I, the yellow connoisseur, do the audit business and earn tens of millions of dollars a year

Hello everyone, this is the third issue of the "Rear Window" column of The Investment China Network. This is a program about the workplace + people, here, we see the other side of the worker. Through individualized stories, we can observe the changes in people's situation and the forefront of the industry.

Two years ago, a documentary about Facebook's censors, The Web Censor, was released at the Sundance Film Festival. Someone on Douban commented, "This is the most cruel profession in the new era." The 85-minute period is a challenge to the psychological quality of tens of thousands of "human flesh" individuals with bloody, violent, pornographic and even inflammatory content.

But excluding the curiosity factor, behind the theme expressed in the film is a huge business opportunity for global resource allocation and hidden business with trillions of Internet companies.

Chen Taifeng said he was one of the first "pioneers" in China to smell this business opportunity.

He was the vice president of a well-known unicorn company in China. More than a year ago, I began to migrate all the way from Beijing to the south, camped in Rugao, Jiangsu Province, and took over the content moderation business of many large Internet companies, "Can you imagine, I have done tens of millions of yuan of performance a year. ”

In the year of Chen Taifeng's "southward migration", the growth rate of the people's network content review business was as high as 166%, and it is planned to expand the review team from 300 to 3,000 people. At the investor communication meeting after the financial report was issued this year, the content risk control business almost became the most frequently asked thing on the spot.

The "Rear Window" column reached the third issue, and someone asked me, is your column looking for wealth stories? Not really. In this column, I want to explore the relationship between the results of individual efforts and the cycle of the times.

In this issue of "Rear Window", I found front-line practitioners engaged in content moderation business, content security directors of Internet manufacturers who built content review systems from 0 to 1, and entrepreneurs of All in content moderation. When I threw each of them the confusion that another respondent was experiencing at this stage, I found that they actually knew each other well. Through this issue, they will have a dialogue over the air, which may be able to answer many doubts in this industrial chain.

Moreover, they are not shy about the ridiculous title - the yellow master.

Zhang Kaishuo Head of the content review department of an Internet company with a market value of 100 billion

"My subordinates came to me and felt 'dirty.'"

Since joining my current company in 2015, I have been in this industry for 6 years and am now the manager of the content moderation team of an Internet company. If in one sentence I describe the daily routine of my work, job dispenser and masseuse.

From the grass-roots auditors to the management post, with a team of 100 people, every day thinking about how to coordinate, plan and manage information and personnel scheduling, but also to carry out psychological counseling for subordinates who are not in the right state. Those who do our business, especially the new graduates, initially contact a lot of things that he/she can't see before, and may not be able to digest psychologically.

The most impressive thing is that there is a female colleague who has just worked for a few months, collapsed, and reads a lot of bloody, pornographic, violent, fraud and other illegal information every day, feeling that she is "dirty". For a while, I always comforted her, "Those contents are not the whole of life, but the malicious behavior of people with ulterior motives to disturb the order, just treat it as a job." 」 People whose psychological quality is not strong and whose stance is not firm enough really cannot do this line of work.

But in fact, I also came from that stage. I was 24 years old when I started. At that time, I wanted to find a job that I could go to work every day, and not to run around with my face in an open face, so I entered the industry, how to say that at that time, I was also a big Internet manufacturer.

The amount of labor in this line is particularly large, and the grass-roots auditors are 7 × a 24h work system, three shifts, audio and video, ANIMATed pictures, and articles must be involved. Take the review of articles, an auditor has to review about 2,000 articles a day, no physical strength, patience, can not sit still, this line can not do. To put it bluntly, it's a bit of a youthful rice flavor.

Correspondingly, the salary is not high, when I entered the industry, the monthly salary was 4,000 yuan, and now the new auditor has risen to about 8,000 yuan, but it is still lower than other positions in Internet companies. The content moderation field is divided into two layers, the technology will do the primary screening, manually carry out more detailed filtering, I started to do this part of the manual review later. Of course, if you do a good job, it's normal to get a 30% increase in salary every year.

The threshold of the industry is not high, around 2015, the specialist is on the line, experience is more important than academic qualifications, but now it must be a bachelor's degree, or even a book. This transformation is caused by the content of the work, 5 years ago, the grass-roots auditors are nothing more than some pornographic, violent, bloody pictures, in the pure sense of the audience's illegal information, it is not difficult to identify. But the road is one foot high, and now, like I thought before, the trick of "staying and working" is no longer working, and there are more and more scenes that need to be thought, if the understanding ability is not enough, this job cannot be done.

I think there is a paradox in the relationship between academic qualifications and this job. Whether or not you can do this job well, the most direct correlation is a person's insight and knowledge reserves, but every time i recruit people with high academic qualifications to come in, I always feel almost meaningless. If you look at the teachers in this industry, the judgment of information and emergency handling ability are indeed "taste right".

To be honest, in the past two years, I have brought a team of 100 people, and there are not many people who can do this job well.

This line of work has been done for a long time, and there will be times when you are tired, just like you go to clean a room. There is always a clean day, but do the content review of this work, how to sweep ah, this room has not been clean, and it is getting more and more difficult to clean. It's not that I haven't thought of leaving, but every time when I'm tired, I just catch up with my promotion, and from this point of view, it's a bit sweet in this line.

In the past two years, I have slowly noticed that the position of our position in the company is also changing, and there are more and more opportunities for external contact with important departments, and I will perceive that there are more opportunities than before. My lover is with me, but she has now switched to digital operations.

Zhao Xiao Content security director of an Internet factory

"After the implementation of the Cybersecurity Law, no matter how big the factory is, it can't help but be punished."

Upstairs said that he is a big Internet company, but from the perspective of content moderation, it can only be regarded as a "small factory". The reason is very simple, byte, Kuaishou, Tencent, Weibo such a company belongs to a complex community, audio and video, text, posts of various forms of content full coverage, this belongs to the "big factory" is nothing wrong; but do search business, Q&A business started on the platform, covering less content forms, even if the market value of more than 100 billion companies or ranked BAT, the gold content of their auditors and the gold content of complex community auditors must be different. The distinction between "big and small factories" in content moderation business and the "big and small factories" of conventional Internet companies is not the same concept.

Generally speaking, it is difficult for the auditors of "small factories" to come to "big factories" for interviews; at the same time, it is difficult for "small factories" to recruit auditors of "big factories". But then again, I myself am also in the so-called "small factory" out of the crawl, more than a decade ago I entered the industry, from 0 to build the old owner's content review team, but also to see the rise of the Internet industry, the disorder of online content dissemination caused by the harm gradually formed a global consensus, this position in a company more and more important. As a simple example, four years ago, we didn't even have the Cybersecurity Law, and the penalties for violations were relatively crude. In 2017, the "Cybersecurity Law" was promulgated, the maximum number of penalties for illegal information was 500,000 yuan, and the granularity of management was getting finer and finer, even if it was a "big factory", under the impact of massive information, it really could not help but be punished.

There is no doubt that this is a huge market. The world's major Internet giants are increasing investment in content review, mainly reflected in two aspects: 1. The research and development and application of review technology are constantly strengthening; 2. The investment in the field of manual review is increasing.

"Big factories" like Tencent and Byte have at least tens of thousands of content moderators. Globally, many Internet giants' censorship human resources are deployed globally. As far as I know, Facebook has hired more than 30,000 content censors worldwide in 2019, of which the Indian IT outsourcer Cognizant alone has reached 6,000 people to provide censorship outsourcing services for Facebook.

In addition, a number of companies in the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and other countries provide content censorship outsourcing services for giants such as Twitter, Amazon and Google and Facebook. From this point of view, this is indeed a fast-growing emerging industry, whether it is a "big factory" or a "small factory", everyone has this demand.

Regarding "machine audit" or "human audit", there is also a difference between large and small factories. "Big factory" machine audit may account for more than 90% of the proportion, the need to develop a detailed security strategy, the machine can review the vast majority of and black and white content, the human audit is more in the "gray area", accounting for perhaps even less than 10%. The content of small and medium-sized Internet companies is not so much, the technical filtering is relatively simple, and the proportion of human participation will be greater, and even some will account for 50%.

In my opinion, it is the general trend that machines replace human trials, and multi-dimensional judgments are needed to be judged by people. I'm working on this multidimensional tool so that novice auditors can get started quickly.

To say that the upward path of auditors is nothing more than vertical and horizontal. Vertically upward is the audit leader; the auditor who compares cattle can be horizontally upward, such as risk assessment, risk control, public opinion and GR positions, and can also be transferred to do products and operations. But to be honest, not many people can break out of the auditor position, and about 8-10 out of 100 people can successfully transform.

Why is there an auditor who can transition to GR? They even do VP positions, because the industry recognizes that the best state of GR is to understand both security business and communication methods, which is a position that can be both internal and external. Content moderators are truly one of the best at security business.

After doing this business for a long time, it is inevitable that there will be occupational diseases. For more than ten years, no matter where I am, domestic or foreign, mobile phones are always out of the body, and anxiety has become the norm. Whether it is information security or technical security, there are too many uncontrollable factors, and I am thinking at any time, "Don't have an accident today", I am always afraid that there is no place for audit. In addition, high sensitivity is also one of the occupational diseases, sometimes often cold out of many feelings, from time to time in the circle of friends to send a "small essay".

Chen Taifeng Content security entrepreneur

"When professional institutions and unprofessional institutions compete together and feel uncomfortable, it is also the time when opportunities come."

The pressure of Zhao Zong, we can share. Regardless of whether it is a "big factory" or a "small factory", when it comes to content and communication, everyone is eager to accept compliance management, but not all enterprises have the ability or carrying capacity to independently complete the content security business, which is also the opportunity for our content review entrepreneurs. Therefore, in 2019, I founded Guoxin Juan.

Content security startups are made because a sentence from a former colleague awakens. One day she suddenly said to me, "Every day to communicate with everyone about content security, communication review, many people do not understand, especially when communicating with startups, they do not understand." We are doing so well in this industry, why can't we export our ability in this area? "Maybe she just didn't have the heart to sigh at the time, but I took it seriously, and this industry is really my specialty and interest."

The current situation and general trend of this industry is that when the wind and waves are calm, the presence of the content moderation department is not high, but once something goes wrong, it may be a disaster for the entire company.

From the perspective of content moderation outsourcing alone, to some extent, this line is indeed a personnel-intensive work. Either the enterprise does it itself, or outsources, but for large companies, such a large amount of human resources allocation, recruitment costs, labor risks and the operational efficiency of the enterprise will be affected, if it is a listed company, it may also affect the company's per capita production capacity financial statements. What we want to do is to provide such enterprises with a one-stop overall solution for content security and help them solve content risks and employment risks.

At present, my customers are the top three social platforms in China, the largest domestic mobile phone manufacturers, and the education companies with the highest market share. But can you imagine, our team of more than 800 people, the current business development staff is only me.

There are two main parts of the business that these companies cooperate with us, one is the security audit and compliance audit of the content, and the other is the data labeling. In the process of providing services, we will also provide enterprises with consulting services for the overall solution of content security, such as how to build an efficient content review platform, how to use human-machine audit to improve efficiency, how to improve the daily management process system and so on.

As said upstairs, this line is divided into two categories, technical security and content security. Companies such as 360, Qianxin, NSFOCUS and other companies provide technical security services, but the format of content security companies is relatively scarce. The current competitive landscape is more about the outsourcing of traditional human resources, and the outsourcing of pure business directions is relatively small. This is also the reason why the audit quality of outsourcing companies is uneven, the industry is generally still operating in the way of "buying heads", but the content review industry also has an off-peak season, and the head cannot be equated with quality, and there will indeed be waste in resource allocation. As a result, we pioneered the volume-based billing business model in the industry, which facilitates quality management and improves human efficiency. Currently, our human efficiency is about 30% on average in the mobility industry.

I put the audit business in Rugao, Jiangsu, a county-level city under the jurisdiction of Jiangsu Province, and the base currently has about 800 auditors. The reason for choosing this city is that the labor cost is low, the second is that it is convenient to manage, and the local government will have some policy support. Different from other human resources outsourcing companies, our auditors are divided into training posts, audit posts, quality inspection posts, public opinion posts, and special maintenance posts for key projects. Among them, one of our biggest cost expenditures lies in the training post, each employee recruitment, to pass the written test and psychological test, to comprehensively assess the security background and psychological quality of the personnel, followed by 22 days of theoretical knowledge training, training and then the examination, a fully qualified auditor needs at least half a year to grow.

The threshold of this industry is not as low as the outside world thinks, and it is not easy for me to train an employee, so all kinds of welfare guarantees and job content allocation should be as comfortable as possible.

If there's one thing that makes me feel psychologically fluctuating, it's when I compete with companies that outsource manpower. For some customers, because of budget constraints, when selecting suppliers, the ability of suppliers only accounts for 40% of their factors of consideration, and the price accounts for 60%, once it involves price wars, I will be more uncomfortable.

Not long ago, a customer who chose human resources outsourcing, not long after in the process of review team construction and business construction, thunder broke out, going around or finding us to solve the problem, which also shows that the competition and development of this industry is still in a reckless period.

In 2020, my company did tens of millions of dollars in performance. This industry is not like the Internet outlet industry, stepping on the right node will suddenly have an order of magnitude outbreak, a careless will fall off the altar, we will continue to rise steadily.

Entrepreneurs will always think about how to improve the operational efficiency of enterprises. Right now, I have a lot of energy looking for technology partners to work with or bring in funding from the content security technology space to complement each other. I think that for at least 5 years, machine audits cannot completely replace human audits, and the model built by long-term experience accumulation will become another irreplaceable factor in this industry.

(At the request of the interviewer, Zhang Kaishuo and Zhao Xiao are pseudonyms)