Working for the Machine - Fragments of life and death of a content moderator
An autoethnographic investigation into the psychological shreder that is content moderation. Revealing what should no longer remain hidden.
by Horacio Espinosa
Cite this work as:
Suggested citation: Espinosa, H. (2026). „Trabajando pala la Máquina – Fragmentos de vida y muerte de un moderador de contenido“. [“Working for the Machine – Fragments of life and death of a content moderator“]. In: M. Miceli, A. Dinika, K. Kauffman, C. Salim Wagner, and L. Sachenbacher (eds.) Data Workers‘ Inquiry. Creative Commons BY 4.0. https://data-workers.org/horacio
This piece can be used, shared, and adapted with proper attribution.
Working for the Machine is still in its infancy, a project not yet fully formed that seeks to unleash its potential. It is neither an academic treatise nor an exercise in catharsis. It is a first-person investigation that attempts to reveal what should no longer remain hidden and yet has remained in the private sphere for far too long.
How is it possible that the working conditions and psychological consequences for Meta’s (Facebook and Instagram) content moderators remain invisible? The answer is simple and painful: a systematic corporate effort to silence them. Aggressive NDAs, union co-optation, threats, manipulation and, above all, the induced fear of speaking out have sustained that wall. From that necessity arises the method: autoethnography. The zine draws on conversations, memories and interviews, but its backbone is my own experiences. I engage with the experiences of former colleagues; their identities and words have been distorted to protect them from occupational or legal risks. If I alter details, it is to preserve their anonymity, not the truth. No one should speak for another. Everyone has their own voice. But this time I am also speaking for those who cannot.
The text is a dismembered corpse, in more ways than one. It is a fanzine made from scraps of a larger work yet to come; hence its fragmentary, almost experimental form. But it is also composed of the remains of the bodies I saw over five years as a content moderator. I have chopped it up and laid it out as if in a butcher’s shop: bodies massacred, tortured, prostituted, exploited, ridiculed, in multiple formats. That is what a content moderator does for Meta — and probably for any Big Tech firm —: look at hundreds, thousands of bodies circulating online and classify them. Although corporate propaganda speaks of ‘protecting communities’, what we do is label.
The job is a psychological shredder. Those of us who perform best—the so-called high performers—are ‘rewarded’ with increasingly violent and degrading streams: people hanging themselves, shooting themselves in the head, abused children. The most atrocious acts produced by human beings, repeated for days on end, like a digital version of A Clockwork Orange. The mind remains on permanent alert.
The text and images that follow may be violent or disturbing. Discretion and common sense are advised before continuing.
About the Author
Horacio Espinosa
If we stick strictly to my professional background, I am a social scientist. I hold a PhD (Cum Laude) in Social Psychology from the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona and have postdoctoral experience in Social Anthropology at the Universidad de Barcelona. Although, to be fair, I have also worked as a music journalist and a server.
My interests have always revolved around urban culture and those less well-lit corners of cities’ histories. But as there is that stubborn habit of eating three times a day, I ended up working for five years as a content moderator for a Meta subcontractor. I have survived both the daily exposure to the worst of humanity and the harshest forms of capitalist corporate culture.
I am grateful to Data Worker’s Inquiry for the opportunity to share this.
