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Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

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Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#71

Post by mcbits »

creaghpatr wrote: post #61
danharaj wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Your argument being ... that they should simply get a new job if it's so bad, or that the article must be misrepresenting the job if they don't?

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#72

Post by cldellow »

martin1b wrote: post #51

The issue is not as much Cognizant or FB as it is the state of the public. The horrible acts posted online for entertainment by the public is the reason for companies like Cognizant. I hope these posts can forwarded to local law enforcement and the posts used as evidence against the poster.

The article implies strongly that Facebook prefers to focus on the short term task of blocking offensive content and only pays lip service to the long term task of pursuing criminal charges.

I'd definitely believe that that is the case, as there's little economic incentive to play the long term game with its uncertain payout if you can just churn through low-wage content moderators instead.

Users of Facebook, but more realistically, employees of Facebook are the ones best situated to pressure Facebook to change that behavior.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#74

Post by vetinari »

lallysingh wrote: post #39
dexen wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Couldn't violence (both towards animals and humans) be detected in an automated fashion? Even if it could (and parallel posters argue it cannot), there is a meta-problem: "Who is allowed to post violent content?". Violence is contextual, and also legality of posting it is contextual. Same goes for other objectionable materials (nudity, extreme ideologies etc.). Point in case, if all users were subject to the same cr…

Train with signals about the sender?

So Facebook would have their own Animal Farm?

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#75

Post by dillonmckay »

comboy wrote: post #25

> 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 cheape…

No, that is only to protect IP rights.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#76

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#77

Post by dsfyu404ed »

arethuza wrote: post #3

Just a warning - I found even a short description of some of the videos they had to watch fairly disturbing. I don't think I could do that job for very long - let alone in a badly run, high pressure environment with low wages.

There's a lot of variance between individuals. Given the choice this sounds like an overall better job than working a busy McDonald's drive through (people are assholes when they're hungry) but I'm not the kind of person that's particularly bothered by graphic violence. My opinion of humanity is dark enough to accommodate it. I'm sure many people would prefer McDonald's though.

Some of the people interviewed were complaining primarily about the bad working conditions (and their complaints are valid as far as I care). I would wager these people are not as bothered by the content (though I'm sure they don't like it) as the ones who's primary complaints are about the content. They could probably do the job with less burnout if the rest of the job was made to suck less (i.e. it wasn't a shitty call center style job with all the accompanying baggage).

Edit: Why am I getting down-voted? Can people legitimately not fathom that some people would not be seriously bothered by seeing this content? People post violent content to Facebook. Shock and gore sites exist because some people actively seek out(!!) the kind of content that these moderators are being exposed to. It stands to reason that the subset of the population that at least finds that content not mentally damaging is substantially larger than the group that seeks it out.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#78

Post by arethuza »

Pigo wrote: post #53
arethuza wrote: post #3

Just a warning - I found even a short description of some of the videos they had to watch fairly disturbing. I don't think I could do that job for very long - let alone in a badly run, high pressure environment with low wages.

I don't see how an average person could be expected to witness some of the things mentioned in the article. I didn't have time to read the entire article, but do they have counselors on staff or something? That one paragraph about organs was enough to ruin my day, and it was just text. I'm surprised such a "rash of videos" wasn't in the news somewhere.

From the article:

He sought out the on-site counselor for support, but found him unhelpful.

“He just flat-out told me: ‘I don’t really know how to help you guys,’”

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#80

Post by cldellow »

eswat wrote: post #63
pawelmurias wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't have first-hand experience with the job, but I've read a few articles about these sort of teams, as they're widely deployed by all the large Internet companies.

In my view, it's knowledge work. Sure, it's knowledge work that almost anyone can be trained to do, but there's a skill set required.

For example, moderators need to make judgment calls that distinguish between offensive uses and artistic/journalistic/parody uses. There are many cultures and in-groups on Earth, which makes this harder than it might seem at first blush. Not all nudity is obscenity, not all hate speech is blatant.

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