People contracted to comb through YouTube content and clean the platform up have complained of long hours and dwindling mental health, according to an investigation by The Verge published Monday.

One of those contractors explained to The Verge that at a site based in Austin, Texas, moderators might be hired to weed out content that breaches rules relating to copyright, hate speech and pornography but also “violent extremism.” It seems moderating that last is taking its toll on some contractors.

“In the past year, Peter has seen one of his co-workers collapse at work in distress, so burdened by the videos he had seen that he took two months of unpaid leave from work,” wrote The Verge. “Another co-worker, wracked with anxiety and depression caused by the job, neglected his diet so badly that he had to be hospitalized for an acute vitamin deficiency.”

That particular contractor was hired because he spoke Arabic, but he said watching videos depicting extremist acts of violence such as beheadings can be difficult. He and other employees are hoping at some point they’ll at least be taken on full-time at Google LLC.

Other employees spoke of stress, long shifts with few breaks, poor wages and the onset of post-traumatic stress disorder.

One contractor explained a panic attack she suffered outside of work: “Children being tied up, children being raped at that age, three years old. I saw the rope, and I pictured some of the content I saw with children and ropes,” she said. “And suddenly I stopped, and I was blinking a lot, and my friend had to make sure I was okay. I had to sit down for a second, and I just exploded crying.”

Earlier this year, a similar investigation found that contractors who moderated Facebook were also suffering from stress and in some cases PTSD. They explained that they were being paid low wages to sift through images and videos of the worst aspects of human nature. Such work has been described as “the worst job in technology.”

Photo: Andrew Perry/Flickr