The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators • Hacker News Board

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#91

Post by tenebrisalietum » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 6:56 PM UTC

jbrennan wrote: post #77

In my opinion this is an argument in favour of shutting Facebook (and every other large social network) down. This sort of work is damaging and abusive, and nobody should have to endure it just so we can have social networks. I understand there are some jobs in the world that need to deal with dark stuff (like law enforcement), but social networks just aren’t worth the human cost.

Why not just require social networks to verify identity and verify users are 18+ before allowing them to make an account? Furthermore, maybe even introduce a direct, easy-to-understand, hard-to-misuse law, enforceable locally (e.g. in the US it be a state law) that says committing fraud to join a social network is a misdemeanor with a $1,000 fine. Facebook can then report fraudsters to local police.

People would be less inclined to post this type of content to Facebook if it their account was very connected to their real identity, if they were 18+, and if there was meaningful punishment for making fake accounts or accounts with stolen identities.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#92

Post by matz1 » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 6:57 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #21

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then they should run sidebar ads on the gore sites. The point is that there appears to be a subset of the population that is not traumatized by this stuff. We may as well give them an opportunity to put that difference to use. Edit: and saying things like "well clearly these people are already traumatized if they're seeking this out, it's not good for them, we shouldn't give these jobs to them" seems laughably patern…

There is a subset of people who seek this stuff out, yes. Whether or not it is traumatic for them does not strictly follow from that. People come to their choices with all manner of existing problems and conflicts, and they don't always do things in their own best interest.

There are people that really like chocolate and some people that really hate chocolate.

Human are so diverse.

Is is really hard to believe that there are people that are not negatively affected by this ?

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#93

Post by milquetoastaf » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 6:57 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #66

I'm surprised there hasn't been a revenge movie where one of these moderators use their access to find out where these people live and start hunting them down like some sort of batman-like person. I could see a movie like this being a means of making the more general population aware of the terrible stuff content moderators have to watch.

The "Unfriended" horror flicks are like this

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#94

Post by intopieces » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 6:59 PM UTC

Every time you use Facebook, see an advertisement there, or click it, every time you share content on Facebook and get others to engage with that platform, you are contributing to a platform that is directly responsible for human psychological harm, in many different ways.

Same for Twitter, and for Reddit, and Instagram... and probably TikTok.

I don’t believe the use of these platforms can be considered ethical.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#95

Post by msapaydin » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 7:00 PM UTC

What I am wondering, and this is probably a dumb question, is why this has not been automatized? Can't content moderation be done with modern and strong machine learning based systems? There must be plenty of training data on this, and just like a spam filter which does not require humans in most cases, this should also be automatable. Why is it not?

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#96

Post by SaltyLemonZest » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 7:00 PM UTC

jungturk wrote: post #63

ed_balls wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's insolvable problem. - mom works as a freelancer and the kid uses her computer to post bad content. Does she lose her job? - someone trolls his mate for lolz.

Mom leaves a hundred dollar bill on the desk and her kid spends it. Someone leaves a hundred dollar bill on the desk and his mate spends it for lolz. Are these significantly different (if no less unjust)?

Yes. A huge fraction of modern culture takes place online, through Instagram or Youtube or Facebook or Twitter. I think most people would rather go bankrupt than be barred from all Internet access.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#97

Post by amelius » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 7:01 PM UTC

msapaydin wrote: post #95

What I am wondering, and this is probably a dumb question, is why this has not been automatized? Can't content moderation be done with modern and strong machine learning based systems? There must be plenty of training data on this, and just like a spam filter which does not require humans in most cases, this should also be automatable. Why is it not?

Perhaps because the training of these systems requires human supervisors?

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#98

Post by Havoc » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 7:03 PM UTC

It also sounds (from other articles) like people are seeing specific clips multiple times. Surely a bit of semi-AI filtering should be able to blacklist the regular stuff

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#99

Post by wmf » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 7:03 PM UTC

tenebrisalietum wrote: post #91

jbrennan wrote: post #77

In my opinion this is an argument in favour of shutting Facebook (and every other large social network) down. This sort of work is damaging and abusive, and nobody should have to endure it just so we can have social networks. I understand there are some jobs in the world that need to deal with dark stuff (like law enforcement), but social networks just aren’t worth the human cost.

Why not just require social networks to verify identity and verify users are 18+ before allowing them to make an account? Furthermore, maybe even introduce a direct, easy-to-understand, hard-to-misuse law, enforceable locally (e.g. in the US it be a state law) that says committing fraud to join a social network is a misdemeanor with a $1,000 fine. Facebook can then report fraudsters to local police. People would be l…

This hasn't worked the previous times it has been tried. https://anildash.com/2020/07/21/a-federal-blue-checkmark-won...

I wonder if prosecuting people who post horrible stuff would have a deterrence effect, though.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#100

Post by dhosek » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 7:04 PM UTC

cvhashim wrote: post #89

dhosek wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MySpace had to deal with this. They also had content moderators who were kept in a separate room at HQ who had to view all manner of flagged videos/photos. The turnover was really high even though at the time, MySpace had the kind of cool factor that developers would pick up women at bars with the promise of taking them into the offices after hours (which is a whole other weirdness and the corporate higher ups had to…

Facebook was a zoo in its early years. Basically a frat house. Google was also a complete boys club and full of misconduct. But you have to be a complete nerd to take your date to your office, even if it’s a nice office.

It really wasn't a nice office. My wife worked there from 2005–2008 and I'd occasionally pick her up after work. I think the big thing was just that it was MySpace and at the time, it was the epitome of cool. They even had a record label https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySpace_Records Unlike Facebook, MySpace was heavily tied into the entertainment industry, especially music, but to a lesser extent film and stand-up comedy which probably contributed to the cool factor. The engineering culture was pretty heavily bro-grammer in a way I've never seen anywhere else.