Investigation shows Accenture is Facebook's biggest content moderation partner, employing over a third of its moderators, with annual contracts exceeding $500M
and none have been more important than Accenture. https://www.nytimes.com/... Marc Owen Jones / @marcowenjones : Accenture doing content moderation for Facebook. Seems like a downgrade. The Silent Partner Cleaning Up Facebook for $500 Million a Year https://www.nytimes.com/... Greg Otto / @gregotto : This FB/Accenture story from the NYT is very good (I think there is a lot of interesting stories around how much Accenture is in cybersecurity btw) and i will be thinking/laughing about this passage for a long time https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... Caitlin Mitchell / @k8thegr8est : This whole story is disturbing af. Shame on Facebook for outsourcing some of its most sensitive work, then denying responsibility for the very real mental health impacts on the workers doing it. https://www.nytimes.com/... Sarita Schoenebeck / @syardi : This is an impressively detailed glimpse into who is doing the content moderation at FB. Overall useful article for getting behind the scenes, though I expected to see a @ubiquity75 citation. https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... Justin Hendrix / @justinhendrix : “You couldn't have Facebook as we know it today without Accenture,” said Cori Crider... of Foxglove, a law firm that represents content moderators. “Enablers like Accenture, for eye-watering fees, have let Facebook hold the core human problem of its business at arm's length.” https://twitter.com/... Lisette Voytko / @lisettevoytko : The amount of godawful offensive content I was exposed to as a social media manager (beheadings, bestiality, dick pics) showed in the mid aughts that platforms couldn't spend their way to cleanliness. https://twitter.com/... Tony Romm / @tonyromm : super important story that (putting on my new econ hat) makes you wonder about the future of work — and the sufficiency of laws that are supposed to protect against unsafe labor https://twitter.com/... @rmac18 : Those who report on Facebook know how much the co hates talking about its relationship w/ content moderation partners like Accenture. @satariano and @MikeIsaac get really good details on their business relationship, worth $500 million+ every year. https://www.nytimes.com/... Cecilia Kang / @ceciliakang : “Facebook has quietly paid others to take on much of the responsibility. Since 2012, the company has hired at least 10 consulting and staffing firms globally to sift through its posts” great investigation via @satariano @MikeIsaac https://www.nytimes.com/... Matthew Zeitlin / @mattzeitlin : Facebook is really like the government now in that no matter what decisions they make or policy they implement, someone will be mad and yell at them, and the actual on the ground work is done by contractors https://www.nytimes.com/... Hamza Shaban / @hshaban : “Facebook and Accenture have rarely talked about their arrangement...But their secretive relationship lies at the heart of an effort by the world's largest social media company to distance itself from the most toxic part of its business.” https://www.nytimes.com/... Adam Satariano / @satariano : Accenture and Facebook redefined the limits of business outsourcing, building a model for policing internet speech that is now used by scores of other companies. It helped spawn a new content moderation industry, estimated to be worth $8.8b by 2022, roughly double from 2020. Matt Rosoff / @mattrosoff : Great piece. Accenture is a quiet tech giant, but typically provides high-value consulting and systems integration work...or at least that was my impression. https://www.nytimes.com/... Adam Satariano / @satariano : Faced with mounting legal, ethical and reputational risks, Accenture's top executives debated whether to keep doing the work. In the end, Accenture stood by Facebook, which carries the rarified status of “diamond client” within the consulting firm. https://www.nytimes.com/... Pui-Wing Tam / @puiwingtam : Much fine work has been done on the plight of Facebook's content moderators. @satariano and @MikeIsaac examined the parameters of a key corporate relationship that gave rise to those working conditions & found just how much $$$ makes that world go round. https://www.nytimes.com/...
New York Times
Context & Ripple Effects
The NYT investigation gives a name and a price tag to the moderation apparatus described in leaked documents back in 2018: Accenture, employing over a third of Facebook's moderators under contracts exceeding $500M a year. That reframes Facebook's earlier promise to enforce working conditions for contractor moderators as a commitment it made in 2019 — one whose day-to-day execution sits with its largest vendor.
The story also sharpens the accountability question OneZero raised about how Facebook's takedown reporting hides moderator trauma behind technocratic language: the investigation argues that outsourcing through Accenture adds another layer of distance between Facebook and the mental-health costs of the work.
First-order effects
Accenture is now publicly identified as Facebook's single largest moderation partner, making it — not just Facebook — the named actor in any future scrutiny of moderator pay, conditions, and trauma support.
Facebook's 2019 pledge on contractor working conditions becomes directly testable against Accenture's practices, since over a third of its moderation workforce now has a disclosed employer.
Second-order effects
Other platforms' moderation vendors face the same exposure risk: the investigation effectively maps what a $500M-a-year outsourced trust-and-safety relationship looks like, inviting parallel reporting elsewhere.
Accenture's dominance pressures rival business-process firms competing for moderation contracts, since platforms can now point to a benchmark scale — a market the relationships data pegs at $8.8B by 2022, spawned partly by this model.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, trust and safety consolidates as a consulting-industry service line, with platforms purchasing operational distance from moderation labor along with the labor itself — a structural liability gap regulators would have to decide whether to close.
The Facebook–Accenture arrangement becomes the template case for how platform accountability diffuses through subcontracting chains, complicating who answers for moderator welfare when harm surfaces.
The trend: Content moderation is industrializing into an outsourced services market where big platforms buy both the labor and the distance from it, with Accenture setting the template.
A new investigation by @satariano and @MikeIsaac looks at the secretive relationship between Facebook and Accenture, the company hired to keep toxic content off the world's largest social media platform. https://www.nytimes.com/...
NEW: Facebook offloaded responsibility for policing its most toxic content to a web of outsourcing firms. No company has been more crucial than Accenture. Here is our investigation into the secretive corporate relationship. https://www.nytimes.com/...
“Accenture has absorbed the worst facets of moderating content and made Facebook's content issues its own. As a cost of doing business, it has dealt with workers' mental health issues from reviewing the posts.” https://www.nytimes.com/...
Fascinating look at how Accenture, and the many contractors it hired, became the sponge for all the darkness on Facebook. It was good business. Each American moderator generated $50 per hour for Accenture. Starting pay was $18 per hour. https://www.nytimes.com/...
Incidentally, Facebook spending $500m per year on content moderation is absurdly cheap. In Q2 2021 Facebook made more than $300m profit *per day*. It spends less than 2 days worth of its profits on moderation. It could spend 5 billion a year on moderation and not break a sweat. h…
This FB/Accenture story from the NYT is very good (I think there is a lot of interesting stories around how much Accenture is in cybersecurity btw) and i will be thinking/laughing about this passage for a long time https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/...
U can't read this & still believe the current schema of an unregulated Internet is working. This (FB) is also who we are supported 2 trust w properly managing an Instagram for those under 13 yoa when outsourcing & absolving responsibility is the goal? https://www.nytimes.com/...
Some Accenture workers have said they started experiencing depression, anxiety and paranoia after reviewing hundreds of the platform's most noxious posts per shift. Two workers have joined a class-action lawsuit to protest the working conditions. https://www.nytimes.com/...
I know that people keep demanding Facebook “do more” to moderate content on their site, but those same people seem unwilling to consider the human costs of that... https://twitter.com/...
Moderating Facebook's most disturbing content was so lucrative for Accenture, the social network became what's internally known as “diamond client.” Be sure to read @MikeIsaac @satariano on the $500M codependent relationship between the two companies https://www.nytimes.com/...
This whole story is disturbing af. Shame on Facebook for outsourcing some of its most sensitive work, then denying responsibility for the very real mental health impacts on the workers doing it. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@RMac18 ... Wait, this Accenture? They were in the Kc star today for charging $64 million to answer calls for the unemployment system and ... not answering calls. https://twitter.com/...
This is an impressively detailed glimpse into who is doing the content moderation at FB. Overall useful article for getting behind the scenes, though I expected to see a @ubiquity75 citation. https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Mark Zuckerberg pledged to clean up Facebook. Behind the scenes, the company has paid others to take on much of the responsibility — and none have been more important than Accenture. https://www.nytimes.com/...
Accenture doing content moderation for Facebook. Seems like a downgrade. The Silent Partner Cleaning Up Facebook for $500 Million a Year https://www.nytimes.com/...
“You couldn't have Facebook as we know it today without Accenture,” said Cori Crider... of Foxglove, a law firm that represents content moderators. “Enablers like Accenture, for eye-watering fees, have let Facebook hold the core human problem of its business at arm's length.” htt…
The outsourcing environment is completely toxic. It rewards loyalty and punishes any challenge to it. As long as Accenture is enabling them, Facebook cannot even begin to work on its issues with moderation and labor https://twitter.com/...
The amount of godawful offensive content I was exposed to as a social media manager (beheadings, bestiality, dick pics) showed in the mid aughts that platforms couldn't spend their way to cleanliness. https://twitter.com/...
super important story that (putting on my new econ hat) makes you wonder about the future of work — and the sufficiency of laws that are supposed to protect against unsafe labor https://twitter.com/...
Those who report on Facebook know how much the co hates talking about its relationship w/ content moderation partners like Accenture. @satariano and @MikeIsaac get really good details on their business relationship, worth $500 million+ every year. https://www.nytimes.com/...
“Facebook has quietly paid others to take on much of the responsibility. Since 2012, the company has hired at least 10 consulting and staffing firms globally to sift through its posts” great investigation via @satariano @MikeIsaac https://www.nytimes.com/...
Facebook is really like the government now in that no matter what decisions they make or policy they implement, someone will be mad and yell at them, and the actual on the ground work is done by contractors https://www.nytimes.com/...
“Facebook and Accenture have rarely talked about their arrangement...But their secretive relationship lies at the heart of an effort by the world's largest social media company to distance itself from the most toxic part of its business.” https://www.nytimes.com/...
Accenture and Facebook redefined the limits of business outsourcing, building a model for policing internet speech that is now used by scores of other companies. It helped spawn a new content moderation industry, estimated to be worth $8.8b by 2022, roughly double from 2020.
Great piece. Accenture is a quiet tech giant, but typically provides high-value consulting and systems integration work...or at least that was my impression. https://www.nytimes.com/...
Faced with mounting legal, ethical and reputational risks, Accenture's top executives debated whether to keep doing the work. In the end, Accenture stood by Facebook, which carries the rarified status of “diamond client” within the consulting firm. https://www.nytimes.com/...
Much fine work has been done on the plight of Facebook's content moderators. @satariano and @MikeIsaac examined the parameters of a key corporate relationship that gave rise to those working conditions & found just how much $$$ makes that world go round. https://www.nytimes.com/.…