Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#291

Post by xamuel » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 3:46 PM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #131

jsgo wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only problems I see are that someone could potentially upload a lower resolution version of the video a moderator has seen and then perhaps bypass the content id system (I don't know how tolerant they tend to be for situations as that). There's also the aspect of if we make it search out for distinct frames (like "scene change" type things), there's the possibility that some safe things could become auto-moderate…

Even with lower resolutions, fingerprinting (on a frame level) should still work relatively well, shouldn't it? If you get a certain level of confidence on each frame - if you have 80% of the frames with 80% confidence to be the same as $someVideo, that ought to be good enough overall to not get false positives but catch repeat views - how many 30s videos will randomly share 80% of their frames with a 90s video of an…

>how many 30s videos will randomly share 80% of their frames with a 90s video of an animal being abused?

If a powerful actor wants the 30s video removed, and knows it would be removed if it shared 80% of its frames with a 90s video of an animal being abused, then it would not be technically difficult to engineer such a 90s video.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#292

Post by sbov » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 3:47 PM UTC

ameister14 wrote: post #250

lexapro wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's kinda how free markets work.

Except it's not, not really - Ford discovered that paying workers a better wage resulted in greater profitability and increased efficiency.

To be more specific, paying them a better wage resulted in less turnover which meant less time searching for employees, less time training, and more experienced workers - resulting in an overall more efficient production line.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#293

Post by Fjolsvith » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 3:48 PM UTC

acdha wrote: post #246

asark wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's not really a shortcut around having employees do it because Facebook has a significant amount of private content which users will not tolerate being shared, standards vary widely (imagine a vegan flagging every picture with leather visible or a post about eating meat as obscene — if you're requiring this, do you just disable their account once you notice it?), and especially because it's the target of coordin…

And yet Facebook lawyers recently argued to a judge that there is no expectation of privacy on Facebook.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#294

Post by xnyan » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 3:49 PM UTC

ralusek wrote: post #289

xnyan wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 exploi…

https://twitter.com/lil_yenta/status/1140788295175233536

edit: if it was not clear, facebook is in fact part of society (by definition) and their responsibility is proportional to their role in society, no more no less.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#295

Post by britch » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 3:49 PM UTC

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.

Come on... don't let FB off the hook. Don't just stand up and blame "society."

Posting violent, hateful, evil stuff is as old as the internet itself. There will always need to be moderators. The question is how these people are treated.

Do you really think it is _impossible_ for a company as big and valuable as FB to treat these moderators well? Do they not have the money to pay them what they deserve, to give them sick leave, and to offer even basic mental health services?

Imagine if half or even a quarter the money and effort that has gone into their crypto debut had gone into helping build better tools and services for their moderation team.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#296

Post by ralusek » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 3:54 PM UTC

Lewton wrote: post #194

ralusek wrote: post #170

Earlier 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'…

> If it's a shit job that isn't worth the pay, people won't do it. That is not how the labor market works... At all. "Worth the pay" is overridden by "absolutely need this money for me or my kids to survive"

I responded to another poster. Desperation (debatable regarding whether or not this is possible in the United States) breaks markets, sure, but that doesn't mean that they suddenly need to be micromanaged. I have long been in favor of UBI in order to remove desperation from the table. I'm not, however, in favor of micromanaging roles at companies and arbitrarily determining what they're worth.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#297

Post by thom » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 3:54 PM UTC

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.

I know a very well qualified woman who has previously worked with pschological trauma in the army amongst other organisations, who has recently been hired to work at Facebook in Ireland as part of what sounds like a sizeable team. So it seems like Facebook aren't entirely ignorant of their responsibility here, although they do seem massively behind the curve.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#298

Post by ralusek » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 3:55 PM UTC

xnyan wrote: post #294

ralusek wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 exploi…

https://twitter.com/lil_yenta/status/1140788295175233536 edit: if it was not clear, facebook is in fact part of society (by definition) and their responsibility is proportional to their role in society, no more no less.

Yes, and taxes + UBI would represent that proportion. This meme is also only ridiculous because of the $100 figure. What if someone paid you $20k to fuck off. $100k to fuck off?

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#299

Post by jedimastert » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 3:55 PM UTC

bena wrote: post #207

_bxg1 wrote: post #129

I think the most pertinent question is why don't they quit ? It says a great deal about how broken the United States' job market and social safety net are. If minimum wage were $15, they could find another job that paid their basic living expenses. If health care weren't left up to your employer, they wouldn't be out of luck while looking for a different job. If there were any alternative , they wouldn't stay in this…

That is true, but a common theme among many of the stories is how much more they pay compared to other places. These people are literally trading dollars for their mental health. That is the choice they are making.

Yeah, 28,000 was barely a livable wage in the incredibly low-cost city I used to live in. I can't even imagine trying to live on it in the cost-of-living-helscape that is silicon valley.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#300

Post by Fnoord » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 3:57 PM UTC

meruru wrote: post #277

DannyB2 wrote: post #107

> 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.

> I find hard to believe humans are so sensitive [...]

Perhaps that says more about you than about humanity.

There's two very good reasons why cops use checksums instead of watching child pornography.

1) It goes faster (on the long term once the scripts/programs are written).

2) Its mentally exhaustive to check such footage. Why? One word: empathy.

Also, why is it that cops become so tense, or racist? Because of what they experienced. If your experience is shooting someone for the first time in your life, yielding a kill, then that is going to have a severe impact on you. If its #81, then its just a statistic.