Somebody Has To Do It

By Brad

Yesterday, the New York Times published a fascinating piece highlighting a darker side of the Internet: the men and women who spend their days policing social networking sites for illicit and unlawful imagery. Here’s how it starts:

Ricky Bess spends eight hours a day in front of a computer near Orlando, Fla., viewing some of the worst depravities harbored on the Internet. He has seen photographs of graphic gang killings, animal abuse and twisted forms of pornography. One recent sighting was a photo of two teenage boys gleefully pointing guns at another boy, who is crying.

An Internet content reviewer, Mr. Bess sifts through photographs that people upload to a big social networking site and keeps the illicit material — and there is plenty of it — from being posted. His is an obscure job that is repeated thousands of times over, from office parks in suburban Florida to outsourcing hubs like the Philippines.

Read the whole thing, as they say.