Although there are probably a few of you that don’t agree, I’m sure that most people are pretty stoked that they don’t have to deal with images of child porn, animal torture – you know stuff like Chinese bear bile farming but way worse – decapitation and whatever else when you’re scrolling down your Facebook feed. I know I am at least, but I’m sure like me you’ve never bothered to think why this was the case and probably just assumed Facebook had some amazing algorithm for it.

Well you would be wrong. It turns out that it’s all down to some low paid workers in the Philippines, as discovered by Adrian Chen for Wired who visited a smilier operation for the secret sharing app Whisper. It turns out it’s way cheaper for big companies to outsource stuff like this to the Far East because it’s way cheaper than getting people in the western world to do it.

It’s estimated there are around 100,000 people employed in this industry and apparently they earn a few hundred dollars a month for the privilege despite working long intense hours and having to deal with a whole bunch of disturbing shit that nobody who doesn’t want to should really have to see. One man said that he had recently been contacted by Facebook and offered a job that paid $312 a month, which equates to roughly $2 and hour.

Considering some of the horror stories from these jobs I’m not sure if that’s really enough, but I guess that’s the going rate. One woman is quoted as saying that she doesn’t think she’ll ever recover from having witnessed a man rape a child during the beginning of her career whereas another guy says that he’s put on weight drastically and started drinking heavily to try and deal with having to watch decapitaitons and animal torture all day.

It’s a tough job, but I guess somebody has to do it for the greater good. Might be better if they paid a bit better though right?