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We Had To Remove This Post

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We Had To Remove This Post

By: Hanna Bervoets, Emma Rault - translator
Narrated by: Khristine Hvam
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About this listen

'The dank underside of social media, its cruelty and delusions . . . superbly poised, psychologically astute and subtle' - Ian McEwan, author of Atonement
'A glimpse of the foetid underbelly of the internet' - The Times


We Had To Remove This Post by Hanna Bervoets is a chilling, powerful and gripping story about who or what determines our world view.

To be a content moderator is to see humanity at its worst — but Kayleigh needs money. That’s why she takes a job working for a social media platform whose name she isn’t allowed to mention. Her job: reviewing offensive videos and pictures, rants and conspiracy theories, and deciding which need to be removed.

Kayleigh and her colleagues spend all day watching horrors and hate on their screens. Yet Kayleigh is good at her job, and in her colleagues she finds a group of friends, even a new girlfriend — and for the first time in her life, Kayleigh’s future seems bright.

But soon the job seems to change them all, shifting their worlds in alarming ways. How long before the moderators own morals bend and flex under the weight of what they see?

Examining the toxic world of content moderation, the novel forces us to ask: what is right? What is normal? And who gets to decide?

Translated from the original Dutch by Emma Rault.

'Taut as a thriller, sharp as a slug of ice-cold vodka' - Irish Times
'Fast paced and thrilling, violent and nightmarish' - Kristen Arnett, author of Mostly Dead Things
'An acid glimpse into a new form of labor existing today' - Ling Ma, author of Severance

Family Life Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction World Literature

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Critic reviews

Acid-dipped novella . . . a glimpse of the foetid underbelly of the internet and a sobering consideration of who is deciding what we see, and at what cost. (Siobhan Murphy)
A chilling page-turner . . . the unreliable narrator gives it a strong literary heartbeat — and it’s richly suspenseful too. With a few deft strokes [Bervoets] manages to incorporate all of the ills of social media into one concise story . . . utterly haunting. (Johanna Thomas-Corr)
The setting alone is compelling and has always been in need of an accomplished novelist’s attention . . . The dreamlike climax of the final pages is beautifully wrought. Men might usefully confront in Bervoets a writerly intelligence at once so tender and so willing to look into the abyss. (Ian McEwan)
Bervoets' neat dissection of morality is as taut as a thriller, sharp as a slug of ice-cold vodka. (Catherine Taylor)
Surprising and enigmatic . . . intriguing and frustrating . . . As we spend more and more time in the trickmirror of the internet, how can we know what or whom to believe? (Laura van den Berg)
A very modern tale about the dark side of the internet.
Hanna Bervoet's slim, compelling novel We Had to Remove This Post addresses the foetid morass of social media . . . Bevoets is often acidly funny, especially when demonstraring the workers' mordant, jockish humour.
The dank underside of social media, its cruelty and delusions . . . Hanna Bervoets has richly obliged in this superbly poised, psychologically astute and subtle novel of mental unravelling. (Ian McEwan, author of Atonement)
Extremely gripping and intense edgy queer novel (Andrea Lawlor, author of Paul Takes The Form Of A Mortal Girl)
This novel gives us an acid glimpse into a new form of labor existing today, a job that extracts an immeasurable psychic toll. Fascinating and disturbing. (Ling Ma, author of Severance)
An astonishing and compelling cast of characters, drawn together through circumstance, separated by the same. The novel is fast paced and thrilling, violent and nightmarish and grief-stricken, but also tender and wildly moving. (Kristen Arnett, author of Mostly Dead Things and With Teeth)
I thought it was incredible and has real cult potential. (Alice Slater)
Powerful, discussable, and a harbinger of a voice-in-translation to watch.
Scathing, darkly humorous exploration of the impact of VR, IR . . . Bervoets just gets it. This is, unironically, a novel for our time.
Magnetic . . . Bervoets frames the story like a mystery, slowly revealing the fractured relationships and circumstances that drove Kayleigh away from her job.
All stars
Most relevant
I listened to this in one sitting which was a very interesting experience. I really enjoyed the story and the exploration of how social media and exposure to controversial content that comes to us under the guise of the 'truth', is slowly changing and rewriting how we see reality and our history too, as well as how it is inevitably changing how we are as people, and interpersonally. The ending was a bit of a strange one for me, I'm not sure what it was trying to say? It may have been a little too ambiguous for me. But a great experience listening on the whole, non the less.

Engaging, unique story

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It’s alright. Bit short, bit vague, more about the woman’s relationship with a colleague rather than her experience of being a content moderator. Disappointing

Meh

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