Mark Zuckerberg in July referred to the multiple stories of Facebook content moderators struggling to cope with the daily work of viewing hours of disturbing content "a little overdramatic."

The Facebook CEO made the comments during a company-wide meeting over the summer, audio of which was obtained by The Verge's Casey Newton and published Tuesday. In the recording, Zuckerberg can be heard answering questions from employees about Facebook's rivalry with TikTok, presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren's calls to break up the company, and plans for the Libra blockchain currency.

In one exchange, an employee inquired about news reports on Facebook's army of 30,000 contract workers responsible for content moderation. Multiple stories over the last year, including some from The Verge, detailed the disturbing content that moderators have to review, including videos of violent deaths, posts containing vitriol hate speech, and photos of child pornography.

In the leaked audio, Zuckerberg said that while content moderation is an "important area that we're focused on," some reports about moderators' experiences have been exaggerated.

"Some of the reports, I think, are a little overdramatic," Zuckerberg said. "From digging into them and understanding what's going on, it's not that most people are just looking at just terrible things all day long."

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Viewing disturbing content has taken an emotion toll on these moderators. The Verge reported in February that some employees cope with the stress by telling dark jokes about killing themselves, having sex at the workplace, and smoking weed during the work day — all while being micro-managed, paid minimally, and allowed minimal break time. Other employees have adopted the fringe views and the conspiracy theories they've viewed online.

Further, another report from The Verge in June detailed the poor working conditions at Facebook's content moderation sites, which are operated by outside companies offsite of Facebook campuses. One site in Phoenix was shut down for a week after an infestation of bed bugs, and, at another site in Florida, an employee died at his desk after suffering a heart attack.

In the Q&A session, Zuckerberg did go on to say it's important these workers get "the right counseling and space" and "mental health support." However, content moderators have said in past reports they haven't received proper mental health support. In one case, an employee was reportedly given a box of Legos to play with to relieve stress about a particular bad day of content.

Adding more stress to the job of content moderation is the sheer amount of content posted to Facebook, as well as Facebook's unclear, ever-changing set of moderation guidelines.

In other responses to employee questions, Zuckerberg said he was ready to "go to the mat" with federal regulators who are calling for Facebook to be broken up under antitrust policies.

Read more of Zuckerberg's comments from the meetings over at The Verge.