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The worst job at Google: hunting for child porn, beheading videos

Google contractors in charge of removing illegal content also have to watch it.

"Bestiality, necrophilia…body mutilations… explicit fetishes (like diaper porn)" are just a few of the things a Google employee saw while monitoring the company's products for unsavory content, according to a piece at BuzzFeed FWD. The employee says Google usually hires contractors to those positions, so workers are offered no benefits or emotional support to unwind from the twisted sights wrought by the Internet.

"Child porn is the biggest thing for tech companies," writes the employee. US law dictates it must be taken down within 24 hours of notice and reported to federal authorities. Unsurprisingly, the position responsible for tracking, verification, and removal of such material isn't a coveted one on the Google campus. According to the piece at FWD, Google commonly hires people to do that dirty work on contracts of a year or less; they have the potential to be hired full-time after that, but many are simply cut loose.

The author of the piece notes that Google covered one session of therapy, and encouraged him to continue attending (without Google's financial support). But after nine months on the contract, the author was told his contract would expire, rather than roll into a full-time position. While the lack of support for employees traversing the darkest corners of the Internet is disturbing, we wouldn't wish an open-ended full-time job in that field on our worst foes.

Channel Ars Technica