Fellows

I think we are winding down the “Women in Translation” rec list! Or at least, what’s left of it is significant outnumbered by the other things now on my TBR. But last night I finished We Had to Remove This Post by Hannah Bervoets, translated from Dutch by Emma Rault. This novella was book #19 from the list, and is about a woman who works as a content reviewer for a big social media corporation.

This book rockets by; it’s only 134 small pages, so things devolve quickly. The meat of the story is about the impact of the job on the protagonist, Kayleigh, and her coworkers, as narrated by Kayleigh to an attorney in the aftermath of the job.

I think the book could have benefitted from being a big longer, giving us some more time to get to know Kayleigh and her comrades at the start, but assuming they were all relatively normal people when they began, you get a pretty grim picture of their constant exposure to the utter dregs of the internet changes them.

One guy comes in with a taser one day to threaten a manager who gave him too low a ranking on his accuracy in deciding whether posts stay up or not. He’s back at work days later. Another worker, not long out of high school, becomes a flat earth conspiracist after reviewing their videos day in and day out. Holocaust denial starts sprouting among them. They drink, they smoke, the jokes they share amongst each other become increasingly dark and echo the language they see in the posts they review.

A lot of the impact is filtered through the lens of Kayleigh’s relationship with one of her coworkers, Sigrid. Kayleigh and Sigrid’s differing views on their relationship becomes a significant point of contention as the book progresses. As Sigrid turns to increasingly ridiculous solutions to the obvious trauma the job is inflicting on them (she’s convinced powdered supplements and going to bed at 7:30 can turn things around), Kayleigh continues to cling to Sigrid as a buoy, past the point of rationality.

It opens up a necessary conversation about the impact of jobs in content moderation. We started with a group of people who were, presumably, relatively normal, and watch how their sense of logic is eroded both by constant exposure to violence and conspiracies, as well as secondary trauma.

It also toys heavily with the unreliability of our own perception: who is more right about their relationship, Kayleigh or Sigrid? Is there a “true” answer, or only each of their increasingly disparate realities? It plays into the book's overall themes on censorship and viewpoint. Who decides? Who's version of truth is true? The hairsplitting minutia that govern the rules on what the moderators should or shouldn't leave up recur again and again; late in the story, Sigrid and Kayleigh argue over their own sex tape, about whether it would be taken down for sexual coercion or not.

I would have liked a longer book with a deeper dive into the characters and their descents, but the current length keeps the book punchy, if it leaves you with questions. As more and more of life goes online, what is the best way to handle content moderation? Because this book definitely portrays the existing system as untenable.