A former social media content moderator has spoken about the emotional toll of the job, calling it “traumatising” at times.
The man, whose identity remains private, shared his experience in an interview with VICE’s Informer series. He worked at Facebook, where his role involved reviewing harmful content daily. The nature of the job left a lasting impact on him, and after leaving the company, he was diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
The man explained that employees were warned about encountering “disturbing” content, but the actual extent was never clear.
“You don’t fully understand what that means until you’re in the job. It’s hard to measure how extreme the content is because the numbers aren’t shared with employees,” he said.
He estimated that 5-10% of the content he reviewed each day was potentially traumatising.
The former moderator described the types of material he dealt with daily, including hate speech, graphic violence, and animal abuse.
“You see dead bodies, murders, and people celebrating killing someone. You even see animals being barbecued alive,” he shared. “It took me a long time to realise how much this affected me.”
Initially, the man didn’t believe in PTSD, admitting he thought it was a sign of weakness.
“I used to think PTSD wasn’t real. I thought people were just being overly sensitive,” he said. However, his experiences forced him to seek therapy, helping him work through the emotional reactions that surfaced.
One person commented, “I can’t imagine seeing the worst of humanity every day. Huge respect to moderators for their strength.”
Another said, “Moderators do the job no one wants to do but is so necessary. They deserve recognition.”
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