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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

#151

Post by prng2021 »

janderson215 wrote: post #93
prng2021 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think people who took these jobs had a list of job offers and were jumping for joy to be able to pick this one out? Or that they stuck with it after the first 5 minutes of moderating necrophilia because they believed other jobs would have similar downsides? You’re so out of touch with the real world and hardships people face trying to make a living for themselves and their family.

I’m curious of other perspectives and conclusions on this. Why do you think Facebook is the responsible party and not the purveyors of the content that caused them PTSD? From my perspective, Facebook hired people to prevent this content from reaching a wider audience. Thanks for any insight you can provide.

I never said Facebook is the responsible party. I’m saying these workers deserve our sympathy and I’m saying it’s not a case of people who had a simple choice but willingly chose a job that caused them PTSD.

I don’t think Facebook is blameless though. They practically brag about their $40B of AI spend per year and absolutely brag about how advanced their AI is. You can’t focus some of your R&D to flag content that’s instantly recognizable as disgusting content, like pedophilia, necrophilia, and beastiality? There’s already a ton of pre-labeled data they can use from all these workers. No, they don’t get a pass on that. I think it’s shameful they focus all their AI compute and engineering on improving targeted ads and not put a major focus on solving this specific problem that’s directly hurting so many people.

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

#153

Post by coryrc »

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…

It's a problem when you don't verify the identity of your users and hold them responsible for illegal things. If Facebook verified you were John D SSN 123-45-6789 they could report you for uploading CSAM and otherwise permanently block you from using the site if uploading objectionable material; meaning only exposure to horrific things is only necessary once per banned user. I would expect that to be orders of magnitude less than what they deal with today.

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

#154

Post by batch12 »

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.

That's the tragic consequence of being human. Either the people you care about leave first or you do, but in the end, everyone goes. We are blessed and cursed with the knowledge to understand this. We should try to maximize the time we spend with those that are important to us.

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

#155

Post by Eisenstein »

AnarchismIsCool wrote: post #149
Eisenstein wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is it about partaking in or witnessing the killing of animals or humans that makes one more connected to reality?

Lots of people who spend time working with livestock on a farm describe a certain acceptance and understanding of death that most modern people have lost.

[flagged]

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

#156

Post by noduerme »

llm_trw wrote: post #115
noduerme wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing something you think is culturally wrong is not necessarily traumatizing, is it? And surely there are degrees of "wrongness", ranging from the merely uncomfortable to the truly gross to the utterly horrifying. Even within the horrifying category, one can differentiate between things like a finger being chopped off and e.g. disembowelment. It's reasonable to expect a person would be more traumatized the further…

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?

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

#157

Post by Dalewyn »

Eisenstein wrote: post #143
nradov wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean to trivialize traumatic experiences but I think many modern people, especially the pampered members of the professional-managerial class, have become too disconnected from reality. Anyone who has hunted or butchered animals is well aware of the fragility of life. This doesn't damage our concept of normal life.

What is it about partaking in or witnessing the killing of animals or humans that makes one more connected to reality?

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 and acknowledge the fleeting nature of life and that eating something means you are taking another life to sustain your own.

The same environment will likely leave most westerners squeamish or perhaps even gag simply because the west goes out of its way to hide where food comes from, even though that simply is the reality we all live in.

Personally, I enjoy meats respecting and appreciating the fact that the steak or sashimi or whatever in front of me was a live animal at one point just like me. Salads too, those vegetables were (are?) just as alive as I am.

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

#158

Post by sandworm101 »

LeftHandPath wrote: post #109
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.

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.

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

#159

Post by Eisenstein »

Dalewyn wrote: post #157
Eisenstein wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is it about partaking in or witnessing the killing of animals or humans that makes one more connected to reality?

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?

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

#160

Post by Dalewyn »

int_19h wrote: post #87
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…

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…

>Crossbows can increase this to ~400 J.

Funny you mention crossbows; the Church at one point in time tried to ban them because they democratized violence to a truly trivial degree. They were the nuclear bombs and assault rifles of medieval times.

Also, I will take this moment to also mention that the "problem" with weapons always seem to be how quickly they can kill rather than the killing itself. Kind of takes away from the discussion once that is realized.

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