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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

#401

Post by asark »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #397
asark wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Don't have to subject anyone to it. Don't have Facebook.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#402

Post by kshacker »

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…

If the same article was about Apple and a subcon (not Foxconn) where do you think the limelight will be?

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#403

Post by johnrbent »

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…

Facebook is the entity creating this work, and is the root of the problem (by contracting a 3rd party to perform work that they very well understand the consequences of). The article is suggesting that Facebook should be held accountable for the detriment (trauma) that their work is causing. I think the article even argues that the contractors aren't equipped to deal with a problem of this magnitude/seriousness. Facebook is in the best position to rectify their moral accounts, but we all know that's not going to happen because they are evil and so forth.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#404

Post by bksenior »

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.

The effectiveness of types of persuasion change with time.

Eventually there will be something that moves people if it becomes important enough.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#405

Post by enraged_camel »

colpabar wrote: post #189
arethuza wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: He sought out the on-site counselor for support, but found him unhelpful. “He just flat-out told me: ‘I don’t really know how to help you guys,’”

So the counselors were probably an afterthought. I'd even bet the decision was made not as a way to keep the moderators from going insane, but to protect the company's image.

I mean, a counselor can only do so much in this type of situation, since the patient is not in a position to remove the negative stimuli from their lives.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#407

Post by H8crilA »

rock_hard wrote: post #188
mikeash wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make the executives do this.

It’s common practice for them to do so. Not just at Facebook, but YouTube and other platforms. It’s management 101

Oversight over key quality metrics (including understanding what exactly raters/moderators do) is a VP or even SVP level job. It's critical if your entire org's goal is to deliver ever improving data quality at reasonable latency and reasonable reliability (example: Google Search).

Not to mention that, in data driven orgs, the launch/no launch debates are focused on those metrics. So if you want to call the shots you kind of need an in-depth understanding.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#408

Post by danso »

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…

It's true that Cognizant has direct power to change things, but ultimately, the buck stops with Facebook, since they seem to be the vast majority of Cognizant's work and thus essentially have direct control of the purse strings. FB has the ability to change how Cognizant treats its workforce, and it's Facebook's choice to take a stand or to wash its hands of it. FB also has indirect say in demanding a certain standard ("98% accuracy target") for a given amount of money ($200M) -- though obviously if FB were to simply pay Cognizant more for the contract, there's no guarantee Cognizant would use that money for better worker pay/benefits (as opposed to giving bigger bonuses to executives, for example).

In the article, one of the contractors says that Cognizant puts up a "dog-and-pony show" whenever FB executives visit. Again, it's ultimately up to FB to decide how much they want to push past the facade.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#409

Post by TallGuyShort »

asark wrote: post #401
TallGuyShort wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Don't have to subject anyone to it. Don't have Facebook.

I have never distributed child pornography or snuff films. I'm already not subjecting anyone to it. Communications channels exist. Unless you want to undo that, or enable this behavior, you have to deal with it somehow.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#410

Post by emn13 »

bksenior wrote: post #404
president wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The effectiveness of types of persuasion change with time. Eventually there will be something that moves people if it becomes important enough.

Relying on congress to respond to public issues is fundamentally weaker now, and weakening by the year due to the duopoly in politics: any issue one side takes up is immediately something that - if possible - is criticized and turned into a point of differentiation; and media are growing into that too (online media already are highly polarized).

Whatever small forces of reasonable consensus remain aren't enough to address issues like this: because let's be honest, it's not really all that clear exactly what the problem is (there are lots of aspects), how serious it is, let alone how to address (if that's even possible). You're not going to get proper consensus overnight on an issue like that in the best of times, and it's hopeless now. At best - and I don't think even that's likely - you'll see some hyper-targeted no worker-abuse kind of laws, but nothing addressing the underlying dynamic that creates the situation, and something that a creative business is likely to be able to route around. Essentially a base-pleasing legislative patch that punts the problem until it reemerges. Given the topic that's only going to happen if the democrats win both houses.

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