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

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#431

Post by emn13 » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 8:34 PM UTC

crooked-v wrote: post #414

emn13 wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ad…

> any issue one side takes up is immediately something that - if possible - is criticized and turned into a point of differentiation This kind of "bothsame" response willfully overlooks that one party has gone to substantial lengths to offer compromises on bills, appointees, and policy goals, while the other very much hasn't.

You're totally right to point out that Republicans are much more shameless in this regard. I didn't intend to imply the two parties are the same here, but that's how it reads.

But even if the republican party+electorate are at "fault" here - I don't think that fact is going to help anyone, nor that Democrats are acting like little angels here anymore (if they ever did). They don't have the power to stop this dynamic, but they sure are participating pretty wholeheartedly in it now.

More fundamentally, the idea of open markets and in general an open society (i.e. the anti-Trump) was in some sense fallacious, and Democrats didn't admit this quick enough. A rising tide does not lift all boats - not automatically; at least. And there was precious little care for ensuring people had the negotiating position to actually profit from the changing times. And what rebalancing there was didn't actually serve to reduce inequality, merely to make it sting a little less - but people don't like being treated as inferiors needing a paternalistic pat on the head.

I think of it a bit like a prisoners dilemma: sure, it's utterly self-destructive to do what Trump (and by extension his voters) are doing. But it's partly a reaction borne of lack of other options: if they're going to get screwed, then screw everyone; time for a reboot. Only: that reboot isn't in sight, and all kinds of other nasty social habits are coming along for the ride.

I'm exaggerating a little as a point of debate, but you might say that the liberal elite (say) 15-30 years ago was being a little deceptive, and were doing so in a somewhat condescending, abrasive way, and that was plain dumb - because that helped cause something like Trump. For the playground analogy: maybe they started, but this fight was avoidable.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#432

Post by khazhou » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 8:34 PM UTC

emn13 wrote: post #410

bksenior wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ad…

Actually, since Facebook is now considered "anti-GOP", I would not be surprised if Republican senators begin investigations into this.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#433

Post by megous » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 8:35 PM UTC

calgoo wrote: post #319

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…

Make it captcha test: Select all the pictures of animal cruelty. /s

Wow, captcha from hell.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#434

Post by nkrisc » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 8:38 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.

People will have a much more visceral reaction to the truth behind the products they eat, as opposed to the arcane world of credit reporting that most people are only vaguely aware of when they go to rent an apartment and the landlord runs a credit check.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#435

Post by LinuxBender » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 8:40 PM UTC

RegBarclay wrote: post #23

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…

I thought the same thing -- that once content is moderated, it should be trivial to block exactly the same content from being posted and moderated again. What a waste.

The content may get modified quite a bit if censored though. A good example was the ChristChurch video. 4chan members modified it so many times, there are probably 4k-5k different iterations of it. NZ made a big deal about blocking it and arresting people for viewing it, making the demand for it significantly higher. There would have to be some really efficient and highly optimized ML to group all the variations together with a common label. AFAIK this does not exist for videos yet.

The only partial mitigation that comes to mind would be if a small circle of your friends had to "approve" your video before people outside your circle could see it. That would put them on the hook for sharing bad things too. That might even reduce the psychological load on the moderators.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#436

Post by _bxg1 » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 8:41 PM UTC

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #308

_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…

In general folks working in in-demand areas of tech are pretty out of touch with how hard it is it "just quit" a job. If you're an engineer or data scientist making $200k+ then you very likely have some moderate savings to cushion you between jobs and will have no trouble finding a new job and getting a slight raise. If you make over $200k, you are getting that much because your skills are in demand and employers nee…

You clearly only read the first line.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#437

Post by stronglikedan » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 8:42 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.

Update June 19th, 10:37AM ET: This article has been updated to reflect the fact that a video that purportedly depicted organ harvesting was determined to be false and misleading.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#438

Post by dRaBoQ » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 8:43 PM UTC

atishay811 wrote: post #210

I imagine if Facebook could use its users to moderate content from others, say you are sign up for moderation, then have to moderate 20 posts from unrelated users to get 20 days of ad free Facebook. Facebook could employ a system like re captcha uses to identify users faking it. Win-win?

Facebook won't be able to install the necessary measures to prevent the moderators from saving the videos onto their own machines.

A lot of the bad content is highly desired by criminals and can even be profitable to sell on the dark web (e.g. child abuse).

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#439

Post by _bxg1 » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 8:43 PM UTC

jm4 wrote: post #398

_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?

They aren't necessarily trying to maximize, they're trying to keep their heads above water. If they had alternative option for doing that, they would take it.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#440

Post by xvector » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 8:44 PM UTC

threatofrain wrote: post #209

bumby wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine many people wouldn't. It's potentially shortsighted to have that sort of myopic utility maximizing mindset when it causes you to debase other values like social stability. But in a society that advocates the hustle, I gotta get mine, right? /s

Isn't that something that should be resolved at the social or government level? As opposed to Walmart? The market is good at some things, and that which the market does not naturally provide... we morally expect/beg for? Doesn't a situation like this ask for social or government intervention?

Social responsibility is a thing.