Out Of Sight, Out of Mind - Short film

Social media content moderator Alex is starting to feel the psychological impact of her job. While trying to cope with her current situation, a tragic incident happens. She is pushed to her limit and decides to take action.
______________

A content moderator is responsible for user-generated content submitted to an online platform. The moderator’s job is to make sure that uploaded media is free from any illegal acts, such as hate speech, animal abuse, graphic violence and much more.
Content moderators for Facebook related companies have 9 seconds to watch and evaluate content, skipping any medium is forbidden regardless of how violent it may be. Depending on the company a video/photo quota has to be reached by each employee, which can vary between 250 to 400 videos/photos per day.

There are usually no Psychological evaluations before hiring someone.

Doing this type of work over a longer period of time plus mismanagement, policies shifting almost daily and overwork, can cause significant and/or permanent mental health consequences for employees. Yet human workers are needed for some uploads, as algorithms cannot recognise and sift through everything as accurately.

This movie serves as a critique of the current content moderation system.

Our goal is to raise more awareness for this situation, and we are aiming for more psychological support for these workers! No one should have to develop anxiety or depression because of their work, and their work is important!

Without them we would receive a lot more negative and disturbing media every day than we already do...

This short film is for everybody who's active on social media and advocates for better mental health support systems in our society!

We believe that this topic should be resurfaced. There are plenty documentaries and interviews about it but no story driven film has been made yet, so we thought it would be an opportunity to bring this work environment to an audience through a work of fiction based on what we have gathered from different media sources.

If you want to know more about the job of a social media content moderator, we can recommend this documentary: The Cleaners.

Besides this we are always aiming to bring a diverse cast to the screens of Germany, which means that we are putting extra effort into finding POC actors for this project.

Without money, no film can be made. Even though we are a "No Budget" project we still need to finance the basics such as gasoline costs, extra equipment, set design elements, food, eventual train tickets and comfort for our crew and actors, etc.

Due to corona we are facing a few challenges such as having to follow the safety rules, which involves making sure that everyone is safe, has an FFP2 mask, is tested, has an individual meal pack to avoid contamination and of course the presence of hand sanitiser.

You would be supporting a less stressful working environment for everyone involved.