The Human Toll of Protecting the Internet from the Worst of Humanity

Henry Soto worked for Microsoft's online-safety team, in Seattle, for eight years. He reviewed objectionable material on Microsoft's products--Bing, the cloud-storage service OneDrive, and Xbox Live among them--and decided whether to delete it or report it to the police. Each day, Soto looked at thousands of disturbing images and videos, which included depictions of killings and child abuse. Particularly traumatic was a video of a girl being sexually abused and then murdered. The work took a hea...