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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

#501

Post by mehrdadn »

hashkb wrote: post #488
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…

> Facebook is enormously valuable. They made something like $15B in net income in the last four quarters. Their profit is not proof they are valuable, because they are willfully abdicating responsibility for the damage they cause, and, further, involving themselves in government debates over their own regulation. Advertising businesses are inherently suspect, and when one is addictive and potentially enabling electio…

> my opinion of course is that FB, Insta, etc (any advertising product with push notifications and/or infinite scroll) ought to be illegal. In 50 or 100 years we'll all recognize that social networks are like internet cigarettes.

Well cigarettes are still not illegal, so we have some ways to go...

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#502

Post by hashkb »

otterley wrote: post #499
hashkb wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't actually meet the legal requirements of contractors. In CA, anyway, they'd have to be full time employees since they do the same thing every day, full time, they are required to be on-prem during dictated hours, and the business relies on their work (e.g. they can never finish their project.)

The moderators are employees of the contracted organization (Cognizant, in this case). They’re not employees of FB.

Cognizant pays them hourly; they are referred to as "contractors" multiple times in the article, while the word "salary" does not appear.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#503

Post by jnbiche »

jfindley wrote: post #192
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…

Given the description of the videos in the article, I'm not sure that merely paying the moderators more would solve it. I think for most people that I'd want to be moderating content (e.g. not sociopaths) making them richer isn't going to do anything to deal with the real reason this is worse than a call centre - the content itself. I'd rather see facebook put more effort into protecting moderators from the content t…

> Flag accounts who post bad content too often

Too often? If we're talking about content that is traumatic to view (extreme violence, child porn, etc) then I think one time is enough for a flag, no?

That said, I do agree that shadow banning is the best option. Let them spin their wheels for a few weeks posting content before they realize no one is seeing it.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#504

Post by empath75 »

MockObject wrote: post #452
danso wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 standar…

Why wouldn't the buck actually stop with Cognizant management? FB isn't demanding these horrible labor practices, Cognizant is.

They’re paying rates that more or less require it.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#505

Post by Jedi72 »

hashkb wrote: post #495
ummwhat wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've talked about this somewhere else. What you're seeing is just a manifestation of what I call "the fundamental problem of user created content." Said problem is that warehousing and distributing content scales insanely well but curation does not. Until we have strong AI, curation is a manual process. Moderators just aren't efficient enough at processing content for their output to pay for a full time salary. You c…

> We can blame Facebook, but the reality is no one has a good solution. We can take a step backwards and eliminate Facebook, Insta, etc from our societies and enact legislation that will govern the second generation of social networks.

What legislation? Specifically? What do you want to make law, that they have to hire moderators (which they already do?) or do you want to make it illegal to post "bad things" on the internet?

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#506

Post by nonwifehaver3 »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #500
nonwifehaver3 wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can kiddie porn, gore and animal cruelty "flood the network" for people using Facebook? Don't you normally just see things from your friends, ads, and groups that you are a part of? If they post that, either call the cops, block them on Facebook, don't hang out with them irl, or leave the group as appropriate. Problem solved? I haven't used Facebook in 5+ years so maybe this is no longer accurate.

As you may have guessed from the downvotes, this is not even close to accurate. It should have been possible for you to realize this was inaccurate simply from how trivial the problem looked to you in comparison to how much effort is being spent on it.

I genuinely don't understand how an average Facebook user would encounter videos like those described in the article. Is it some recommender system gone awry?

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#507

Post by jschwartzi »

sneak wrote: post #411
eswat wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 p…

There is no penalty to quitting if the workers are unhappy with the work or feel it was misrepresented to them, and the warehouse jobs are still there waiting.

The penalty is the amount of time you have to spend looking for a new job, and doing it while you're still working your soul-sucking current job.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#508

Post by meerita »

kartan wrote: post #422
meerita wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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." I bet this can be done with ML and IA instead human power. Yet, FB uses their human cattle to censor conservative voices.

> I bet this can be done with ML and IA instead human power. IA and ML work in bulk. But they misclassify things that a human easily can discern. Think Tesla VS Google. Google wants a self-driving car, and that is not working yet. Tesla wants a car that helps you to drive and that is good enough. It's order of magnitude easier to be almost always correct that to be correct all the time. And you only need one kiddie p…

It is matter of time this will happen. Even with self-driving cars. Using people to do this is just killing people. Think all the mental effort that has to be done to censor. Humans aren't that perfect and cannot oversee the entire FB daily activity.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#509

Post by 1stcity3rdcoast »

hashkb wrote: post #495
ummwhat wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've talked about this somewhere else. What you're seeing is just a manifestation of what I call "the fundamental problem of user created content." Said problem is that warehousing and distributing content scales insanely well but curation does not. Until we have strong AI, curation is a manual process. Moderators just aren't efficient enough at processing content for their output to pay for a full time salary. You c…

> We can blame Facebook, but the reality is no one has a good solution. We can take a step backwards and eliminate Facebook, Insta, etc from our societies and enact legislation that will govern the second generation of social networks.

Ah, yes, Congress — the most competent subject matter experts regarding the internet and technology.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#510

Post by vageli »

greghatch wrote: post #483
vageli wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...which it's unlikely to happen because of the NDA's they have to sign. > If there's something wrong with this reasoning, please elaborate. I would be utterly surprised if an NDA could be used to prevent an employee from exercising their right to organize (in the US at least). Just because you sign something does not make it legally enforceable.

Yeah - but how would they know what is legally enforceable or not? It's really complicated and I don't think it's reasonable to assume people have access to a clear answer on enforceability and certainly not an answer they could rely upon enough to risk their job over,

I agree the whole thing is complicated and especially hard to navigate without guidance. I was merely responding to parent asking to validate their reasoning.
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