China video site Bilibili to add 1,000 censors after employee dies due to overwork

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<strong>After a heated discussion over the death of an employee due to overwork, China video site Bilibili is planning to hire 1,000 content censors.</strong></p>
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Cissy Zhou, writing in Nikkei Asia said that Chinese online video streaming service Bilibili has decided to increase the content monitoring team by 40 per cent. A 25-year-old member, nicknamed Muse Muxin, died due to a sudden brain aneurysm last Friday, Bibibili said in a statement on the Weibo social network late Tuesday.</p>
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He was deputy team leader of the graphics and text censoring team at Bilibili's office in the central city of Wuhan.</p>
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The death comes amid a growing rejection of the technology sector's ingrained culture of overwork — nicknamed "996" in reference to 9 am to 9 pm working hours six days a week — among young people who are instead embracing a laid-back philosophy of "laying flat," reported Nikkei Asia.</p>
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Meanwhile, Bilibili in its statement on Muse denied that he put in overtime or worked night shifts. Bilibili said he had "worked 8 hours a day" and "had two days off" per week during the recent Lunar New Year holiday period, said Cissy.</p>
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Meanwhile, the Chinese authorities demand that internet platforms take primary responsibility for censoring user-generated content.</p>
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As a result, the largest ones have hired tens of thousands of censors to monitor posted materials while also often deploying artificial intelligence to try to catch forbidden terms and references.</p>
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A Weibo user who said he had been a content censor at another company commented, "You can never complete the amount of daily censoring work assigned to you, so you would have to work overtime voluntarily without overtime pay. My previous employer only provided free snacks."</p>
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