Why a top content moderation company quit the business instead of fixing its problems.

An empty content moderation floor at a Cognizant site in Tampa
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales

Cognizant’s decision to lay off 6,000 people — and give up hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue — demonstrates how hard this job is

Yesterday, as I tried to sort through Twitter’s decision to ban political ads, I got a tantalizing tip from a new source. Cognizant, the professional services company I have spent much of this year investigating over the dire conditions of its workplaces, was exiting the content moderation businesses.

To my surprise, the tip turned out to be true. The company announced it in an earnings call on Wednesday, without mentioning the names of Facebook, Google, or any of its other clients. Later that day, Facebook provided me with a statement from Arun Chandra, the company’s vice president of scaled operations.


By Casey Newton.
Full story at The Verge.