The CleanersHans Block, Moritz Riesewieck
Who decides whether or not something should appear on Facebook? Can we create a social media platform where violence or hatred is never promoted? Or is this censorship? This neo-noir thriller explores who has the power to decide what we do or do not see. In January, this documentary was nominated in the World Cinema Documentary category at the Sundance film festival.
Anonymous men and women working in small, dark offices are given a few seconds to decide whether an image is right or wrong, permissible or not. Is it publishable or should it be censored? This amounts to no less than 25,000 Facebook posts per day. Some images clearly cross a line of admissibility but others are trickier. What about a nude painting of Trump, for example? Funny or offensive? This raises ethical questions about how far platforms such as Facebook can go in censoring the images of their users. Is giving this power to strangers a good way to censor? The film makes it clear that although Facebook is a large company, it also consists of individuals who feed the machine with photos, data and status updates. These individual employees in their office decide which images actually appear online. As Variety describes it: the conscience of Facebook is outsourced. Block and Riesewieck follow the employees but at the same time they also look for the people who are influenced by their decisions.
Info
Directed by Hans Block, Moritz Riesewieck
Brazil, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, US
2018 90 min.
English, Spanish
Subtitles: English
Programme
ConScience
credits
Director
Hans Block, Moritz Riesewieck
Producer
Christian Beetz, Georg Tschurtschenthaler
Cinematography
Axel Schneppat, Max Preiss
Editing
Philipp Gromov, Hans-Jörg Weissbrich, Markus CM Schmidt
Contact info
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(beschikbaar vanaf 20.03)