American Sweatshop looks at content moderation. We see rows of people lined up in front of computers. Their job is to either accept or delete things that have been reported as objectionable. They delete all the horrible stuff so it doesn’t come across your timeline – violence, hate speech and other unacceptable material.

American Sweatshop centers around the awful stuff that gets posted online. It focuses on several people with the same job and we see how watching all that disgusting material changes them.

Daisy (Lili Reinhart) is the main character. She sees a particular video that really affects her. It obsesses her. She goes vigilante looking for the guy who posted it. She’s out to get him.

Ava (Daniela Melchior) works in the chair next to Daisy. She’s been there longer and tries to let it all roll off her back and not make her faint or throw up like some of the workers.

Bob (Joel Fry) deals with the job by having occasional outbursts of anger. He’ll throw things or shout or stomp out of the workroom. Joel Fry was excellent as the volatile Bob.

Paul (Jeremy Ang Jones) is a new guy. They have a pool going on when he will fall out of his chair in horror at what he’s seeing. One of the most interesting conversations in the movie was when Paul told Daisy he was writing a program that could do what they do. She told him it had been tried and didn’t work because computers didn’t have empathy. She said, “We’re being paid for our grief.”

Daisy tries to deal by staying high or getting drunk or having sex. None of it takes her mind off the guy she wants to find from the video. The majority of the movie is about Daisy’s actions around the one video that broke her. Lili Reinhart did a wonderful job with the part.

It’s sad that people have to be employed in jobs like this. It’s sad because the world is full of so many bad people who want to share their evil online. Thank goodness for the moderators doing their jobs so at least some of the horrible stuff people post online never reaches our eyes.

Uta Briesewitz directed American Sweatshop. It’s currently streaming on Hulu/Disney+. I’d love to hear your thoughts if you watch it.