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Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

theverge.com

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Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#21

Post by the_duke »

mschuster91 wrote: post #14
the_duke wrote: post #13

Couldn't violence (both towards animals and humans) be detected in an automated fashion? Especially screams in the audio should be fairly easy to find. Then block those videos by default, with a manual appeals process that sends it to a moderator, combined with a big warning that submitting videos against the TOS will get you suspended. Of course this could lead to people submitting videos without audio, but this wil…

> Shouldn't violence (both towards animals and humans) be farely easy to detect in an automated fashion? No. Already filters fuck up way too much and restrict perfectly legal content.

That's why I mentioned an appeals process for requesting human review.

As long as this exists and actually leads to human review, I'd much rather wait a while for my videos to be posted if it means easing the burden on 15.000 people having to watch highly damaging content.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#22

Post by creaghpatr »

For the wage mentioned in the article, I'm surprised they don't have trouble finding people to do the job.

>Speagle helps to take care of his parents, who have health problems, and was afraid to quit Cognizant. “It was tough to find a job down here in this market,” he said.

Tougher than watching graphic PTSD-inducing videos every day? It sounds like the job absolutely sucks but these contractors need to have a little bit of personal responsibility for their own mental health. I suspect they do but the article gives the impression they are all trapped there with no way out.

Tampa is a major call center hub so I imagine contractor positions are opening up all the time given general churn rates.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#23

Post by RegBarclay »

cldellow wrote: post #12

This was a valuable article to read. Facebook is enormously valuable. They made something like $15B in net income in the last four quarters. Content moderators are a necessary condition for that profit. If kiddie porn, gore and animal cruelty flooded the network, it would cease to be a destination visited by people that advertisers will pay to reach. And yet, there are two sets of entry-level knowledge workers at Fac…

I thought the same thing -- that once content is moderated, it should be trivial to block exactly the same content from being posted and moderated again. What a waste.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#24

Post by jsty »

the_duke wrote: post #13

Couldn't violence (both towards animals and humans) be detected in an automated fashion? Especially screams in the audio should be fairly easy to find. Then block those videos by default, with a manual appeals process that sends it to a moderator, combined with a big warning that submitting videos against the TOS will get you suspended. Of course this could lead to people submitting videos without audio, but this wil…

> Especially screams should be farely easy to detect

I guess it depends how reliably it could determine between ordinary screaming (especially with children who scream at just about anything that makes them happy or unhappy), and 'terrible things are happening' screaming. Even most humans would probably struggle to tell the difference just based on a short audio clip of a scream, which is what your algo would have to work with.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#25

Post by comboy »

> But as the weeks went on, the video continued to reappear in his queue (..) They kept reposting it again and again and again.

Seems like it should be pretty "easy" to spot similar videos and audio (even after some modifications) given how great dataset all those moderators are providing.

I'm pretty sure there are some pretty smart folks working at fb, so it would mean that given accuracy standards it's still cheaper for them to hire humans to do the job.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#26

Post by navigatesol »

AnaniasAnanas wrote: post #5
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're painting with a very broad brush there. NDAs and non-competes have their uses. It's when they become part of the default boilerplate that everyone signs to get a job that the problems start.

> NDAs and non-competes have their uses I have yet to see a valid use that does not hinder whistle-blowing, the advancement of technology, or does not abuse the employees. I am sure that you will find a few valid use-cases if you try hard enough, however in the vast majority of cases they are used in order to repress the rights of others.

>I have yet to see a valid use that does not hinder whistle-blowing

The legal system isn't static. If your company is breaking the law and you report it to authorities, your NDA will be unenforceable.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#27

Post by SolaceQuantum »

"Conditions at the Phoenix site have not improved significantly since I visited. Last week, some employees were sent home after an infestation of bed bugs was discovered in the office — the second time bed bugs have been found there this year. Employees who contacted me worried that the infestation would spread to their own homes, and said managers told them Cognizant would not pay to clean their homes."

This is utterly nightmarish, given how costly to one's life bedbugs are. (clearing out a home, including the replacing of all mattesses/couches, and bagging or hot-cleaning all clothing, sheets, towels, rugs...)

"A manager saw that she was not feeling well, and brought a trash can to her desk so she could vomit in it. So she did."

This particular manager put their employees in danger of catching illness, especially given what appears to be the open office floorplan where airborne sicknesses can travel the entire room. I'm shocked and apalled, and this is the stuff I'm comfortable quoting from the article to be shocked and apalled by. The other stuff has convinced me to help inform friends and family to get off facebook rather than passively clean myself of it only.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#28

Post by AnaniasAnanas »

skybrian wrote: post #6
AnaniasAnanas wrote: post #2

NDAs and non-compete agreements should not ever be considered as valid contracts by the government.

Some NDA's can be too broad, but this is a bad take. It needs to be possible to hire people that you trust not to disclose all your secrets, and your customer's secrets. This is what privacy regulations are all about. (At Facebook in particular, disclosing stuff about users is pretty bad, see lots of news stories over the last few years.) The balance between protecting privacy and making abuses public is pretty nuanc…

> It needs to be possible to hire people that you trust not to disclose all your secrets, and your customer's secrets

I disagree, it needs to be possible for whistle-blowers to operate freely. It should also be possible to disclose to the whole world new and superior techniques and technologies that a company tries to hide.

> This is what privacy regulations are all about

I am pretty sure that this is a separate thing to NDAs. Nevertheless I believe that the solution should be technical rather than legal, with things like end to end encryption and public key cryptography.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#29

Post by skybrian »

dustingetz wrote: post #11
skybrian wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some NDA's can be too broad, but this is a bad take. It needs to be possible to hire people that you trust not to disclose all your secrets, and your customer's secrets. This is what privacy regulations are all about. (At Facebook in particular, disclosing stuff about users is pretty bad, see lots of news stories over the last few years.) The balance between protecting privacy and making abuses public is pretty nuanc…

> needs to be Nothing needs to be anything, though the world order would certainly look different and reflect the interests of different classes of people than today

Seems like looking at this from a class perspective only complicates things further?Poor people often have secrets and can be pretty vulnerable to attack if they're disclosed.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#30

Post by ghaff »

dustingetz wrote: post #11
skybrian wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some NDA's can be too broad, but this is a bad take. It needs to be possible to hire people that you trust not to disclose all your secrets, and your customer's secrets. This is what privacy regulations are all about. (At Facebook in particular, disclosing stuff about users is pretty bad, see lots of news stories over the last few years.) The balance between protecting privacy and making abuses public is pretty nuanc…

> needs to be Nothing needs to be anything, though the world order would certainly look different and reflect the interests of different classes of people than today

No. But, in the absence of NDAs and other agreements for both employees and external partners, you'd see a great deal more limits on sharing information both within and without companies to a strictly need to know basis. Certainly those limits exist today to a degree because NDAs basically just allow for consequences. But if you can't keep someone from turning around and sharing anything you tell them other than through some sort of mutual trust, you'll be less inclined to share it.
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