We Had to Remove This Post

From a rising international literary star, a chilling, powerful, and urgent literary masterpiece about who or what determines our worldview, who sets the boundaries, and just how much a person can be asked to accept.

“A superbly poised, psychologically astute, and subtle novel of mental unraveling.”—Ian McEwan

A brilliant peek behind the curtain 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, New York Times bestselling author of Mostly Dead Things and With Teeth

What is “normal”?

What is “right”?

And who gets to decide?

To be a content moderator is to see humanity at its worst. Needing money, Kayleigh takes a job working for a social media platform whose name she isn’t allowed to mention. Her task: review offensive videos and pictures, rants and conspiracy theories, and decide which need to be removed.

It’s grueling work. Kayleigh and her colleagues spend all day watching horrors and hate on their screens, evaluating them with the platform’s everchanging moderating guidelines. Yet Kayleigh is good at her job, and she finds in her colleagues a group of friends—even a new girlfriend—and for the first time in her life, her future seems bright.

But soon the job seems to change them all, shifting their worlds in alarming ways. How long will it be before the moderators’ own senses of right and wrong begin to bend and flex?