Welcome to If Then, the show about how technology is changing our lives and our future.

I'm Shannon Paulus.

Hey everyone, welcome to If Then.

We're coming to you from Slate and Future Tense, a partnership between Slate, Arizona State University, and New America.

We are recording this on the afternoon of Monday, October 7th.

On today's show, we'll be talking to Sarah Roberts, an assistant professor at UCLA,

an author of the book Behind the Screen, Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media.

After the interview, my colleague Aaron Mack will join me for Don't Close My Tabs,

where we talk about the best things we saw on the web this week.

That's all coming up on if then.

At a company called Megatech, there are recent college graduates

who spend their days watching

some of the most gruesome, violent, and graphic videos that you can find on the internet.

They make less than $50,000 a year.

They are only allowed to do the job for one year straight because it's so mentally grueling.

They actually never have insurance.

They can't use Megatech's rock climbing wall.

They aren't on track to be promoted within the company.

But the job they do is critical to Megatech.

Without it, Megatech users would have to watch all those ghastly videos instead.

You're probably a Megatech user yourself.

Megatech is a fake name for a real company.

...