https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/8xbwvx/journalists-social-media-platforms-unpaid-content-moderators-twitter-facebook-instagram

For years tech companies have been getting free content moderation from journalists. Whether it’s Russian manipulation campaigns, non-consensual sexual imagery, or hate speech around the world, journalists have often been the ones unearthing illegal or problematic behaviour on huge platforms, with social networks only dealing with issues once they know that there’s an impending news article coming.

In a recent interview at Facebook headquarters, one senior company employee told Motherboard that Facebook somewhat formalized the process of responding to content moderation-related inquiries from journalists, and has a dedicated system for ‘escalating’ issues highlighted by journalists. This often gets the content in front of those deciding whether to remove it or not more quickly than ordinary user-generated reports.