We Had to Remove This Post by Hanna Bervoets Review

In need of cash, Kayleigh goes to work at Hexa, a subcontractor for a social media giant, where she will be a content moderator, evaluating flagged videos on the site and deciding whether to keep them up or take them down. Nothing bad’s going to come from watching hours and hours of disturbing videos all day every day, right…?

We Had to Remove This Post is the first book Dutch writer Hanna Bervoets has had translated into English and it wasn’t bad. A lot of the relationship material wasn’t that compelling but pretty much everything at Hexa was great, so it evens out to a decent novella.

Bervoets’ writing style is both accessible and compelling and, combined with the foreboding opening chapter (a framing device for the forthcoming story where Kayleigh is addressing a lawyer who wants her to join a class action lawsuit against Hexa), she draws you into the story swiftly and completely.

Bervoets sets up a tantalising hook and occasionally ups the tension by showing some of Kayleigh’s colleagues’ behaviour, as we see what absorbing so much dark content is doing to them. Quite a bit of the time though that tension is deflated with a fair amount of banal relationship melodrama about Kayleigh’s ex and her current girlfriend Sigrid.

I understand why it’s there - to show how Kayleigh, like her colleagues, is being warped the more time she spends at Hexa - but the material is still more dull than not and dragged the pace down. The ending is also underwhelming given the considerable set-up of the opening chapter.

The novella does give you a good idea of what being a content moderator is like - it’s amazing more people who do this job aren’t psychologically damaged - and, given the source list at the end, it looks like Bervoets has done her research so the things that happen in the story are likely an accurate portrait of how people behave working this kind of job. Kayleigh’s anecdote about her childhood hamster Archibalt was surprisingly moving and the scene with the Flat Earthers/Holocaust deniers was interesting too.

It’s not a consistently gripping read, the middle sags quite a bit, and the ending is forgettable, but We Had to Remove This Post is a fine novella. Well-written, unpredictable, original, contemporary and relevant - I look forward to reading more from Hanna Bervoets in the future!