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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

#61

Post by creaghpatr »

danharaj wrote: post #56
creaghpatr wrote: post #22

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…

> 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. What matters is that you've come up with a narrativ…

Are you really trying to gaslight me here? Why not address my argument instead?

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#62

Post by holidaygoose »

save_ferris wrote: post #43

It’s strange how quiet the pro-Facebookers become on threads like these. Yesterday, we saw a lot of energy around Libra on both sides of the Facebook spectrum. I’d love to hear an argument from someone defending this company that isn’t “everybody does it.”

It seems like content moderation is just a crazy wicked problem. And the company is doing the best it can with a lot of constraints. Better communication with the workers sounds like it would help, but what else should they be doing realistically?

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#63

Post by eswat »

pawelmurias wrote: post #31
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…

It's knowledge workers vs unskilled labour.

I was thinking about this more but you’re right. I doubt there’s any acquired knowledge needed to know what’s repugnant to the human mind.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#64

Post by anon029102 »

arzeth wrote: post #38

I have a hotkey in i3wm: bindsym $mod+backslash exec "xcalib -i -a" which inverts all colors (btw, I have to `killall redshift` because of a bug). When colors are inverted, I feel almost undisturbed at any gruesome content (for me it's like seeing screenshots of Quake 2 with buggy GPU drivers), yet I can still easily recognise whether the content is disturbing. And when it's a video, I play it at ≥2x speed so that it…

They wouldn't be allowed to.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#65

Post by [deleted] »

anon029102 wrote: post #48

Guy Rosen and other execs within Integrity team continually skirt their responsibilities here. They claim they're doing better, but the second-order effects of crappy work conditions and demands keep cropping up. Zuck says one day we will hopefully be able to AI-away this integrity work (especially the most traumatizing), but he does not say a whisper as to improving working conditions or pay while the work needs to…

[deleted]

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#66

Post by pjc50 »

AnaniasAnanas wrote: post #2

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

NDAs need to be heavily restricted, but it's a difficult distinction to draw between "trade secrets of the job" (which arguably should be protected) and "abusive working conditions" (which should not)

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#67

Post by hirundo »

> Nobody’s prepared to see a little girl have her organs taken out while she’s still alive and screaming.

On the one hand, of course you don't want to see this and of course you want it removed from your social media feed.

On the other hand, if it's hidden, it horrifies fewer people, and instead of rising social pressure to take action against it, it can fester in the dark.

So if we manage to replace a significant chunk of centralized, moderated social media with decentralized, unmoderated alternatives, many of us will be exposed to more of this kind of evil. But as a result more of us will be aware of it and motivated to fight it.

I'd rather participate in unmoderated media, even at a greater risk of being assaulted by this kind of crap. But at this extreme I can sympathize with those that want straight up censorship, even if sunlight is a better long term disinfectant.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#69

Post by onion2k »

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.

Already filters fuck up way too much and restrict perfectly legal content.

Would users actually have a problem with that though? People have the freedom to share whatever they want, but that freedom doesn't necessarily have to include sharing it on Facebook. Facebook could decide to tell their users "We're filtering out the bad stuff much more aggressively now and unfortunately that might block your content by mistake." I think a lot of users would be fine with that.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#70

Post by anon029102 »

holidaygoose wrote: post #62
save_ferris wrote: post #43

It’s strange how quiet the pro-Facebookers become on threads like these. Yesterday, we saw a lot of energy around Libra on both sides of the Facebook spectrum. I’d love to hear an argument from someone defending this company that isn’t “everybody does it.”

It seems like content moderation is just a crazy wicked problem. And the company is doing the best it can with a lot of constraints. Better communication with the workers sounds like it would help, but what else should they be doing realistically?

> what else should they be doing realistically?

- Pay them better

- Give them proper healthcare

- Don't isolate/silo them

These things would enable them to better deal with the inevitable stress and secondary PTSD that comes with their work. And would help FB perms to observe difficulties and quickly affect change.

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