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

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#391

Post by officialchicken » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 6:25 PM UTC

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.

While "Mary had a little lamb" may be the part everyone remembers - and is THE REASON why the FDA was founded - the book spends more time discussing exploiting labor (unions and busting them); the role of banks in predatory housing; the role of transportation networks in segregation; and all kinds of issues related to immigration, education, and public health.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#392

Post by csallen » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 6:25 PM UTC

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #347

csallen wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

To my eye, "I would if I could" implies "I don't because I can't."

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#393

Post by colpabar » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 6:34 PM UTC

aboru wrote: post #381

I am surprised after reading a lot of comments here (not all), that I have not seen any discussion of Cognizant and their role. I am no fan of Facebook and I believe that they have significant responsibility here, but the contractor is, imo, the party directly responsible. These people do not work for Facebook, and we don't know the nature of the contract in play. Are they paying per person, or a lump sum for some ca…

Cognizant isn't in the headline and unfortunately most people don't actually read things.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#394

Post by geodel » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 6:43 PM UTC

memmcgee wrote: post #353

H8crilA wrote: post #184

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?

Neither of those include massive mental trauma.

More likely none of trauma they suffer is being pursued and reported by media.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#395

Post by neuro » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 6:43 PM UTC

This seems to be the place

Cognizant Technology Solutions Woodlands2 7725 Woodland Center Blvd, Tampa, FL 33614

There's another big story here, it may get more horrific, from browsing their phone directory most of their "employees" appear to be people of south Asian nationality. Given the circumstances and their predatory behavior, I imagine they are also taking advantage of H1Bs.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#396

Post by lostlogin » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 6:48 PM UTC

president wrote: post #357

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.

> Just publicly shame the company and ultimately they change or congress passes laws. This just doesn't work in today's world. If it did, Equifax wouldn't be thriving the way it still does today.

A good example. Another is FB and their practices with privacy and user data.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#397

Post by TallGuyShort » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 6:53 PM UTC

asark wrote: post #378

TallGuyShort wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Just pricing in an externality. If that's a disgusting and shocking way to deal with this, then it doesn't follow to me that paying a little money to folks to do it makes it anywhere near OK. So yeah, it was tongue in cheek, with a side of reductio .

No the concern with distributing likely child pornography and snuff films to users is that the whole point of moderation is to STOP distributing that. You want to have it moderated in as controlled an environment as possible. I'm all for not subjecting more people to it than necessary, but it should at least be people who explicitly consent and are trained and provided with the necessary resources.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#398

Post by jm4 » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 6:55 PM UTC

_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…

I'm not following this logic. They can't quit a job that pays double minimum wage unless minimum wage is increased to the amount they are currently getting paid? If minimum wage was $15 there would be some other crummy employer paying more than minimum wage to incentivize people to take a shitty job. Would they be stuck in that one too because the alternatives pay less?

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#399

Post by cldellow » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 6:56 PM UTC

wrongdonf wrote: post #387

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…

It says right in the article that the content moderators have full medical benefits

Sorry, yes, I could have expanded on that. You're right, they provide health benefits, in theory.

My experience with the US health care system is that there is a wide gulf in health benefits. When I worked for Microsoft in the late 2000s(as an employee, not as "dash trash", as contractors were called), I paid some very small premium like $10-20/month for a plan with 0 deductible, 0 copay, and pretty much every doctor was in network and covered at 100%. When I dislocated my shoulder, some orthopedic surgeon who used to consult for an NBA team looked at it for me.

I understand that that was considered quite good insurance and that most people in the USA don't get that level of care, much less at that price.

If you read Glassdoor reviews of Cognizant, people complain about the insurance offerings available to employees. https://www.homebaseiowa.gov/sites/homebaseiowa.gov/files/do... looks like it might be what they offered 2 years ago. It doesn't look very good to me. If I was earning $15/hour, I think I'd pretty much buy the cheapest plan and only use it if I was actively bleeding to death.

I'll also link to https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/may/25/facebook-modera... again - it describes how other companies that moderate distressing content approach this. It includes the company paying for psychological treatment, including after the employee leaves the company.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#400

Post by joeblubaugh » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 7:10 PM UTC

dalore wrote: post #159

If they made engineers take turns working in the content moderation you would soon see all sorts of improvements (like the aforementioned ability to recognize duplicate content for starters). They would hate it so much, that would make better tooling. But now they don't have to know about it, just send images to the moderation team over and over like they are robots.

I knew an engineer who worked on news moderation tools - the stress was so high that he had a breakdown and had to quit.

I think if FB engineers had to actually interact with the bottom-bucket of the content on a regular basis, Facebook would have stricter rules, and perhaps even prior-restraint filters for image and video uploads.