Moderators are often the first line of defense for reporting and responding to various crimes playing out online, whether video or photos are uploaded or happening in real time. As they look through flagged content, moderators might see similar things as first responders. “That’s not something anyone could have ever imagined, but it’s a reality that these are the first responders of the Internet,” says Nigam.

Rather than thinking about where companies fail to support content moderators or if the psychological toll is an inextricable part of the work, Nigam believes we should instead be focusing on giving moderators more robust care, and giving more recognition to the importance of moderators for the work they do. He also believes we should train them similarly to how we train law enforcement.

Thousands dredge through the worst of the web to protect those online from trauma-inducing content – but what happens to the workers?

Source: The Human Cost of Monitoring the Internet – Rolling Stone