The Silent Partner Cleaning Up Facebook for $500 Million a Year

Facebook has constructed a vast infrastructure to keep toxic material off its platform. At the center of it is Accenture, the blue-chip consulting firm. The two companies have rarely talked about their arrangement or even acknowledged that they work with each other, but their secretive relationship lies at the heart of an effort by the world’s largest social media company to distance itself from its content moderation practices. Accenture has taken on the work — and given it a veneer of respectability — because Facebook has signed contracts with it for content moderation and other services worth at least $500 million a year, according to the New York Times. The company employs more than a third of the 15,000 people whom Facebook has said it has hired to inspect its posts. As a cost of doing business, it has dealt with workers’ mental health issues from reviewing the posts. It has grappled with labor activism when those workers pushed for more pay and benefits. And it has silently borne public scrutiny when they have spoken out against the work.