Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

More than 140 Kenya Facebook moderators sue after diagnoses of PTSD

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 500 posts

Re: More than 140 Kenya Facebook moderators sue after diagnoses of PTSD

#161

Post by Dalewyn »

Eisenstein wrote: post #159
Dalewyn wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Japan, some sushi bars keep live fish in tanks that you can order to have served to you as sushi/sashimi. The chefs butcher and serve the fish right in front of you, and because it was alive merely seconds ago the meat will still be twitching when you get it. If they also serve the rest of the fish as decoration, the fish might still be gasping for oxygen. Japanese don't really think much of it, they're used to it…

If I were to cook a pork chop in the kitchen of some of my middle eastern relatives they would feel sick and would probably throw out the pan I cooked it with (and me from their house as well). Isn't this similar to why people unfamiliar with that style of seafood would feel sick -- cultural views on what is and is not normal food -- and not because of their view of mortality?

You're not grasping the point, which I don't necessarily blame you.

Imagine that to cook that pork chop, the chef starts by butchering a live pig. Also imagine that he does that in view of everyone in the restaurant rather than in the "backyard" kitchen let alone a separate butchering facility hundreds of miles away.

That's the sushi chef butchering and serving a live fish he grabbed from the tank behind him.

When you can actually see where your food is coming from and what "food" truly even is, that gives you a better grasp on reality and life.

It's also the true meaning behind the often used joke that goes: "You don't want to see how sausages are made."

Re: More than 140 Kenya Facebook moderators sue after diagnoses of PTSD

#162

Post by mulmen »

throw__away7391 wrote: post #128
krior wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious, do you have a better solution?

The solution to most social media problems in general is: `select * from posts where author_id in @follow_ids order by date desc` At least 90% of the ills of social media are caused by using algorithms to prioritize content and determine what you're shown. Before these were introduced, you just wouldn't see these types of things unless you chose to follow someone who chose to post it, and you didn't have people delib…

I'd love a chronological feed but if you gave me a choice I'd get rid of lists in SQL first.

> select * from posts where author_id in @follow_ids order by date desc

SELECT post FROM posts JOIN follows ON posts.author_id = follows.author_id WHERE follows.user_id = $session.user_id;

Re: More than 140 Kenya Facebook moderators sue after diagnoses of PTSD

#163

Post by abdullahkhalids »

shadowgovt wrote: post #63
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of facebook moderators (besides legal compliance) is to protect normal people from the "sick" people. In a federated network, of course, such people will create their own instances, and hide there. But then no one is harmed from them, because all such instances will be banned quite quickly, same as all spam email hosts are blocked very quickly by everyone else. From a normal person perspective on not seei…

That's the theory. I'm not sure yet that it works in practice, I've seen a lot of people on Mastodon complaining about how as a moderator, keeping up with the bad services is a perpetual game of whack-a-mole because everything is access on by default. Maybe this is a Mastodon specific issue.

That's because Mastodon or any other federated social network hasn't taken off, and so not enough development has gone into them. If they take off, naturally people will develop analogs of spam lists and SpamAssassin etc for such systems, which will cut down moderation time significantly. I run an org email server, and don't exactly do any thing besides installing such automated tools.

On Mastodon, admins will just have to do the additional work to make sure new accounts are not posting weird stuff.

Re: More than 140 Kenya Facebook moderators sue after diagnoses of PTSD

#164

Post by skissane »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #141
skissane wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, with the advent of GenAI, CSAM has been redefined to include generated imagery that does not contain any of {children, sex, abuse} It hasn’t been redefined. The legal definition of it in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand has included computer generated imagery since at least the 1990s. The US Congress did the same thing in 1996, but the US Supreme Court ruled in the 2002 case of Ashcroft v Free Speech Co…

Thanks for the information. However I am unconvinced that SCOTUS got this right. I don’t think there should be a free speech exception for obscenity. If no other crime (like against a real child) is committed in creating the content, what makes it different from any other speech?

> However I am unconvinced that SCOTUS got this right. I don’t think there should be a free speech exception for obscenity

If you look at the question from an originalist viewpoint: did the legislators who drafted the First Amendment, and voted to propose and ratify it, understand it as an exceptionless absolute or as subject to reasonable exceptions? I think if you look at the writings of those legislators, the debates and speeches made in the process of its proposal and ratification, etc, it is clear that they saw it as subject to reasonable exceptions – and I think it is also clear that they saw obscenity as one of those reasonable exceptions, even though they no doubt would have disagreed about its precise scope. So, from an originalist viewpoint, having some kind of obscenity exception seems very constitutionally justifiable, although we can still debate how to draw it.

In fact, I think from an originalist viewpoint the obscenity exception is on firmer ground than the child pornography exception, since the former is arguably as old as the First Amendment itself is, the latter only goes back to the 1982 case of New York v. Ferber. In fact, the child pornography exception, as a distinct exception, only exists because SCOTUS jurisprudence had narrowed the obscenity exception to the point that it was getting in the way of prosecuting child pornography as obscene – and rather than taking that as evidence that maybe they'd narrowed it a bit too far, SCOTUS decided to erect a separate exception instead. But, conceivably, SCOTUS in 1982 could have decided to draw the obscenity exception a bit more broadly, and a distinct child pornography exception would never have existed.

If one prefers living constitutionalism, the question is – has American society "evolved" to the point that the First Amendment's historical obscenity exception ought to jettisoned entirely, as opposed to merely be read narrowly? Does the contemporary United States have a moral consensus that individuals should have the constitutional right to produce graphic depictions of child sexual abuse, for no purpose other than their own sexual arousal, provided that no identifiable children are harmed in its production? I take it that is your personal moral view, but I doubt the majority of American citizens presently agree – which suggests that completely removing the obscenity exception, even in the case of virtual CSAM material, cannot currently be justified on living constitutionalist grounds either.

Re: More than 140 Kenya Facebook moderators sue after diagnoses of PTSD

#165

Post by tzs »

shadowgovt wrote: post #125
kotaKat wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm shocked at the amount of people I've seen on my local news getting arrested lately for it and it all comes from the same starting tip: "$service_provider sent a tip to NCMEC" or "uploaded a known-to-NCMEC hash", ranging from GMail, Google Drive, iCloud, and a few others. https://www.missingkids.org/cybertiplinedata "In 2023, ESPs submitted 54.8 million images to the CyberTipline of which 22.4 million (41%) were u…

And, indeed, this is why we should not expect the process to stop. Nobody is rallying behind the rights of child abusers and those who traffic in child abuse material. Arguably, nor should they. The slippery slope argument only applies if the slope is slippery. This is analogous to the police's use of genealogy and DNA data to narrow searches for murderers, who they then collected evidence on by other means. There's…

> And, indeed, this is why we should not expect the process to stop. Nobody is rallying behind the rights of child abusers and those who traffic in child abuse material. Arguably, nor should they.

I wouldn't be so sure.

When Apple was going to introduce on-device scanning they actually proposed to do it in two places.

• When you uploaded images to your iCloud account they proposed scanning them on your device first. This is the one that got by far the most attention.

• The second was to scan incoming messages on phones that had parental controls set up. The way that would have worked is:

1. if it detects sexual images it would block the message, alert the child that the message contains material that the parents think might be harmful, and ask the child if they still want to see it. If the child says no that is the end of the matter.

2. if the child say they do want to see it and the child is at least 13 years old, the message is unblocked and that is the end of the matter.

3. if the child says they do want to see it and the child is under 13 they are again reminded that their parents are concerned about the message, again asked if they want to view it, and told that if they view it their parents will be told. If the child says no that is the end of the matter.

4. If the child says yes the message is unblocked and the parents are notified.

This second one didn't get a lot of attention, probably because there isn't really much to object to. But I did see one objection from a fairly well known internet rights group. They objected to #4 on the grounds that the person sending the sex pictures to your under-13 year old child sent the message to the child, so it violates the sender's privacy for the parents to be notified.

Re: More than 140 Kenya Facebook moderators sue after diagnoses of PTSD

#166

Post by llm_trw »

noduerme wrote: post #156
llm_trw wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be believable if not for the fact that hanging gutting and quartering was considered good wholesome family entertainment to watch while getting fast food in the market not three centuries ago literally everywhere.

How did that go away, if people only do what they're brought up to do?

We found out that keeping people homeless to die of exposure slowly was much more effective at keeping the majority in line.

Re: More than 140 Kenya Facebook moderators sue after diagnoses of PTSD

#167

Post by EasyMark »

hinkley wrote: post #23
para_parolu wrote: post #7

One of few fields where AI is very welcome

I’m wondering if, like looking out from behind a blanket at horror movies, if getting a moderately blurred copy of images would reduce the emotional punch of highly inappropriate pictures. Or just scaled down tiny. If it’s already bad blurred or as a thumbnail don’t click on the real thing.

I'd be fine with that as long as it was something I could turn off and on at will

Re: More than 140 Kenya Facebook moderators sue after diagnoses of PTSD

#168

Post by wkat4242 »

I have several friends who do this work for various platforms.

The problem is, someone has to do it. These platforms are mandated by law to moderate it or else they're responsible for the content the users post. And the companies can not shield their employees from it because the work simply needs doing. I don't think we can really blame the platforms (though I think the remuneration could be higher for this tough work).

The work tends to suit some people better than others. The same way some people will not be able to be a forensic doctor doing autopsies. Some have better detachment skills.

All the people I know that do this work have 24/7 psychologists on site (most of them can't work remotely due to the private content they work with). I do notice though that most of them do have an "Achilles heel". They tend to shrug most things off without a second thought but there's always one or two specific things or topics that haunt them.

Hopefully eventually AI will be good enough to deal with this shit. It sucks for their jobs or course but it's not the kind of job anyone really does with pleasure.

Re: More than 140 Kenya Facebook moderators sue after diagnoses of PTSD

#169

Post by wkat4242 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #158
LeftHandPath wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earlier this year, I was at ground zero of the Super Bowl parade shooting. I didn’t ever dream about it, but I spent the following 3-4 days constantly replaying it in my head in my waking hours. Later in the year I moved to Florida, just in time for Helene and Milton. I didn’t spend much time thinking about either of them (aside from during prep and cleanup and volunteering a few weeks after). But I had frequent drea…

A parade shooting is bad, very bad, but is still tame compared to the sorts of things to which website moderators are exposed on a daily/hourly basis. Footage of people being shot is actually allowed on many platforms. Just think of all the war footage that is so common these days. The dark stuff that moderators see is way way worse.

> Footage of people being shot is actually allowed on many platforms.

It's also part of almost every American cop and military show and movie. Of course it's not real but it looks the same.

Re: More than 140 Kenya Facebook moderators sue after diagnoses of PTSD

#170

Post by wkat4242 »

loriverkutya wrote: post #111
medvezhenok wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I’m not sure what is behind your assumption, if it’s the Autistic people does not have empathy myth, please read up on the topic.

Autistic people do have empathy, it just works differently. Most of them are actually really caring, just not very good at showing it. Nor at picking up others' feelings. But they do care about them in my experience.

Most of them I know will have more difficulty with this type of work, not less. Because they don't tend to process it as well. This includes myself as I do have some autistic tendencies. No way I could do this.

Post reply on HN