[RichardCoulter]

Today's episode explained how the content that they had been exposed to led some moderators to suffer panic attacks, sleepless nights, nightmares about the content that they had removed etc.

One woman described how, when taking her rubbish out one evening, she heard a baby crying in the block of flats where she lived. This triggered something because she had been removing posts containing child abuse and she became convinced that the baby was crying because it was being abused somewhere in the building.

When she came round she found herself sitting on the kerbside.

It was also said that moderation was not used, as was claimed, to protect users from harmful content, but to appease advertisers who did not want to see their ads placed next to innapropriate content.

They went on to say that they were told that controversial posts led to more traffic, which was good for advertising.

This led to a situation where perfectly normal and innocent posts such as pictures of breastfeeding were taken down due to a violation of their no nudity rule, whilst posts containing offensive content were allowed to stay up.

Hopefully the Online Safety Act will alter the attitude of website owners as it will be them that face fines or imprisonment, not the person who posted the offending material, a parent, a mobile phone company etc.