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The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

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Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#171

Post by justanotheranon »

teddyh wrote: post #83
kylecazar wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd wonder if frequents in these subreddits are typically professional and healthy people to have on a team, though (honestly no idea, never been). It's a strange conundrum because ideally you want good people who are comfortable watching things good people rarely want to watch. Don't have much experience with this demographic -- maybe there are more sane, emotionally healthy people watching snuff films for fun than…

> maybe there are more sane, emotionally healthy people watching snuff films for fun than I instinctively expect. Probably not, since there are no documented instances of any snuff films ever found.

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/07/11/the-revelations-of-wik...

Thanks to Wikileaks publishing the Dutroux Dossier in 2008, we know hundreds of snuff films were recovered from the notorious pedo-rapist Marc Dutroux.

Just because the police keep those films as sealed evidence that are never published does NOT mean snuff films are an Urban Legend. I can see why the police always keep snuff films secret. Imagine what would happen if snuff films were uploaded all over the Internet? There would be mobs of angry villagers armed with torches and pitchforks descending on jails and prisons to lynch pedos. It would make harassment from QANONs look like school yard bullying.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#172

Post by Nasrudith »

wheelie_boy wrote: post #37
tmpz22 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right but the difference is the sheer amount of money involved and the politicization that comes with that. If Facebook was worth 100m nobody would care. If facebook only has 10m users nobody would care. It's the scale that completely breaks the legal and political frameworks the our society leans on.

I'd say another difference is the percentage of your attention is being devoted to this kind of thing. Presumably reddit or phpbb mods aren't spending 40 hr/wk looking at gore.

Wouldn't that suggest then that the "ideal" way to do it is a very part time job then with high volume? Like say 5 hours a week. It would be a scheduling and logistical nightmare of course but it would give more "dispersion time" for trauma.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#173

Post by intopieces »

falcrist wrote: post #134
intopieces wrote: post #94

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.

Does this logic also apply to commenting on hacker news? Or is it specifically the platforms you mentioned? What specifically is the reason you consider those particular platforms to be unethical, and what is the solution. It's not enough to say "social media bad". You can say that about anything including the internet as a whole. We need the reasons it's bad and solutions.

> What specifically is the reason you consider those particular platforms to be unethical, and what is the solution.

These platforms are so large that they require hundreds of thousands of moderators in order to remove vile, illegal content, causing trauma for a vast underclass of foreign workers.

Here’s a few solutions:

Limit the number of people that a person can be friends with to 150, the Dunbar number.

Restrict the posting of photos to those which have been identified as having you or your friends in the picture, or no humans at all. Require permission from all human participants to post.

Charge a fee for access.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#174

Post by justanotheranon »

untog wrote: post #35
MattGaiser wrote: post #3

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.

> It is just that there are small pockets of people who are psychologically capable of tolerating this or even enjoy it. I wouldn't assume "watches this stuff" and "is psychologically capable of tolerating this stuff" are one and the same. Those people might be actively harming themselves by watching the content. That's one thing when they're volunteering to do so (though that's an interesting conversation in and of…

I think the best counter to becoming desensitized or depressed is having an over arching sense of mission and identifying your work with a cause for good that is greater than yourself.

take ER doctors. they daily witness human trauma far worse than viewing horror show videos and images. do you ever hear about ER docs who become depressed or mentally ill from being exposed to so much horrific human suffering? Doctors have a personal sense of doing good in the world through healing. They witness so much trauma that they become so desensitized that non doctors often criticize them for seeming so detached and for treating human bodies like mechanistic processes. But doctors have to be somewhat detached in order to do their jobs well.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#175

Post by chronid »

munificent wrote: post #23
Sebb767 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you crowdsource the moderation task[...]? I highly doubt that. These reported posts might contain private data or highly shocking content; putting that on a public platform, especially associated with the name of Facebook, is very unlikely to happen.

> putting that on a public platform, especially associated with the name of Facebook Is that not what the person who originally posted the content being moderated is doing?

> Is that not what the person who originally posted the content being moderated is doing?

The person that posted the content does not expect a random person from the internet to see a video of his children because it was accidentally flagged by an AI as child porn. :)

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#176

Post by uniqueid »

shadowgovt wrote: post #163
uniqueid wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can we build better AI Nope. That's what the people in charge of our social media companies keep trying, over and over, and it doesn't work at all. AI-moderation is like the Ring is to Golem for them. They can't accept that "cheap and fair" moderation isn't currently possible. > Can you crowdsource the moderation task This is the clear answer, imo, and it isn't obvious to me why these C-level execs avoid it. If I h…

When the goal is to prevent users from seeing this content, crowd-sourcing moderation defeats the purpose. Users don't want the back-stop to be "a critical mass of community members object;" for content like this, they want to see zero of it, ever, and will choose to use another site that satisfies that hard constraint if FB cannot.

    > they want to see zero of it, ever
Many want that, but very few (probably nobody at all, by this point) expect it.

    > When the goal is to prevent users from 
    > seeing this content, crowd-sourcing moderation 
    > defeats the purpose.
It's not actually all-or-nothing, and if it were, it would defeat it no less frequently than paid moderation already does. People tolerated toxic internet content before social media not because they never encountered any, but because they encountered much less.

No system can ever stop 100% of users from seeing 100% of the material they find objectionable. Every user has their own idea of what material is beyond the pale, and even if we invent AI that is competent at blocking content, and capable of tailoring its filters per-user, it will still fail some of the time, because users are people, and people's tastes change over time.

Aside from that, the way Youtube, Reddit, Twitter et al, currently operate, a user who reports objectionable content typically waits days, weeks, or years (or forever) for the company to take action. If you give a user a little real agency, it goes a long way to mitigate their displeasure over occasional exposure to unwanted content.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#177

Post by philwelch »

three_seagrass wrote: post #151
philwelch wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have a subcontracting company do the moderation and have them run the sidebar ads.

Which is still linked to the brand - "Facebook pays $10 M to company that runs ads on gore and rape sites" Look at how much trouble they got in when it was revealed they were using Onavo (even before acquisition).

Meh, if that’s the worst PR they can get they’d be massively ahead of where they are now. Especially considering how massively the press narrative has turned against them overall.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#178

Post by justanotheranon »

intopieces wrote: post #94

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.

social media is a mirror--you see what you want in it. for every horrifying or hyperviolent act or outrageous scandal, you can find the most joyous and beautiful depiction.

have you ever seen foxes laughing? they sound like babies. without social media, i never would have known that, nor experienced one minute of happiness while watching it.

https://twitter.com/mollyfprince/status/1277601602866761729

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#179

Post by ativzzz »

intopieces wrote: post #94

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.

I think this is pushing it a bit. By similar logic, paying taxes to, or simply being a member of the US (or almost any country) is contributing to a platform that is directly responsible for human harm.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#180

Post by falcrist »

intopieces wrote: post #173
falcrist wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this logic also apply to commenting on hacker news? Or is it specifically the platforms you mentioned? What specifically is the reason you consider those particular platforms to be unethical, and what is the solution. It's not enough to say "social media bad". You can say that about anything including the internet as a whole. We need the reasons it's bad and solutions.

> What specifically is the reason you consider those particular platforms to be unethical, and what is the solution. These platforms are so large that they require hundreds of thousands of moderators in order to remove vile, illegal content, causing trauma for a vast underclass of foreign workers. Here’s a few solutions: Limit the number of people that a person can be friends with to 150, the Dunbar number. Restrict…

Why is size the determining factor, though?

Is it just that you're worried about the outsourcing of content moderation? Because other than than the problems are the same. Someone will always need to moderate the content.

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