The present podcast was developed and recorded by us, two anonymous data workers based in Germany. We are content moderators for a large social media platform working through an outsourcing company in Berlin, where we don’t have any prospects of raises in pay or better working conditions. As immigrants, our bachelor’s degrees are not accredited, and our residence permits in Germany are tied to the work contracts. This forces us into precarious forms of occupation and makes us ‘prisoners’ of our circumstances. We are not even allowed to access all the personalized data our employer collects about our performance.

Accordingly, the goal of this podcast is twofold. On the one hand, we want to give social media users an overview of how their data (such as posts and messages) are processed and repurposed for the profit of platform owners. For this, we describe a typical day in our occupation, delineating how we are silenced by social and company-enforced taboos, constantly pressured by key performance indicators, and harmed by the actual content of our tasks. On the other hand, we want to encourage other workers to step forward and share their experiences publicly.