151–160 of 268 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Then they should run sidebar ads on the gore sites. That would do wonders for the Facebook brand.
Have a subcontracting company do the moderation and have them run the sidebar ads.
Look at how much trouble they got in when it was revealed they were using Onavo (even before acquisition).
Every time you use Facebook, see an advertisement there, or click it, every time you share content on Facebook and get others to engage with that platform, you are contributing to a platform that is directly responsible for human psychological harm, in many different ways. Same for Twitter, and for Reddit, and Instagram... and probably TikTok. I don’t believe the use of these platforms can be considered ethical.
You are commenting on one of those platforms right now.
I don't envy the work that Dan and Scott have to do in the slightest, but I don't think they'll end up with PTSD from it. At least, that's what I gathered when I read "The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News"[0], especially this description of it: "Pressed to describe Hacker News, they do so by means of extravagant, sometimes tender metaphors: the site is a “social ecosystem,” a “hall of mirrors,” a “public park or garden,” a “fractal tree."
Every time you use Facebook, see an advertisement there, or click it, every time you share content on Facebook and get others to engage with that platform, you are contributing to a platform that is directly responsible for human psychological harm, in many different ways. Same for Twitter, and for Reddit, and Instagram... and probably TikTok. I don’t believe the use of these platforms can be considered ethical.
You are commenting on one of those platforms right now.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are people that really like chocolate and some people that really hate chocolate. Human are so diverse. Is is really hard to believe that there are people that are not negatively affected by this ?
But are they same as the people actively seeking it?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I also think part of the objection here is around off-shoring. It's similar to other complaints about off-shored jobs: we're farming out unpleasant work to people that get paid less and have much less support (e.g. mental health). That's an interesting point, and has me wondering something. If a site like Facebook opened up a volunteer moderator scheme where people could sign up to filter out stuff that broke their…
YouTube tried doing something like this with YouTube Heroes and got tons of backlash for it. Then YouTube tried automating everything away and I'm guessing now people wish they had implemented something like YouTube Heroes instead.
Disclosure: I work for but don't represent Google. This is my own opinion.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As long as they have a pulse and can sit in the chair long enough to do the job they'll likely be fine. Content moderation farms, call centers and the like tend to optimize their internal processes such that they don't need to restrict their hiring to "professional and healthy people". There are plenty of people who are insane and unhealthy that can hack this sort of work.
Do you want "insane and unhealthy" people who voluntarily look at horrifying stuff deciding whether that stuff should be allowed on the platform, though? It'd be like having a jury pool made up of serial killers.
They have little power to abuse and obvious accountability. If they block kitten and baby pics and allow people being tortured to death they'll get fired quickly after the inevitable shitstorm.
Insane and unhealthy or creepy doesn't neccessarily mean dangerous. Even if they got twisted pleasure from it they would be gross but not inflicting actual harm. It isn't like people are being brutally murdered to give them kicks - they aren't a source of demand.
Perhaps it's a solution to use brainwave headsets. So whenever the viewer would get too much negative stimulation, the video would stop and the viewer could take a break.
Clearly, there's near-universal agreement that some moderation is fine; only a handful of (downvoted) comments on this thread saying "The easiest way to fix this problem would be for Facebook to stop censoring posts and let users block what they don't want to see." But we clearly don't think that's a good solution in this case.
The question of whether QAnon should also be blocked is one of degree, not quality.
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.
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…
It seems like if you acknowledge that: a) Terrible job exists b) Terrible job is necessary
You should also allow for a person to do terrible job without thinking that they must be a terrible person by extension. Otherwise you continue the well-trodden history of certain professions like hide-makers, executioners, or coroners being ostracized from society for doing the job we told them to do.