Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't, because that would be horrible...
If they were willing to work for that wage, why wouldn't you allow them to? Why would you favor an opportunity for someone pricing themselves higher?
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Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions
281–290 of 620 posts
Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions
#282> 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.
>We evolved in an environment where violence was part . . .
We also evolved in an environment without screens, that is, a world without any selection pressure to distinguish between actually dangerous experiences and experiences generated by screens.
Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions
#283Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions
#284I 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.
a lot of "AI" is just poor people.
in general response to this article there was a thread on twitter with some good links https://twitter.com/max_read/status/1141336189800239107
Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions
#285Don't fret, FB mods. You'll soon be replaced by algorithms so you won't have to do this much longer. You know, by those people making a min of 4x what you do and look down upon you. They'll tell ya to learn to code as they chuckle under their breath.
Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions
#286> 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.
Id like to preface, I'm not trying to reduce what these people are going through.
But it's relative.
I grew up on farms, I've slaughtered animals and I've seen seemingly stable 30 year olds completely break down when they see a video of an animal being humanely slaughtered.
I've also heard stories from mates of mine in the military that I'd prefer not to see on video.
People are desensitised from things they are raised with. Some shit (kiddie porn and extremely graphic BDSM and rape), isn't something you really want people to be able to accept.
Knowing that it's something that really happened vs a movie is a big difference.
Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions
#287> 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.
It's well known that viewing graphic material can trigger PTSD, e.g. in the police force. These moderators will be exposed to similar.
Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions
#288Maybe 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…
I agree with your point about the site being a bad idea, so maybe your first point was tongue-in-cheek. But displaying reported child pornography to people outside of your controlled environment? Not a great idea...
Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand how this isn't a problem perfectly solved by the market. If it's a shit job that isn't worth the pay, people won't do it. If it's an okay job that isn't really worth the pay, they will have high turnover. High turnover has a cost, maybe it's worth it to them. If the turnover is so high or the job is so undesirable, maybe they'll axe the role. If the role is so important to the business that it can'…
"And the Union workhouses." demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?" "Both very busy, sir..." "Those who are badly off must go there." "Many can't go there; and many would rather die." "If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population." C. Dickens: A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, 1843
That literally describes the problem though. There are too many people that can do that job, so there's a surplus supply for it to be valuable to the market. It isn't the responsibilities of the Scrooges and the Facebooks to account for the fact that there isn't enough demand for that position for it to pay well. If people are unable to find work, or are otherwise unable to have enough stability so as to avoid exploitative work, that becomes a societal responsibility. Don't tell Facebook what that job should be worth, or what it should entail, that doesn't make any sense. Just like minimum wage laws, they don't make any sense.
If we're legitimately talking about situations where the balance of power is so unfavorable to the unemployed individual, the solution is to start talking about UBI, not micromanaging very specific roles at very specific companies.
Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions
#290This 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…
Given the description of the videos in the article, I'm not sure that merely paying the moderators more would solve it. I think for most people that I'd want to be moderating content (e.g. not sociopaths) making them richer isn't going to do anything to deal with the real reason this is worse than a call centre - the content itself. I'd rather see facebook put more effort into protecting moderators from the content t…
Provide colour-inversion buttons to help reduce visual impact
I was thinking also about blurring the picture/video.