By 2000, companies had begun to take a more proactive approach. CompuServe, for instance, developed one of the earliest "acceptable use" policies barring racist speech, after a user with a Holocaust revisionist stance started filling a popular forum with antisemitic commentary. In 2001, eBay
banned Nazi and Ku Klux Klan memorabilia, as well as other symbols of racial, religious, and ethnic hatred. Democratized countries joined forces to take down child pornography. Palfrey calls this phase Access Denied, characterized by a concerted effort across the industry and the government to ban unappetizing content.
Over the next decade, companies and governments honed these first-generation moderation tools, refining policies and collapsing the myth that cyberspace existed on a separate plane from real life, free from the realities of regulation, law, and policy.
This was the era in which Mora-Blanco began her career at YouTube. Trying to bring order to a digital Wild West one video at a time was grueling. To safeguard other employees from seeing the disturbing images in the reported content they were charged with reviewing, her team was sequestered in corner offices; their rooms were kept dark and their computers were equipped with the largest screen protectors on the market.
Members of the team quickly showed signs of stress — anxiety, drinking, trouble sleeping — and eventually managers brought in a therapist. As moderators described the images they saw each day, the therapist fell silent. The therapist, Mora-Blanco says, was "quite literally scared."
