‘I didn’t eat or sleep’: a Meta moderator on his breakdown after seeing beheadings and child abuse

Solomon, a Meta moderator in Accra, said the scale and depravity of what he was exposed to was far darker than he ever imagined. Photograph: NurPhoto/Getty Images

When Solomon* strode into the gleaming Octagon tower in Accra, Ghana, for his first day as a Meta content moderator, he was bracing himself for difficult but fulfilling work, purging social media of harmful content.

But after just two weeks of training, the scale and depravity of what he was exposed to was far darker than he ever imagined.