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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

#281

Post by Dalewyn »

Eisenstein wrote: post #267
Dalewyn wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That the point is being repeated to no effect ironically illustrates how most modern people (westerners?) are detached from reality with regards to food.

To me, the logical conclusion is that they don't agree with your example and think that you are making connections that aren't evidenced from it. I think you are doing the same exact thing with the above statement as well.

In the modern era, most of the things the commons come across have been "sanitized"; we do a really good job of hiding all the unpleasant things. Of course, this means modern day commons have a fairly skewed "sanitized" impression of reality who will get shocked awake if or when they see what is usually hidden (eg: butchering of food animals).

That you insist on contriving one zany situation after another instead of just admitting that people today are detached from reality illustrates my point rather ironically.

Whether it's butchering animals or mining rare earths or whatever else, there's a lot of disturbing facets to reality that most people are blissfully unaware of. Ignorance is bliss.

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

#282

Post by diggan »

sd9 wrote: post #251
itake wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d think the higher density/frequency of disturbing content would cause people to be desensitized. I never seen blood or gore in my life and find seeing it shocking. But I’d imagine gore is a weekly situation for surgeons.

I agree. But that might be comorbid with PTSD. It’s probably not good for you to be _that_ desensitised to this sort of thing. I also feel like there’s something intangible regarding intent that makes moderation different from being a doctor. It’s hard for me to put into words, but doctors see gore because they can hopefully do something to help the individual involved. Moderators see gore but are powerless to help t…

It's also the type of gore that matters. Some of the worst stuff I've seen wasn't the worst because of the visuals, but because of the audio. Hearing people begging for their life while being executed surely would feel different to even a surgeon who might be used to digging around in people's bodies.

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

#283

Post by smackay »

yodsanklai wrote: post #215

I'm wondering if there are precedents in other domains. There are other jobs where you do see disturbing things as part of your duty. E.g. doctors, cops, first responders, prison guards and so on... What makes moderation different? and how should it be handled so that it reduces harm and risks? surely banning social media or not moderating content aren't options. AI helps to some extent but doesn't solve the issue en…

I expect first responders rarely have to deal with the level of depravity mentioned in this Wired article from 2014, https://www.wired.com/2014/10/content-moderation/

You probably DO NOT want to read it.

There's a very good reason moderators are employed in far-away countries, where people are unlikely to have the resources to gain redress for the problems they have to deal with as a result.

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

#284

Post by gruez »

sd9 wrote: post #250
prng2021 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“I would imagine that companies like Meta have such good automated moderation that what remains to be viewed by a human is practically a firehose of almost certainly disturbing shit.” This doesn’t make sense to me. Their automated content moderation is so good that it’s unable to detect “almost certainly disturbing shit”? What kind of amazing automation only works with subtleties but not certainties?

I assumed that, at the margin, Meta would prioritise reducing false negatives. In other words, they would prefer that as many legitimate posts are published as possible. So the things that are flagged for human review would be on the boundary, but trend more towards disturbing than legitimate, on the grounds that the human in the loop is there to try and publish as many posts as possible, which means sifting through…

>In other words, they would prefer that as many legitimate posts are published as possible.

They'd prefer that as many posts are published, but they probably also don't mind some posts being removed if it meant saving a buck. When canada and australia implemented a "link tax", they were happy to ban all news content to avoid paying it.

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

#285

Post by Dalewyn »

caymanjim wrote: post #261
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…

Plenty of westerners are not as sheltered from their food as you. Have you never gone fishing and watched your catch die? Have you never boiled a live crab or lobster? You've clearly never gone hunting. Not to mention the millions of Americans working in the livestock and agriculture business who see up close every day how food comes to be. A significant portion of the American population engages directly with their…

>Plenty of westerners are not as sheltered from their food as you. ... You only know about it because it's unusual enough to get reported.

In case you missed it, you're talking to a Japanese.

Some restaurants go a step further by letting the customers literally fish for their dinner out of a pool. Granted those restaurants are a niche, that's their whole selling point to customers looking for something different.

Most sushi bars have a tank holding live fish and other seafood of the day, though. It's a pretty mundane thing.

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

#286

Post by apitman »

croissants wrote: post #107
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #99

Perhaps this is what happens when someone creates a mega-sized website comprising hundreds of millions of pages using other peoples' submitted material, effectively creating a website that is too large to "moderate". By letting the public publish their material on someone else's mega-sized website instead of hosting their own, perhaps it concentrates the web audience to make it more suitable for advertising. Perhaps…

A return to less centralized web publishing would also be bad for the many creators who lack the technical expertise or interest to jump through all the hoops required for building and hosting your own website. Maybe this seems like a pretty small friction to the median HN user, but I don't think it's true for creators in general, as evidenced by the enormous increase in both the number and sophistication of online c…

Content hosting for creators can be commoditized.

Content discovery may even be able to remain centralized.

No idea if there's a way for it to work out economically without ads, but ads are also unhealthy so maybe that's ok.

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

#287

Post by Spooky23 »

yodsanklai wrote: post #215

I'm wondering if there are precedents in other domains. There are other jobs where you do see disturbing things as part of your duty. E.g. doctors, cops, first responders, prison guards and so on... What makes moderation different? and how should it be handled so that it reduces harm and risks? surely banning social media or not moderating content aren't options. AI helps to some extent but doesn't solve the issue en…

In many states, pension systems give police and fire service sworn members a 20 year retirement option. The military has similar arrangements.

Doctors and lawyers can’t afford that sort of option, but they tend to embrace alcoholism at higher rates and collect ex-wives.

Moderation may be worse in some ways. All day, every day, you see depravity at scale. You see things that shouldn’t be seen. Some of it you can stop, some you cannot due to the nature of the rules.

I think banning social media isn’t an answer, but demanding change to the algorithms to reduce the engagement to high risk content is key.

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

#288

Post by apitman »

meiraleal wrote: post #232
azinman2 wrote: post #175

> The moderators from Kenya and other African countries were tasked from 2019 to 2023 with checking posts emanating from Africa and in their own languages but were paid eight times less than their counterparts in the US, according to the claim documents Why would pay in different countries be equivalent? Pretty sure FB doesn’t even pay the same to their engineers depending on where in the US they are, let alone which…

> Why would pay in different countries be equivalent? Why 8 times less?

Because people chose to take the jobs, so presumably they thought it was fair compensation compared to alternatives. Unless there's evidence they were coerced in some way?

Note that I'm equating all jobs here. No amount of compensation makes it worth seeing horrible things. They are separate variables.

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

#289

Post by thrance »

richrichie wrote: post #268
thrance wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech billionaires usually advocate for some kind of return to the gilded age, with minimal workers rights and corporate tax. Markets were freer back then, how did that work out for the average man? Markets alone don't do anything for the average quality of life.

Quality of life for the average man now is way better than it was at any time in history. A fact.

But is it solely because of markets? Would deregulation improve our lives further? I don't think so, and that is what I am talking about. Musk, Bezos, Andreessen and cie. are advocating for a particular laissez-faire flavor of capitalism, which historically has been very bad for the average man.

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

#290

Post by alamortsubite »

zmgsabst wrote: post #217
HPsquared wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You’re only about 20x as likely to die on a motorcycle as in a car. What can I say? People like to live dangerously.

Yes, but you're also far less likely to kill other people on a motorcycle as in a car (and even less, as in an SUV or pick-up truck). So some people live much less dangerously with respect to the people around them.
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