01. 11. @ 20:45 | The Cleaners

When you post something on the web, can you be sure it stays there? Enter a hidden shadow industry of digital cleaning, where the Internet rids itself of what it doesn‘t like. Who is controlling what we see… and what we think?

Enter a hidden third world shadow industry of digital cleaning, where the Internet rids itself of what it doesn‘t  like.  Here  we  meet  five  “digital  scavengers” among  thousands  of  people  outsourced  from Silicon Valley whose job is to delete “inappropriate” content  of  the  net.  In  a  parallel  struggle,  we  meet people around the globe whose lives are dramatically affected by online censorship. A typical “cleaner” must  observe  and  rate  thousands  of  often  deeply disturbing images and videos every day, leading to lasting psychological impacts.

Yet  underneath  their  work  lie  profound  questions around  what  makes  an  image  art  or  propaganda and  what  defines  journalism.  Where  exactly  is  the point  of  balance  for  social  media  to  be  neither  an unlegislated space nor a forum rife with censorship? THE  CLEANERS  struggles  to  come  to  terms  with  this new  and  disconcerting  paradigm.  Evolving  from  a shared  social  vision  of  a  global  village  to  a  web  of fake news and radicalization, the film charts the rise and fall of social media’s utopian ideology.