Image Attribution: Fabrizio Matarese / https://betterimagesofai.org / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Human labour like content moderation and data work are important to the maintenance of social media platforms and artificial intelligence (AI) products and services. Workers contribute valuable labour and skill but can end up facing demanding working conditions and uncertainty while shouldering personal risks to well-being. Over the years, different stakeholders have discussed and called for responses to these sectors’ labour issues. Aapti Institute has contributed to some of these discussions, and this year, we were able to be a part of the conversations at All Things in Moderation 2026.
Our session, “Governing Content, Producing Precarity: Labour Conditions in Content Moderation”, opened with a brief presentation contextualising the work of content moderation and safety data work covering the precarities workers face, the role of algorithmic management in shaping their daily conditions, and the transnational structure of the labour supply chain that makes accountability difficult to locate. This was followed by a panel discussion with two former content moderators based in Kenya and a researcher whose work focuses on moderation decision-making, and a concluding open discussion with attendees on what reform in this sector could and should look like.
