  When people have the freedom to create and post content on the internet,
particularly anonymously, they do not always respect the rules and regulations
of the websites on which they post, leaving other unsuspecting users vulnerable
to sexism, racism, threats, and other unacceptable content in their daily
cyberspace diet. However, content moderators witness the worst of humanity on a
daily basis in place of the average netizen. This takes its toll on moderators,
causing stress, fatigue, and emotional distress akin to the symptomology of
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The goal of the present study was to
explore whether adding positive stimuli to breaktimes-images of baby animals or
beautiful, aweinspiring landscapes-could help reduce the negative side-effects
of being a content moderator. To test this, we had over 300 experienced content
moderators read and decide whether 200 fake text-based social media posts were
acceptable or not for public consumption. Although we set out to test positive
emotional stimulation, however, we actually found that it is the cumulative
nature of the negative emotions that likely negates most of the effects of the
intervention: the longer the person had practiced content moderation, the
stronger their negative experience. Connections to compassion fatigue and how
best to spend work breaks as a content moderator are discussed.
