Description

‘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

Publisher Review

The dank underside of social media, its cruelty and delusions, have become, our shared affliction. It needed an accomplished novelist to explore humanely the damage. Hanna Bervoets has richly obliged in this superbly poised, psychologically astute and subtle novel of mental unravelling. At its wonderful, hallucinatory climax, Kayleigh, the shattered protagonist, asks on our behalf the one true question, and the spellbound reader will usefully struggle for an answer. -- Ian McEwan, author of Atonement 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 We Had To Remove This Post is one of the most fascinating books I've read in years. Hanna Bervoets has created 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. A brilliant peek behind the curtains at what happens when we put our trust in social media. Believe me when I say you've never read anything like it. -- Kristen Arnett, author of Mostly Dead Things and With Teeth I thought it was incredible and has real cult potential. -- Alice Slater * Tik Tok * Powerful, discussable, and a harbinger of a voice-in-translation to watch * Booklist Starred Review * Scathing, darkly humorous exploration of the impact of VR, IR . . . Bervoets just gets it. This is, unironically, a novel for our time. * Kirkus Starred Review *