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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

#271
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> maybe just content on making non violent jokes about blacks or gays The nonviolent "jokes" have a habit of escalating into real violence. If you let enough people post N-word rants without consequence and with validation from their hateful peers often enough they will egg each other on until eventually someone burns down or shoots up a church.

Yeah, I guess that's what I'm starting to see. Like I said, "This is why we can't have nice things."

Ultimately you can only have one absolute principle or right; if you have two, eventually they will come into conflict and you have to decide which is really absolute and which is just mostly absolute.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#272
post #161

I would have thought they would have the best filtering AI and dataset the world has to offer, to avoid having those moderators to work like this.

Building an AI is expensive. It also means FB is on the hook for false classifications.

This moderator labor is (relatively) cheap. It also allows FB to point to a third party if something goes wrong.

Look at their statements in the article. It's easier for them to distance themselves and point to "bad actor" contractors than it is if these were direct FB employees.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#273

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.”

The Libra discussion was strange, because it was mostly pro-crypto people who didn't grasp how not crypto Libra is, and anti-Facebook people, with a slice of "hey this is probably illegal" people thrown in.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much would you pay your house cleaner? 100k a year? Do you tip $100 USD in restaurants so that waiters can enjoy similar effective salary?

I would if I could, absolutely.

What's stopping you from giving high percentages of your income/wealth away to those less fortunate than you right now?

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#275
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but who wouldn't? I would.

I imagine many people wouldn't. It's potentially shortsighted to have that sort of myopic utility maximizing mindset when it causes you to debase other values like social stability. But in a society that advocates the hustle, I gotta get mine, right? /s

Sure, but this seems arbitrary. Why is $150K great but $30K isn't? At what level of income for software engineers would you consider employers to be "debasing" the values of social stability? What's so unstable about a world in which software engineers don't make a ton of money?

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't, because that would be horrible...

How much would you pay your house cleaner? 100k a year? Do you tip $100 USD in restaurants so that waiters can enjoy similar effective salary?

If I had the fuck-you levels of money facebook does I'd switch you and your house cleaner's salary, hire a PI to follow you and figure out which waiter or clerk hates you the most (you know there's at least one) and give them $3.5 million in front of you. Simply because the most powerful and hilarious usage of fuck-you money is punching up in such a manner.

And making someone's life better at the expense of someone that thinks like you do on top is a cherry on the most flavorful sorbet.

What I'm saying is you're a diiiiiiiick

Edit: I was so taken aback by the dickery I forgot my closing point and I guess this shit isn't obvious to some people: There's little reason whatsoever beyond personal insecurity to not want someone to make as much as possible. But many reasons to not want them to make as little as possible. If you can get away with either - like facebook can at this point, I really feel like - why the hell would you do the latter. I'm aware of the practical issues with incentives with this for example, but you already derailed the thread into dumb anyway so what's it matter.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#277

> there are two sets of entry-level knowledge workers at Facebook: > engineers ($150k/year, benefits, upward career trajectory) and > content moderators ($30k/year, no benefits, likely going to acquire mental illnesses). If Facebook could get away with paying engineers $30K/year, no benefits, believe me, they would.

>likely going to acquire mental illnesses

I find hard to believe humans are so sensitive that some visual stimulation is going to give them mental illnesses. We evolved in an environment where violence was part of real life and a real threat to our own well being, seeing it on a screen will elicit emotions we may not be used to in modern life, but causing mental illness is a stretch.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#278
post #59

Maybe Facebook should make all of their own employees do 15 minutes of moderation per day - just to share the pain out a bit....

Make the users do a little every so often. Like Slashdot's "hey, go moderate some posts" thing but forced to before they can use the platform anymore. That'd be fun. Of course the real answer is that this sort of site is a bad idea and shouldn't exist. Wide-open signup and public visibility of content, or ease of sharing it with strangers. Bad combo, don't care how much money it's making them (and other, similar site…

Just what I want my grandmother to see when she logs into Facebook once a week to check on the grandkids.

------------------------------------------------------------

Hello user, you have been randomly selected to help moderate.

Does this depict pedophilia? Y/N

[ Image here ]

This image was flagged by other users as depicting horrible gore and death, do you agree Y/N?

[ Image here ]

This post may contain hate speech, do you agree? Y/N

[ Embedded Nazi Screed post ]

Thank you for making Facebook a safer place for everybody!

------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol. Ever seen a migrant camp? Ever talked to a seasonal farm laborer? People will literally walk across continents for 30k/years. https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Soldier/Salary

Sounds like $30k is an improvement in their lives then, so is it really "too little"?

The word is "exploitive". Desperate people will do things because they have to. If I pay a homeless person $20 to humiliate himself, is that a fair transaction, or an exploitation of the asymmetry between our conditions?

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol. Ever seen a migrant camp? Ever talked to a seasonal farm laborer? People will literally walk across continents for 30k/years. https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Soldier/Salary

Sounds like $30k is an improvement in their lives then, so is it really "too little"?

yes.
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