Behind the Screen
Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media
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Narrated by:
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Laura Darrell
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By:
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Sarah T. Roberts
About this listen
An eye-opening look at the invisible workers who protect us from seeing humanity’s worst on today’s commercial internet
Social media on the internet can be a nightmarish place. A primary shield against hateful language, violent videos, and online cruelty uploaded by users is not an algorithm. It is people. Mostly invisible by design, more than 100,000 commercial content moderators evaluate posts on mainstream social media platforms: enforcing internal policies, training artificial intelligence systems, and actively screening and removing offensive material - sometimes thousands of items per day.
Sarah T. Roberts, an award-winning social media scholar, offers the first extensive ethnographic study of the commercial content moderation industry. Based on interviews with workers from Silicon Valley to the Philippines, at boutique firms and at major social media companies, she contextualizes this hidden industry and examines the emotional toll it takes on its workers. This revealing investigation of the people “behind the screen” offers insights into not only the reality of our commercial internet but the future of globalized labor in the digital age.
©2019 Sarah T. Roberts (P)2019 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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- Narrated by: Andrea Emmes
- Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Buying groceries, tracking our health, finding a date: whatever we want to do, odds are that we can now do it online. But few of us ask how all these digital products are designed, or why. It's time we change that. Many of the services we rely on are full of oversights, biases, and downright ethical nightmares. Chatbots that harass women. Signup forms that fail anyone who's not straight. Social media sites that send peppy messages about dead relatives. Algorithms that put more black people behind bars.
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Pretty good but not complete
- By Casey on 10-29-17
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The Filter Bubble
- What the Internet Is Hiding from You
- By: Eli Pariser
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In December 2009, Google began customizing its search results for each user. Instead of giving you the most broadly popular result, Google now tries to predict what you are most likely to click on. According to MoveOn.org board president Eli Pariser, Google's change in policy is symptomatic of the most significant shift to take place on the Web in recent years: the rise of personalization.
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Now in the top 3 best books I've ever read
- By Brian Esserlieu on 05-26-11
By: Eli Pariser
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Artificial Intelligence: 101 Things You Must Know Today About Our Future
- By: Lasse Rouhiainen
- Narrated by: Rodger Paxton
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Artificial intelligence is changing our world faster than we can imagine, and it will impact every area of our lives. And this is happening whether we like it or not. You might have heard that many jobs will be replaced by automation and robots, but did you also know that at the same time a huge number of new jobs will be created by AI? This book covers many fascinating and timely topics related to artificial intelligence, including: self-driving cars, robots, chatbots, and how AI will impact the job market, business processes, and entire industries, just to name a few.
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Completely useless
- By Joe V on 03-29-19
By: Lasse Rouhiainen
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Program or Be Programmed
- Ten Commands for a Digital Age
- By: Douglas Rushkoff
- Narrated by: Douglas Rushkoff
- Length: 3 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In 10 chapters, composed of 10 "commands", Rushkoff provides cyber enthusiasts and technophobes alike with the guidelines to navigate the digital new universe. In this spirited, accessible poetics of new media, Rushkoff picks up where Marshall McLuhan left off, helping listeners to recognize programming as the new literacy of the digital age - and as a template through which to see beyond social conventions and power structures that have vexed us for centuries.
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Good book, but with some crazy ranting
- By Bjarne on 02-05-15
By: Douglas Rushkoff
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Disruptive Marketing
- What Growth Hackers, Data Punks, and Other Hybrid Thinkers Can Teach Us About Navigating the New Normal
- By: Geoffrey Colon
- Narrated by: Geoffrey Colon
- Length: 6 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Now that 75 percent of screen time is spent on connected devices, digital strategies have moved front and center of most marketing plans. But what if that's not enough? What if most people ignore company messages? What if consumer engagement never goes further than the "like" button? A sobering reality is hitting marketers. Technology hasn't just reshaped mass media, it's altering behavior as well. And getting through to customers will take some radical rethinking.
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Needed. Valuable. Welcome contribution.
- By Oliver Nielsen on 04-26-17
By: Geoffrey Colon
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The Future of the Professions
- How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts
- By: Richard Susskind, Daniel Susskind
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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This book predicts the decline of today's professions and describes the people and systems that will replace them. In an Internet society, according to Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind, we will neither need nor want doctors, teachers, accountants, architects, the clergy, consultants, lawyers, and many others to work as they did in the 20th century.
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I Hope It's Not All True
- By John on 05-01-16
By: Richard Susskind, and others
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To Save Everything, Click Here
- The Folly of Technological Solutionism
- By: Evgeny Morozov
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 15 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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In the very near future, smart “technologies and big data” will allow us to make large-scale and sophisticated interventions in politics, culture, and everyday life. Technology will allow us to solve problems in highly original ways and create new incentives to get more people to do the right thing. But how will such “solutionism” affect our society, once deeply political, moral, and irresolvable dilemmas are recast as uncontroversial and easily manageable matters of technological efficiency?
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The about face shift in view I've been looking for
- By McKane on 03-18-15
By: Evgeny Morozov
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Modern Monopolies
- What It Takes to Dominate the 21st Century Economy
- By: Nicholas L. Johnson, Alex Moazed
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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What do Google, Snapchat, Tinder, Amazon, and Uber have in common, besides soaring market share? They're platforms - a new business model that has quietly become the only game in town. A platform, by definition, creates value by facilitating an exchange between two or more interdependent groups. So, rather than making things, they simply connect people. The advent of mobile computing and its ubiquitous connectivity have forever altered how we interact with each other. Yet, few people truly grasp the radical structural shifts of the last 10 years.
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Mostly notes for myself or highlights of the book
- By Gary H. on 11-16-17
By: Nicholas L. Johnson, and others
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Little Rice
- Smartphones, Xiaomi, and the Chinese Dream
- By: Clay Shirky
- Narrated by: George Backman
- Length: 3 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Since the 1990s China has been climbing up the ladder of quality, from doing knockoffs to designing its own high-end goods. Xiaomi - its name literally means "little rice" - is landing squarely in this shift in China's economy. But the remarkable rise of Xiaomi from startup to colossus is more than a business story because mobile phones are special. The common desiderata of the global population, mobile phones offer the kind of freedom and connectedness that autocratic countries are terrified of.
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Informative and up to date.
- By Kevin on 01-10-16
By: Clay Shirky
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Big Data in Practice
- How 45 Successful Companies Used Big Data Analytics to Deliver Extraordinary Results
- By: Bernard Marr
- Narrated by: Piers Hampton
- Length: 7 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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The best-selling author of Big Data is back, this time with a unique and in-depth insight into how specific companies use big data. Big data is on the tip of everyone's tongue. Everyone understands its power and importance, but many fail to grasp the actionable steps and resources required to utilise it effectively. This book fills the knowledge gap by showing how major companies are using big data every day, from an up-close, on-the-ground perspective.
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Good book for managers
- By Capnbody on 01-08-18
By: Bernard Marr
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Anthro-Vision
- A New Way to See in Business and Life
- By: Gillian Tett
- Narrated by: Imogen Church
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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While today’s business world is dominated by technology and data analysis, award-winning financial journalist and anthropology PhD Gillian Tett advocates thinking like an anthropologist to better understand consumer behavior, markets, and organizations to address some of society’s most urgent challenges.
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A Woke Joke-My First Returned Book
- By Bob Flob on 06-16-21
By: Gillian Tett
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The Fourth Industrial Revolution
- By: Klaus Schwab
- Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith
- Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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World-renowned economist Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, explains that we have an opportunity to shape the fourth industrial revolution, which will fundamentally alter how we live and work.
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Friendly reminding : On August 15th, 1971, the dec
- By steve white on 03-24-21
By: Klaus Schwab
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White Feminism
- From the Suffragettes to Influencers and Who They Leave Behind
- By: Koa Beck
- Narrated by: Koa Beck
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Addressing today’s conversation about race, empowerment, and inclusion in America, Koa Beck, writer and former editor-in-chief of Jezebel, boldly examines the history of feminism, from the true mission of the suffragists to the rise of corporate feminism with clear-eyed scrutiny and meticulous detail. She also examines overlooked communities - including Native American, Muslim, transgender, and more - and their ongoing struggles for social change.
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Visionary!
- By J. F. Beck on 01-06-21
By: Koa Beck
What listeners say about Behind the Screen
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Micah D
- 05-07-21
I could only make it through a third
Maybe it gets better? To be sure, my review is based only on the first 2.5 hours and should be taken with a huge grain of salt. I just couldn't persist, despite being highly interested in the topic. I experienced the reader as talented but uncomfortably mismatched to this type of book. The writing, to me, started to feel like a book-length Huffington Post article. The author is clearly bright and capable, and I suspect she'll produce authoritative works in the future. Shoot, the writing might be far stronger in the latter part of this book. But I'm moving on now. I'd love to get to a better part, but I'm too bothered by the oddly mismatched intonation of the reader, the flexing word choices and jargon, and the fact that I've not yet learned something new/useful in 2.5 hours.
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