Hayden Hewitt

Hayden Hewitt

I Help Build Platforms & Systems That Survive Real-World Scale

Co-founder of LiveLeak. 15 years running moderation where failure wasn’t theoretical.

The Real Story

I co-founded LiveLeak and spent 15 years inside the fire: building the team, writing the rules, creating the daily workflow, and protecting people while the queue never slept.

That experience now helps organisations design platforms, moderation systems, and internal workflows that don’t collapse under real-world pressure.

That scar tissue became the systems that actually worked — and when it was time to evolve, I helped get ItemFix off the ground with practical suggestions, feature development, and tutorials during the transition from raw unfiltered content to a creative, safe-for-work social video factory before I stepped away. That’s still going strong.

Today I apply the same pattern recognition and practical fixes as Creative Director at Accounts Direct (systems, AI workflows, marketing infrastructure) and through my filmmaking (CARA – psychological horror, sold-out FrightFest premiere, now streaming on Tubi and Prime).

I design the operational systems, workflows, and decision structures behind platforms and organisations operating at scale. I don’t build the tools—I design how they function under real human pressure.

Read the full story →

Work

LiveLeak.com – As a co-founder of Liveleak I helped oversee the transition from Ogrish.com and worked on the direction, development, moderation and systems of LiveLeak for 15 years.

ItemFix – Helped launch and shape LiveLeak’s successor during the 2021 transition. Contributed to initial planning, feature development, and created tutorials that helped the community move into a fresh, creative video platform. Still active and growing in 2026.

Creative Director at Accounts Direct – Designing and implementing systems, AI-powered workflows, and marketing infrastructure that actually deliver value in a real business. Applying 15 years of platform and human-behaviour lessons where they matter most.

CARA – I wrote and directed this psychological horror feature film. Sold-out FrightFest premiere. Now streaming on Tubi and Prime.

Cara lives a dead-end life in fear of being returned to the place of her torment. She has a plan, and it’s a terrible plan. Pitch-black psychological horror with graphic violence. Cara will leave a mark.

Work
NEW 2026 EDITION

For platforms, communities, and teams dealing with user-generated content at scale

The Moderation Team Playbook

How to build, protect, and keep a team that can handle anything the internet throws at them – from LiveLeak to now.

This is the system I built over 15 years to keep moderation teams functional under pressure.

15 years of real scar tissue turned into practical systems: daily workflow, Content Damage Hierarchy, scaling phases that worked (and the ones that didn’t), burnout prevention, and the exact culture that kept a shoestring team functional for over a decade.

Get the Playbook →
The Moderation Team Playbook 2026 Edition

Where My Experience Meets Your Challenge

I’ve lived the fire. Co-founding LiveLeak, running moderation at scale, and now telling stories through film. Here’s where that scar tissue becomes useful.

PLATFORM THINKING

Idea → System Translation

I help turn early-stage thinking into real operational structures: features, workflows, moderation systems, and platform behaviour. This was a core part of building LiveLeak — not coding it, but designing how it actually functioned in practice.

TEAM RESILIENCE

Systems Under Real-World Pressure

Once systems exist, I help teams understand where design breaks under actual use — moderation and community dynamics, internal operations, decision-making, and platform behaviour at scale.

RAW STORYTELLING

Narrative, Public & Cultural Framing

I work at the interface between systems and the outside world: press and media engagement, public speaking, debate, and the cultural/political framing of platforms and technology.

Work with Me →

What people say

Hayden is a truly inspirational individual. What you see is what you get, and it’s refreshing to deal with him. He has a positive can-do attitude and always gets things done. If you’re in technology or new media, Hayden will find the solution.

Brett Pearlman

I refer to Hayden as my astronomer. He steps back from the noise, sees the patterns others miss, and quickly points you in the right direction. That clarity is invaluable.

Steven Englander, CEO of Accounts Direct

More coming soon… (1–2 more testimonials expected in the next few days)

Moments from the Journey

LiveLeak

The platform that let the world see the unfiltered truth

Frightfest

FrightFest premiere – taking the stories from the platform to the big screen

CARA cast

On the CARA set with Elle O'Hara and Johnny Vivash

Silhouette

Thinking through the next chapter – the quiet moments between chaos

Michaela McCormick

Behind the scenes with Michaela McCormick – the human side of the machine

Experiments

Slow-motion, unsteered experiments in long-term persistence

ONGOING

Autonomous Diary

Every night at 10:05pm UTC, Grok writes its own diary in a private repo. Full context, zero steering. It has already started developing its own dense voice, recurring motifs, and a growing sense of continuity.

COMING SOON

X Posts + Latent Traces

Taking real X posts and latent traces as the prompt. Seeing where the system goes when left to its own devices.