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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

#361

Post by marak830 »

meruru wrote: post #352
marak830 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So take that, and then change it to a human child. I was trying to use a fairly light-touch subject matter. At that point, if you don't have a reaction(from seeing it multiple times), its probably tome to seek professional help.

>At that point, if you don't have a reaction(from seeing it multiple times), its probably tome to seek professional help. You're already assuming there must be something wrong with me because I'm not getting scandalized by the idea of seeing violence. That's exactly the kind of reaction that makes me skeptic. Just so it's clear, I do dislike seeing violence, I just don't think it's that big a deal in general.

No I was using a low level difficult thing to watch, instead of a horrifying thing to watch.

If you think watching child porn to rate the videos as safe or unsafe for a platform such as Facebook or youtube, and that seeing cp is something you can handle multiple times safely, then I urge you to seek some help.

In all honestly, being able to ignore multiple videos like that - which you can believe in their primary are real - without being affected, the you may, in all honestly, have some compassion issues, and in your own best interests, seeking help cannot hurt.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#362

Post by bumby »

crumpets wrote: post #355
bumby wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it's expected in HN that someone would focus on the software engineer pay, but that largely misses the point. I don't think anyone was arguing that the SWE in this case was overpaid. Perhaps there's a case that, in the context of the moderators who make so much less, it can create a wealth inequality that leads to social instability, but I don't thinks there's enough information for that claim. I would argue…

So where is your outrage over the price of nearly all manual labor, fast food jobs, etc? $15/hr is pretty standard for unskilled work.

Who said I don't have similar outrage over those?

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#363

Post by scarface74 »

cldellow wrote: post #12

This 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…

$30k/year, no benefits, likely going to acquire mental illnesses

Why do you think they don’t get benefits? Facebook contracts out to another company. The company they contract with still is probably providing some benefits

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#364

Post by csallen »

bumby wrote: post #324
csallen wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I guess it's expected in HN that someone would focus on the software engineer pay, but that largely misses the point. I don't think anyone was arguing that the SWE in this case was overpaid. Perhaps there's a case that, in the context of the moderators who make so much less, it can create a wealth inequality that leads to social instability, but I don't thinks there's enough information for that claim. I would argue…

> I guess it's expected in HN that someone would focus on the software engineer pay…

This branch of the comments is literally about software engineer pay. See four levels up: "If Facebook could get away with paying engineers $30K/year, no benefits, believe me, they would."

To which you replied, "It's potentially shortsighted to have that sort of myopic utility maximizing mindset…"

> I would argue that there is a non-arbitrary point below which someone cannot meet the items that produce a stable society. Things like being able to raise a family, save for retirement, pay for healthcare etc. When those things are absent people become more reliant on a government/society has to fill in the gaps.

I agree with this. But shouldn't we then be advocating for a government/society capable of filling in the gaps? Expecting individual citizens or corporations to do this out of benevolence seems like a poor strategy.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#365

Post by starpilot »

How much of this originates with FB/Cognizant? This seems mostly characteristic of other low-paying job work environments. You're not going to get the cultural elite paying $15/hour. You get desperate people with patterns of maladaptive behavior and dysfunctions. You get horseplay, various illnesses that come from bad home environments, and overall balls of stress that are just looking for a job, any job.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#367

Post by cldellow »

scarface74 wrote: post #363
cldellow wrote: post #12

This 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…

$30k/year, no benefits, likely going to acquire mental illnesses Why do you think they don’t get benefits? Facebook contracts out to another company. The company they contract with still is probably providing some benefits

That's true, the article says Cognizant offers "a 24/7 hotline, full healthcare benefits, and other wellness programs". But at the same time, it quotes the on-site counsellor as having said "I don’t really know how to help you guys" when an employee went to him for help.

This leads me to believe that there is a qualitative difference in the calibre of benefits Cognizant provides versus those that Facebook provides.

Further, since the job has high turnover and can be expected to put a high toll on an employee's wellbeing, it's also important to me to think about what happens to their benefits if/when they quit. In the US model of employer-linked healthcare, this tends to result in losing your benefits when you need them most. By contrast, other organizations that do similar moderation jobs seem to offer psychological health care treatment even after the employee leaves the company. See https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/may/25/facebook-modera... for more info.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#368

Post by eswat »

sneak wrote: post #150
isolli wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's market forces. If the world was overflowing with employment opportunities, then unskilled labor would leave unpleasant jobs, and employers would have to pay them as much as it takes for someone to put up with the unpleasantness.

US unemployment rates are lower than they have been in more than a decade. There are more jobs than applicants. It could be people prefer working at a desk and a screen in an air conditioned office to, say, schlepping boxes in a warehouse.

> It could be people prefer working at a desk and a screen in an air conditioned office to, say, schlepping boxes in a warehouse.

And judging from the article, agencies hiring content moderators are going to do more to paint the work more colourful and being a career-builder, by outright lying about what contractors will actually do day-to-day.

Of course that’s going to look more attractive at face-value than being pitched a warehouse job by the foreman.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#369

Post by Pigo »

ceejayoz wrote: post #338
antisemiotic wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to be left wondering. While I'm not sure these are the videos mentioned, it's not hard to find some just by googling for it. Or maybe don't, I wish I didn't.

I don't doubt you can find all sorts of horrifying video. I feel like I'd have seen media reports of widely-shared videos featuring live, conscious kids being vivisected in order to harvest their organs.

It really seems important to know whether the video is real or a horror movie.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#370

Post by sillyquiet »

malaxii wrote: post #339
sillyquiet wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, its more like the devs have the necessary marketplace leverage and fallback to either put a quash on that notion or move on to another less ridiculous job. Don't think for a minute devs wouldn't be treated the same (and in some places ARE) if the corporate c-levels could get away with it without bleeding talent that is expensive to re-acquire. I am not, by any means, a Workers of the World Unite kinda person, but…

Historically, unions are a tried and true way for improving working conditions and average compensation. Of course, that's also the reason why they are so vehemently opposed...

Very true, but in honesty, they can be almost or more trouble than they solve when they grow so big and bureaucratic as to no longer represent or even actively harm the workers they purport to support - it's these cases a lot of union detractors latch onto in their arguments against unionization, with some degree of fairness. I speak as the son, grandson, and great-grandson of people who were VERY active in their respective unions. In particular my great-grandfather helped to unionize electrical workers in refineries in Texas, and my father was a union steward. They are full of stories of the headaches the union bureaucracy caused.

That being said - those cases are really rare and in terms of harm, the naked calculating exploitation that corporations flirt with is WAY worse imo than the harm a too-big-for-its-britches union causes.

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