By Guardian staff reporter
Publication Date: 2026-02-05 08:00:00
OOn the porch of her family’s home, Monsumi Murmu works from one of the few places where the cell phone signal lasts, balancing her laptop on a mud slab built into the wall. The familiar sounds of domestic life come from inside the house: clanging utensils, footsteps, voices.
A completely different scene is playing out on her screen: a woman is being held by a group of men, the camera is shaking, there is screaming and breathing noises. The video is so disturbing that Murmu speeds it up, but her job requires her to watch it to the end.
Murmu, 26, is a content moderator for a global technology company and logs in from her village in the Indian state of Jharkhand. Their job is to classify images, videos and texts that have been reported by automated systems as possible violations of the platform’s rules.
On an average day, she views up to 800 videos and images and makes judgments that train algorithms to detect violence, abuse and harm.
This work…