHU\simple: Most of the time when content isremoved from the surface Internet, the Internetwe’re familiar with, it ends up on the darkweb. The second reason is that we wanted toencourage people to venture into the dark,QWHUQHWWRÀQGWKHVHYLGHRVEHFDXVHLW·VDQanonymous platform and we’d like to encouragepeople to use the Internet in an anonymousZD\,W·VDFRXQWHUDFWLRQWRWKHZD\WKHRIÀFLDOInternet is coming to rely more and moreon actual names, personal data, companies’forcing us to supply them with our information.FM: Most of the time when the dark Internetgets discussed in the mainstream media, it’s inrelation to drugs, pornography, and weapons,but it’s not just that. It’s also a platform thatallowed a whistleblower like Edward SnowdenWRUHOHDVHKLVÀOHV,W·VDSODWIRUPWKDWKHOSHGduring the Arab Spring, that allowedanonymous communication between those livingunder oppressive regimes.EM: Most people think “I don’t care aboutbeing anonymous because I have nothing tohide.” But anonymity is one of the fundamentalelements of democracy: Voting is anonymousbecause, if it weren’t, you could be pushed ormanipulated in a certain direction.PORTFOLIO // TRENDS // SNEAK PEEKS // NEWSMAKERSBOTH IMAGES: EVA AND FRANCO MATTES``````Eva andFranco MattesABOVE:Still from the “DarkContent” series.BELOW:Still from BEFNOED,2014, a projectin which the artists“give instructionsto anonymousworkers torealize webcamperformances.”``````NEWSMAKER30 MODERN PAINTERS JUNE/JULY 2016BLOUINARTINFO.COM