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More than 140 Kenya Facebook moderators sue after diagnoses of PTSD

theguardian.com

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

#201

Post by graemep »

newsclues wrote: post #104
int_19h wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that we're particularly fragile, given the kind of physical trauma human beings can survive and recover from. It's that we have technologically engineered things that are destructive enough to get even past that threshold. Modern warfare in particular is insanely energetic in the most literal, physical way - when you measure the energy output of weapons in joules. Partly because we're just that good at makin…

Humans can render other humans unrecognizable with a rock. Brutal murder is low tech.

> Humans can render other humans unrecognizable with a rock.

They are much less likely to.

We have instinctive repulsion to violence, especially extending it (e.g. if the rock does not kill at the first blow).

It is much easier to kill with a gun (and even then people need training to be willing to do it), and easier still to fire a missile at people you cannot even see.

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

#202

Post by spacechild1 »

HPsquared wrote: post #197
narrator wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, these jobs are horrible. However, I do know from accidently encountering bad stuff on the internet that you want to be as far away from a modern battlefield as possible. It's just kind of ridiculous how people think war is like Call of Duty. One minute you're sitting in a trench, the next you're a pile of undifferentiated blood and guts. Same goes for car accidents and stuff. People really underestimate how frag…

I'm no longer interested in getting a motorcycle, for similar reasons.

I spent my civil service as a paramedic assistent at the countryside, close to a mountainroad that was very popular with bikers. I was never interested in motorbikes in the first place, but the gruesome accidents I've witnessed turned me off for good.

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

#203

Post by tovej »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #132
crystal_revenge wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exploitation nearly always involves paying. Plenty of people caught up in sex trafficking still get paid, they just don't have a viable way out. Plenty of people working in sweat shops still get paid, but again not enough with enough viable alternatives to get out.

You’re still not acknowledging the key points - that it is obvious up front that the job fundamentally involves looking at content others don’t want to, and that it is a new job that can be accepted or avoided without taking away from other employment opportunities. Therefore it doesn’t match these other situations you’re drawing a comparison to.

Most of these people are forced to take these jobs, because nothing else is available, they don't have the power to avoid this job. You cannot make a principled decision if your basic needs, or those of your family are not met. In fact, many well-off, privileged people who are simply stressed cannot make principled decisions if their livelihood is at stake.

The world is not a tabula rasa where every decision is made in isolation, you can't just treat this like a high school debate team exercise.

Not acknowledging the social factors at play is bordering on bad faith in this case. The social conditions of the moderators is _the_ key factor in this discussion. The poorer you are, the more likely you are to be forced to take a moderator job, the more likely you are to get PTSD. Our social and economic systems are essentially punishing people for being poor.

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

#204

Post by newsclues »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #200
newsclues wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Armies scale up. It’s like the original massive scale organization.

Scaling an army of rock swingers is a lot more work than giving one person an AK47 (when all who would oppose them have rocks). (Thankfully in the US we worship the 2A and its most twisted interpretation. So our toddlers do shooter drills. /s)

You are discounting the complexity of the logistics required for an AK47 army. You need ammo, spare parts, lubricant and cleaning tools. You need a factory to build the weapon, and churn out ammunition.

Or, gather a group of people, tell them to find a rock, and go bash the other sides head.

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

#205

Post by sensanaty »

Dalewyn wrote: post #182
Eisenstein wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grasp the point just fine, but you haven't convinced me that it is correct. The issue most people would have with seeing the sausage being made isn't necessarily watching the slaughtering process but with seeing pieces of the animal used for food that they would not want to eat.

But isn't that the point? If someone is fine eating something so long as he is ignorant or naive, doesn't that point to a detachment from reality?

I grew up with my farmer grandpa who was a butcher, and I've seen him butcher lots of animals. I always have and probably always will find tongues & brains disgusting, even though I'm used to seeing how the sausage is made (literally).

Some things just tickle the brain in a bad way. I've killed plenty of fish myself, but I still wouldn't want to eat one that's still moving in my mouth, not because of ickiness or whatever, but just because the concept is unappealing. I don't think this is anywhere near as binary as you make it seem, really.

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

#206

Post by wholinator2 »

doublerabbit wrote: post #101
narrator wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, these jobs are horrible. However, I do know from accidently encountering bad stuff on the internet that you want to be as far away from a modern battlefield as possible. It's just kind of ridiculous how people think war is like Call of Duty. One minute you're sitting in a trench, the next you're a pile of undifferentiated blood and guts. Same goes for car accidents and stuff. People really underestimate how frag…

One does not fully-experience life until you encounter a death of something you care about. It being a pet, person; nothing gives you that real sense of reality until your true feelings are challenged. I used to live in the Disney headspace until my dog had to be put down. Now with my parents being in their seventies, and me in my thirties I fear losing them the most as the feeling of losing my dog was hard enough.

Well, i think it goes to a point. I'd imagine there's some goldilocks zone of time spent with the animal, care experienced from the animal, dependence on the animal, and manner/speed of death/ time spent watching the thing die.

I say animal to explicitly include humans. Finding my hamster dead in fifth grade did change me. But watching my mother slowly die a horrible, haunting death didn't make me a better person. I'm just saying that there's a spectrum that goes something like: easy to forget about, I'm able to not worry, sometimes i think about it when i dont want, often i think about it, often it bothers me, and do on. You can probably imagine the cycle of obsession and stress.

This really goes for all traumatic experiences. There's a point where they can make you a better person, but there's a cliff after which you have no guarantees that it won't just start obliterating you and your life. It's still a kind of perspective. But can you have too much perspective? Lots of times i feel like i do

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

#207

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

Eisenstein wrote: post #184
Dalewyn wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But isn't that the point? If someone is fine eating something so long as he is ignorant or naive, doesn't that point to a detachment from reality?

I wouldn't want to eat a cockroach regardless of whether I saw it being prepared or not. The point I am making is that 'feeling sick' and not wanting to eat something isn't about being disconnected from the food. Few people would care if you cut off a piece of steak from a hanging slab and grilled it in front of them, but would find it gross to pick up all the little pieces of gristle and organ meat that fell onto th…

> Few people would care if you cut off a piece of steak from a hanging slab

The analogy here would be watching a live cow get slaughtered and then butchered from scratch in front of you, which I think most Western audiences (more than a few) might not like.

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

#208

Post by keybored »

noduerme wrote: post #89
narrator wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, these jobs are horrible. However, I do know from accidently encountering bad stuff on the internet that you want to be as far away from a modern battlefield as possible. It's just kind of ridiculous how people think war is like Call of Duty. One minute you're sitting in a trench, the next you're a pile of undifferentiated blood and guts. Same goes for car accidents and stuff. People really underestimate how frag…

Watching someone you love die of cancer is also super damaging to one's concept of normal life. Getting a diagnosis, or being in a bad car accident, or the victim of a violent assault is, too. I think a personal sense of normality is nothing more than the state of mind where we can blissfully (and temporarily) forget about our own mortality. Obviously, marinating yourself in all the horrible stuff makes it really har…

... okay.

Emergency personnel might need to braze themselves for car accidents every day. That Kenyans need to be traumatized by Internet Content in order to make a living is just silly and unnecessary.

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

#209

Post by guerrilla »

wkat4242 wrote: post #169
sandworm101 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Of course it's not real but it looks the same.

I beg to differ. TV shows and movies are silly. Action movies are just tough-guy dancing.

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

#210

Post by andrepd »

narrator wrote: post #66
nappy-doo wrote: post #4

I worked at FB for almost 2 years. (I left as soon as I could, I knew it wasn't a good fit for me.) I had an Uber from the campus one day, and my driver, a twenty-something girl, was asking how to become a moderator. I told her, "no amount of money would be enough for me to do that job. Don't do it." I don't know if she eventually got the job, but I hope she didn't.

Yes, these jobs are horrible. However, I do know from accidently encountering bad stuff on the internet that you want to be as far away from a modern battlefield as possible. It's just kind of ridiculous how people think war is like Call of Duty. One minute you're sitting in a trench, the next you're a pile of undifferentiated blood and guts. Same goes for car accidents and stuff. People really underestimate how frag…

I'm pretty sure watching videos on /r/watchpeopledie or rekt threads on 4chan has been a net positive for me. I'm keenly aware of how dangerous cars are, that wars (including narcowars) are hell, that I should never stay close to a bus or truck as a pedestrian or bycicle, that I should never get into a bar fight... And that I'm very very lucky that I was not born in the 3rd world.
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