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The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

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Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#221

Post by uniqueid »

shadowgovt wrote: post #206
uniqueid wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had to come up with a system, it would be some sort of reputation hierarchy, with a small number of paid employees at the top. Each level is responsible for auditing the levels under them. > What real agency does the system you propose offer? The ability for millions of users to moderate themselves. So... fast response time, by opinionated, emotionally-invested moderators, as opposed to the status quo: slow resp…

> occasionally Precisely. How often? Close to never.

Give or take a live-streamed Christchurch massacre?

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#222

Post by mixmastamyk »

irrational wrote: post #64
kylecazar wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd wonder if frequents in these subreddits are typically professional and healthy people to have on a team, though (honestly no idea, never been). It's a strange conundrum because ideally you want good people who are comfortable watching things good people rarely want to watch. Don't have much experience with this demographic -- maybe there are more sane, emotionally healthy people watching snuff films for fun than…

I remember talking to an FBI agent who had to watch a lot of terrible stuff. He said that at first it was very distressing and sickening, but after awhile he became desensitized to it and could eat lunch with no issues while continuing to watch it. I wonder if some people have the psychological profile that allows them to become desensitized while other people never can. Though, it probably isn't good that people hav…

If one can become desensitized to loading people into ovens, they can certainly to pictures of the same thing.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#223

Post by joe_the_user »

CM30 wrote: post #25

It's probably a bit controversial to say this, but haven't large sites had to deal with these problems for years by the time the likes of Facebook/Twitter/YouTube/Instagram/whatever came around? It's obviously horrible doing this as a job and it's obviously a bit more common on Facebook than say, a large old school internet forum, but... at least in this case people are paid to do this. Reddit mods and old school for…

It's probably a bit controversial to say this, but haven't large sites had to deal with these problems for years by the time the likes of Facebook/Twitter/YouTube/Instagram/whatever came around?

I don't think at the same level. Social media usage went from 10% of the population to 79% from 2005 to 2015 and was even lower a few years before this. So current social media companies operate at unprecedented scales. Moreover, the smaller percentage of people usage social media in earlier times tended to be "sophisticated users" who didn't necessarily expect their feed to be systematically filtered.

https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2015/10/08/social-netwo...

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#224

Post by EE84M3i »

teddyh wrote: post #116
exolymph wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A snuff film is a video in which someone actually IRL dies. There are about a zillion of them.

A snuff film is defined by most as at least having been made for the purpose of entertainment of others. Some include the proviso that it has to have been made for profit, and yet others demand that it has at least been sold. But regardless, not even the first level of these criteria have ever been fulfulled. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/a-pinch-of-snuff/

That article was last updated 2006 and does not take into account ISIS or Mexican drug cartel videos, which arguably meet your first definition and many would consider snuff.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#226

Post by bagacrap »

MattGaiser wrote: post #3

They should recruit people on Reddit for this. A large number of them seem perfectly fine with this type of content. There are dedicated communities to all these things. I do not mean this as a hit against Reddit users. It is just that there are small pockets of people who are psychologically capable of tolerating this or even enjoy it. It seems more ethical to hire people from /r/watchpeopledie.

I think there's a good chance that if someone seems perfectly fine with this content, they've already got mental health issues.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#227

Post by shadowgovt »

uniqueid wrote: post #221
shadowgovt wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> occasionally Precisely. How often? Close to never.

Give or take a live-streamed Christchurch massacre?

Yes. One disastrous livestream in the history of the feature, with further controls added almost immediately as a result.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#228

Post by stickfigure »

zacharycohn wrote: post #186
stickfigure wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like something specific to the individual. Maybe this isn't the job for you, but there's probably enough people "made of different stuff" that could handle it? I feel like there's a subtext in this discussion that "nobody can handle it" or "you have to be a monster to work this job" but that's just not true. Just out of college in the mid-90s, I worked for a few months at a small local software company in…

Have you ever had a job where you have to look at pictures of mutilated children all day long? I don't think many people are immune to PTSD, but I suppose sociopaths need jobs too. But I'm not sure you want to hire a department of sociopaths.

> I don't think many people are immune to PTSD

PTSD is real but lots of people still go to war and not everyone comes back a basketcase. Most don't, in fact.

No, I've never had a job watching pictures of mutilated children all day. But like a lot of naturally curious people, I've searched out and watched bloody videos of beheadings and car accidents and whatnot. It wasn't pleasant, but it wasn't really traumatic either. If I didn't already have a much more lucrative career, I don't think I'd suffer too much as a Facebook censor.

Does that make me a sociopath? My wife and son don't think so, nor do my close friends. I'm not sure if I should feel a little offended here.

On the other hand, I may still have PTSD from those days of cold calling as a junior software engineer 25 years ago. I hate phones. Maybe people are just wired differently.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#229

Post by victoriasun »

MattGaiser wrote: post #200
victoriasun wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But are people like that people you want as your co-workers? Serious question, I don't mean this facetiously. I think is an extremely complex question and I wonder if introducing someone who is openly comfortable with gore is dangerous to the psychological health of the company. For example, at a previous company a co-worker publicly shared, without a trigger warning and in great detail, a very gorey thing he enjoyed…

Would they need to be co-workers beyond corporate title? Content moderation is sitting at a desk clicking through things for hours a day.

Certainly in our own, private social spaces we are free to choose whomever we socialize with, but at work that option is less available. The example I gave happened during work hours over work communication, so there is always going to be social overlap that you can't simply opt out of (the age old 'what is culture fit' question applies here, and every co-worker contributes to company culture in some way).

And while a lot of content moderators do focus purely on clicking thru things, a lot of other ones still regularly interface with the company. I used to work at Discord, where content moderation of this level (and traumatic nature) was a constant concern. As engineers you may be staffed to work on a tool to help with moderation. Or you may be working on some fancy AI to help sort and tag unsafe content. And this is only from the product engineering perspective; content moderators will have to work with customer success to create content policy, or enforce bans for unsavory behavior. So I don't think they really are siloable away from the rest of the company, and I'm not even certain that that is a humane way to treat them.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#230

Post by adjkant »

jquery wrote: post #213
zacharycohn wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever had a job where you have to look at pictures of mutilated children all day long? I don't think many people are immune to PTSD, but I suppose sociopaths need jobs too. But I'm not sure you want to hire a department of sociopaths.

Is this not the same type of thinking that’s convinced people who do all sorts of dirty but necessary jobs are “real sickos”? Jobs like homicide/sex crime investigation, fixing the sewers, exterminating pests, and so on. I would probably get PTSD if I had to investigate bleeding anuses digitally but my doctor seems to manage and I doubt she’s a sociopath. My point is, some people simply aren’t traumatized by photos/v…

You seem to be confusing any exposure with constant exposure, and also type of gross/messed up. Nothing you listed compares to content moderation in severity and volume.

Fixing a sewer is gross. Extermination is gross, not traumatic, unless you have extreme empathy for small rodents and insects. Doctors deal with very few remotely bleeding anuses on the order of one a week/month maybe versus one a minute. None of these should be called real sickos, but none would be expected to develop PTSD either.

A significantly bigger portion of the population would be traumatized and develop PTSD by the level of exposure of content moderation. While not nearly all are sociopaths, they 100% will be represented higher even without factoring in selection bias. Hiring a department of them would not be inconceivable, putting the validity of that aside.

You also make the jump from sociopath to bad person, which many I'm sure would have some qualms with as a categorical.

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