Content Moderation Case Study: Xhamster, The 22nd Biggest Site On The Internet, Moderates Content Using Unpaid Volunteers (2020)
Furnished content.
Summary: Formed in 2007 and operated out of Limassol, Cyprus, xHamster has worked its way up to become the 20th most-visited site on the internet. The site boasts 10 million members and hundreds of millions of daily visitors despite being blocked by a number of governments around the world.Being in the pornography business poses unique moderation challenges. Not only do moderators deal with a flood of both amateur and professional submissions, they must take care to prevent the uploading of illegal content. This goes further than policing uploads for unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material. Moderators must also make decisions -- with facts not in their possession -- about the ages of performers in amateur videos to prevent being prosecuted for the distribution of child pornography.Given the stakes, users would expect a well-staffed moderation team trained in the difficult art of discerning performers' ages or at least given the authority to block uploads until information about performers is obtained from uploaders.Unfortunately, this does not appear to be the case. An undercover investigation by Vice shows one of the biggest sites on the internet has chosen to lower its costs by relying on an all-volunteer moderation team.
One member of the discussion is Holger, a user created by VICE News to infiltrate the content moderation team and observe its inner workings. Holger finds himself in a team of over 100 unpaid, voluntary workers called the Reviewers Club, which means he has partial control over which photos stay online and which are taken down.Moderators are guided by a 480-page manual that explains what images and videos are permitted. The "Reviewers Club" then works its way through thousands of content submissions every day, making judgment calls on uploads in hopes of preventing illegal or forbidden content from going live on the site.Decisions to be made by xHamster:
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