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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

#311

Post by Der_Einzige »

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…

Actually reckoning with this stuff leads people into believing in anti-natalism, negative utilitarinism, Scopenhaur/Philipp Mainlander (Mainlander btw was not just pro-suicide, he actually killed himself!), and the voluntary extinction movement. This terrified other philosophers like Nietzsche, who spends most of his work defending reality even if it's absolute shit. "Amor Fati", "Infinite Regress/Eternal Recurrence", "Übermensch" vs the literal "Last Man". "Wall-E" of all films was the modern quintessential nietzschian fable, with maybe "Children of Men" being the previous good one before that.

You're literally not allowed to acknowledge that this stuff is bad and adopt one of the religions that see this and try to remove suffering - i.e. Jainism, because at least historically doing so meant you couldn't use violence in any circumstances, which also meant that your neighbor would murder you. There's a reason that Jain's population are in the low millions

Reality is actually bad, and it should be far more intuitive to folks. The fact that positive experience is felt "quickly" and negative experience is felt "slowly" was all the evidence I needed that I wouldn't just press the "instantly and painlessly and without warning destroy reality" (benevolent world-exploder) button, I'd smash it!

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

#312

Post by lazide »

athrowaway3z wrote: post #221
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'm not sure your comparisons are close enough to be considered precedents. My guess is even standing at the ambulance drive in of a big hospital, you'll not see as much horrors in a day as these people see in 30 minutes.

Outside of some specific cities, I can guarantee it. Even a busy Emergency Dept on Halloween night had only a small handful of bloody patients/trauma cases, and nothing truly horrific when I did my EMT rotation.

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

#313

Post by marcinzm »

efitz wrote: post #308

I have a lot of questions. The nature of the job really sucks. This is not unusual; there are lots of sucky jobs. So my concern is really whether the employees were informed what they would be exposed to. Also I’m wondering why they didn’t just quit. Of course the answer is money, but if they knew what they were getting into (or what they were already into), and chose to continue, why should they be awarded more mone…

So you're expecting these people to have the deep knowledge of human psychology to know ahead of time that this is likely to cause them long term PTSD, and the impact that will have on their lives, versus simply something they will get over a month after quitting?

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

#314

Post by gruez »

diggan wrote: post #280
gruez wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Also a doctor is paid $$$$$ >Content moderator is a min wage job So it's purely a monetary dispute? >bad working hours, no psychological support, and you spend your day looking at rape, child porn, torture and executions. Many other jobs have the same issues, though admittedly with less frequency, but where do you draw the line?

> but where do you draw the line? How about grouping the jobs into two categories: A) Causes PTSD and B) Doesn't cause PTSD If a job as a constantly high percentage of people ending up with PTSD, then they aren't equipped well enough to handle it, by the company who employs them.

>How about grouping the jobs into two categories: A) Causes PTSD and B) Doesn't cause PTSD

I fail to see how this addresses my previous questions of "it's purely a monetary dispute?" and "where do you draw the line?". If a job "Causes PTSD" (whatever that means), then what? Are you entitled to hazard pay? Does this work out in the end to a higher minimum wage for certain jobs? Moreover, we don't have similar classifications for other hazards, some of which are arguably worse. For instance, dying is probably worse than getting PTSD, but the most dangerous jobs have pay that's well below the national median wage[1][2]. Should workers in those jobs be able to sue for redress as well?

[1] https://www.ishn.com/articles/112748-top-25-most-dangerous-j...

[2] https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm

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

#315

Post by renewiltord »

DaSHacka wrote: post #310
renewiltord wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You can thank IRL privacy activists for the lack of cameras in every room in each house; Just imagine how much faster domestic disputes could be resolved!

Sure, there’s a cost-benefit to it. We think that privacy is more important than rapid resolution of domestic disputes and we think that privacy is more important than stopping child porn. That’s fine as a statement.

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

#316

Post by aoanevdus »

tossandthrow wrote: post #301
sd9 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t have any experience with this, so take this with a pinch of salt. What seems novel about moderation is the frequency that you confront disturbing things. I imagine 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. And as soon as you’re done with one post, the next is right there. I doubt moderators s…

> I imagine 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. On the contrary I would expect that it would be the edge cases that they were shown - why loop in a content moderator if you an be sure that it is prohibited ont he platform without exposing a content moderator? In this light, it might make sense…

Content moderation also involves reading text, so you’d imagine that there’s a benefit to having people who can label data and provide ground truth in any language you’re moderating.

Even with images, you can have different policies in different places or the cultural context can be relevant somehow (eg. some country makes you ban blasphemy).

Also, I have heard of outsourcing to Kenya just to save cost. Living is cheaper there so you can hire a desk worker for less. Don’t know where the insistence you’d only hire Kenyans for political reasons comes from.

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

#317

Post by Der_Einzige »

wkat4242 wrote: post #168

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 wo…

So brown/black people in the third world who often find that this is their only meaningful form of social mobility are the "someone" by default? Because that's the de-facto world we have!

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

#318

Post by wongarsu »

_qua wrote: post #253
fcmgr wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend's friend is a paramedic and as far as I remember they can take the rest of a day off after witnessing death on duty and there's an obligatory consulation with a mental healthcare specialist. From reading the article, it seems like those moderators are seeing horrific things almost constantly throughout the day.

I've never heard of a policy like that for physicians and doubt it's common for paramedics. I work in an ICU and a typical day involves a death or resuscitation. We would run out of staff with that policy.

Maybe it's different in the US where ambulances cost money, but here in Germany the typical paramedic will see a wide variety of cases, with the vast majority of patients surviving the encounter. Giving your paramedic a day off after witnessing a death wouldn't break the bank. In the ICU or emergency room it would be a different story.

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

#319

Post by Der_Einzige »

almog wrote: post #19
llm_trw wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

"More than 140 Facebook content moderators have been diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder caused by exposure to graphic social media content including murders, suicides, child sexual abuse and terrorism." What part here are you suggesting is similar to seeing two men kissing?

Not defending this person in particular, but you should take a look at how anti-LGBT, including at the government level, most countries are in Africa. Maybe a decent number of them do regard seeing homosexuality as PTSD inducing.

There are several places where they legally can and will kill you for homosexuality.

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

#320

Post by fc417fc802 »

gruez wrote: post #314
diggan wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but where do you draw the line? How about grouping the jobs into two categories: A) Causes PTSD and B) Doesn't cause PTSD If a job as a constantly high percentage of people ending up with PTSD, then they aren't equipped well enough to handle it, by the company who employs them.

>How about grouping the jobs into two categories: A) Causes PTSD and B) Doesn't cause PTSD I fail to see how this addresses my previous questions of "it's purely a monetary dispute?" and "where do you draw the line?". If a job "Causes PTSD" (whatever that means), then what? Are you entitled to hazard pay? Does this work out in the end to a higher minimum wage for certain jobs? Moreover, we don't have similar classifi…

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