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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

#541

Post by Spooky23 »

ummwhat wrote: post #492
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'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…

It’s fundamental that some members of the public are problems. By prohibiting the content but keeping the people around, they are curating a culture where predators are allowed to roam on the platform as long as they don’t cross a specific line.

They do this because acknowledging and dealing with bad users would also mean impacting fake users that make them money with ad fraud, growth metrics and ginning up engagement.

End of the day, if you operate a social platform, and you have people uploading child pornography and animal torture video, you should do everything in your power to make the user go away, for good.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#542

Post by gradys »

harry8 wrote: post #536
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…

The solution is to legislate it be done properly which is a business expense. Where it is too expensive to be done properly, there is no business case to have a user created content platform. Being a platform is enormously lucrative, shirking the responsibilities to cut costs and make it even more so is evil. Really.

Could you describe some potential legislation you'd be happy with? How would you define "properly"? I'm especially interested in how this would work in places like the United States where there are strong free speech laws.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#543

Post by Spooky23 »

Jedi72 wrote: post #505
hashkb wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I would start with a few things:

- Make social networks mandated reporters for suspected child abuse. Like teachers or little league coaches, reporting would absolve them of liability.

- Prohibit generation of profit from illegal activity.

- Require transparency in political advertising, with an accountable entity and individual listed and publicly available.

- Require reporting of funding source and material individuals for paid political advertising.

- Make the platform liable for false product claims in cases where the platform facilitates direct or implied endorsements for a product. (“Jedi72 likes this homeopathic cancer treatment!”

- Make the platform responsible for reasonable efforts to block and report on actions against fictitious users posing as people. Share liability for any claims, including libel, resulting from the actions of fictitious people.

A regulatory regime like this would either improve the signal/noise ratio or cause the company to abandon or prohibit certain actions or functions.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#544

Post by Spooky23 »

lifeformed wrote: post #279
jumbopapa wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like $30k is an improvement in their lives then, so is it really "too little"?

The word is "exploitive". Desperate people will do things because they have to. If I pay a homeless person $20 to humiliate himself, is that a fair transaction, or an exploitation of the asymmetry between our conditions?

To the chubby engineer type in 2019, yes. Make the drunk dwarf dance, it’s a free market.

When recession strikes and the gravy train ends, the same folks will be wearing Che Guevara T-shirts crying about unfairness.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#545

Post by Spooky23 »

ralusek wrote: post #289
xnyan wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"And the Union workhouses." demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?" "Both very busy, sir..." "Those who are badly off must go there." "Many can't go there; and many would rather die." "If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population." C. Dickens: A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, 1843

That literally describes the problem though. There are too many people that can do that job, so there's a surplus supply for it to be valuable to the market. It isn't the responsibilities of the Scrooges and the Facebooks to account for the fact that there isn't enough demand for that position for it to pay well. If people are unable to find work, or are otherwise unable to have enough stability so as to avoid exploi…

Do you know what a Victorian-era workhouse is?

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#546

Post by HPSUCKME »

HP is why noone can have nice things. Let me fix this for you OP.

"The person responsible for managing YOURCOMPANY's growing contractor workforce is Arun Chandra, whose title is vice president of WHATEVER. Chandra arrived at YOURCOMPANY last November after a long career at HP, where he helped to oversee the company’s global supply chain. In his new role, he told me, he hopes to gradually INCREASE OUTSOURCING TO 100%."

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#548

Post by Spooky23 »

social_quotient wrote: post #512
ralusek wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how this isn't a problem perfectly solved by the market. If it's a shit job that isn't worth the pay, people won't do it. If it's an okay job that isn't really worth the pay, they will have high turnover. High turnover has a cost, maybe it's worth it to them. If the turnover is so high or the job is so undesirable, maybe they'll axe the role. If the role is so important to the business that it can'…

I think the same about Uber and the drama with drivers. If the work is so bad, pay so terrible, riders don’t want to pay more, then why hasn’t the market killed itself? Now we have gov externalities trying to legislate something that shouldn’t have existed? I’m not saying any of this is write or wrong, I’m just at a loss how people get mad at Uber when the model shouldn’t have made it. Where did the market dynamics g…

It will, but it will take a few years.

The issue with Uber is they pay $0.70/mi for a task where the cost of fulfilling the task is $1.00. The drivers do it because they can get quick cash with no friction.

You can already see the system breaking down. Uber XLs are getting older and shittier. 2012 Dodge Caravan that picked me up at the airport will be dead in a year. As the situation goes on, someone will die in a fiery wreck by an Uber with no brakes, and it will gather the national attention and kill the company.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#549

Post by esoterica »

ihm wrote: post #474
Miner49er wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook won't do anything to help these moderaters unless the cost of the negative PR exceeds the cost of doing something. Engineers at FB could help achieve this by causing agitation, for sure. Maybe the best solution is for the moderaters to unionize.

The union would be stronger if it included the engineers too, who have more leverage.

Every single union in the planet was formed because workers wanted to improve their own wages and working conditions. Nobody organizes to protect other people’s interests. Why should engineers be the only rubes on the planet using their bargaining power to help other people instead of themselves?
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