Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 620 posts

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#341

Post by Buttons840 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #169
Buttons840 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That part of the article says they allowed the video of animal abuse to remain visible so that law enforcement could do something about it. Of course, that's bullshit for many reasons. Ban the user and the video, if the same video is posted again, autoban it. If the user is law-enforcent, allow them to see the details of all related content that was banned. There are neat things called if-statemets that could do that…

Yeah, I mean Facebook can open up a portal for all local and national police precincts and law enforcement that goes "This is the content that our systems and content moderators marked as illegal, this is the exact location, date, time it was recorded, our facial recognition software identified these and these individuals", etc. However, I just also described how Facebook could easily be used in a dystopian police st…

Allegedly they are already altering their behavior to assist law enforcement. I'm not suggesting they put a lot of effort into helping, but being able to remove a video from the general public without stopping law enforcent investigations seems reasonable.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#342

Post by DrJaws »

not_a_cop75 wrote: post #323
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.

A company that made 15B can't afford to raise salaries? What a ludicrous statement to make.

He never said they can't afford to raise salaries, but they can get away with it

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#343

Post by michaelt »

oarsinsync wrote: post #235
Nasrudith wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't it be just done in a more pleasant and efficient way by simply tasking them on moderation assistance tools instead of misplaced retribution? While putting themselves in the moderator's shoes may prove helpful they aren't comparable in skillsets. If they were given a command line interface for instance most mods would be puzzled. "Produced for self" and "produces for content moderators" are differing needs.

Dogfooding isn't really retribution, so much as a reasonably effective way to better understand and capture requirements. Using the things you produce generally helps motivate ironing out bugs and/or improving the product overall.

People in this discussion are misunderstanding one another because no-one's making a clear distinction between "Engineers/managers responsible for content moderation and with the power to improve the tools should have to do some content moderation themselves" and "All engineers/managers should do content moderation"

Andy the content moderation tools developer could certainly benefit from experience using the tools he's working on.

On the other hand Bob the Unix admin who keeps the CI cluster online can't iron out bugs in another team's product no matter how hard you motivate him.

Needless to say, if someone writes about Andy but a reader thinks about Bob, the gap in whether the explanation makes sense might leave the reader sceptical about the writer's claims, or even their true motivation.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#344

Post by geggam »

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.

When I worked at Y! groups a couple times legal would ask us to remove images. I am about as insensitive as it gets but a few images of babies being molested will trigger some deep emotions.

I cant imagine doing that day in and day out.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#345

Post by cldellow »

geodel wrote: post #320
cldellow wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I should perhaps clarify - I mentioned developers to point out that Facebook has the resources to provide excellent working conditions. If I can adapt (and perhaps torture) your analogy, I'd say it's like Facebook currently has doctors who save lives and command high salaries, and janitors who change bedpans but don't have access to hot water and latex gloves. So inevitably, the janitors catch a disease (hospita…

Your example seems useless. There would be minimum working condition requirement enforced by labor department. So it would be illegal that janitors be forced to work in filthy conditions without necessary gears. Similarly FB would be fulfilling the working conditions set by labor department for desk workers. People are essentially asking if FB can increase salary/ perks by x amount because internet commenters are som…

> There would be minimum working condition requirement enforced by labor department.

Yeah, this is basically what I'm saying. :) Labour codes are developed over time. In the beginning, it's the wild west. Want to be a janitor and not use any personal protective equipment? Go right ahead! After workers keep getting sick, the government begins to legislate requirements around health and safety.

Awareness of mental illness is a relatively new thing. We'll probably see some developments in this area if the big tech companies continue to outsource moderation at scale. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/may/25/facebook-modera... is a nice article that describes accommodations that other companies provide to moderators. They include, as an example, monthly psychologist visits which continue after the person stops working for the organization. They also include training for the person's family and social support groups.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#346

Post by sharkmerry »

bksenior wrote: post #252

You ever read Upton Sinclair's the jungle? It's a tale as old as time. Just publicly shame the company and ultimately they change or congress passes laws. This is a major reason the media works this way, it's part of American democracy.

I believe Sinclair's goal with the jungle was to expose the working condition for the benefit of the workers but the takeaway was how disgusting our food was

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#347

Post by amanaplanacanal »

csallen wrote: post #274
reactorofr wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Wait, how do you know they don't?

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#348

Post by acdha »

Fjolsvith wrote: post #293
acdha wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m not defending them but there is a distinction between Facebook using your private data for mining and displaying it to random strangers. Any sort of user-driven moderation policy would need to have a way to handle that or people would stop using the service.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#349

Post by fzeroracer »

creaghpatr wrote: post #94
mcbits wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Both! It's right there at the beginning: >But had his managers asked, they would have learned that Speagle had a history of anxiety and depression, and that he might not be suited well for the role. No one did. Perhaps when he realized he was going to be viewing graphic content for the entire workday- he might have reconsidered whether the job was right for him? The framing is clearly trying to pin the blame on the c…

I mean by your own argument, workers are not allowed to criticize their working conditions ever. You're technically not being forced to work there (even if you have a family to feed, poverty preventing access to better jobs etc), therefore you just gotta chin up and deal with it.

This is an argument entirely unrelated to the article at hand which specifically calls out how terrible these working conditions are and how Facebook perpetuates it.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#350

Post by memmcgee »

bagacrap wrote: post #306
bksenior wrote: post #252

You ever read Upton Sinclair's the jungle? It's a tale as old as time. Just publicly shame the company and ultimately they change or congress passes laws. This is a major reason the media works this way, it's part of American democracy.

There's a key difference there: the practices described in the jungle directly affected the population at large, by way of the food they ate. The kind of exposé in tfa requires the masses to have collective empathy.

The population at large is heavily affected by Facebook as well.
Post reply on HN