Live data from Hacker News

More than 140 Kenya Facebook moderators sue after diagnoses of PTSD

theguardian.com

171–180 of 500 posts

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

#171
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're lying and you know it. I remember the 80s as much as anyone else. Especially the part where Elton John and Freddy Mercury where at the peak of their popularity, unless you where living in a religious shithole but that was (and still is) a small part of the world.

In 1980 75% of adults thought that homosexuality was always wrong and 20% that it was never wrong or only sometimes wrong. https://lgbpsychology.org/html/gss4.html https://lgbpsychology.org/html/prej_prev.html Your feelings about the period mean nothing.

Depends seriously on the country, the Netherlands was way ahead there. In many ways more ahead than it is now because it has become so conservative lately.

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

#172

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…

Frankly

there’s a difference between a one or two or even ten off exposure to the brutality of life, where various people in your life will support you and help you acclimate to it

Versus straight up mainlining it for 8 hours a day

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

#173

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…

Speaking as a paramedic, two things come to mind: 1) I don't have squeamishness about trauma. In the end, we are all blood and tissue. The calls that get to me are the emotionally traumatic, the child abuse, domestic violence, elder abuse (which of course often have a physical component too, but it's the emotional for me), the tragic, often preventable accidents. 2) There are many people, and I get the curiosity, tha…

It's also super easy to come up with better questions: "What's the funniest call you've ever been on?" "What call do you feel like you made the biggest difference?" "What's the best story you have?"

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

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the first paragraph of the article: > post-traumatic stress disorder caused by exposure to graphic social media content including murders, suicides, child sexual abuse and terrorism. If you want a taste of the legal portion of theses just got to 4chan.org/gif/catalog and look for a "rekt", "war", "gore", or "women hate" thread. Watch every video there for 8-10 hours a day. Now remember this is the legal portion…

As someone that grew up with 4chan I got pretty desensitized to all of the above very quickly. Only thing I couldn’t watch was animal abuse videos. That was all yers ago though, now I’m fully sensitized to all of it again.

Did your parents know what you were seeing? Advice to others to not have kids see this kind of stuff, let alone get desensitized to it?

What drew you to 4chan?

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

#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 country. Cost of living dramatically differs.

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

#176
There have been multiple instances where I would receive invites or messages from obvious bots - users having no history, generic name, sexualised profile photo. I would always report them to Facebook just to receive a reply an hour or a day later that no action has been taken. This means there is no human in the pipeline and probably only the stuff that's not passing their abysmal ML filter goes to the actual people.

I also have a relative who is stuck with their profile being unable to change any contact details, neither email nor password because FB account center doesn't open for them. Again, there is no human support.

BigTech companies must be mandated by law to have the number of live support people working and reachable that is a fixed fraction of their user number. Then, they would have no incentive to inflate their user numbers artificially. As for the moderators, there should also be a strict upper limit on the number of content (content tokens, if you will) they should view during their work day. Then the companies would also be more willing to limit the amount of content on their systems.

Yeah, it's bad business for them but it's a win for the people.

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

#177

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.

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…

>> ridiculous how people think war is like Call of Duty.

It is also ridiculous how people think every soldier's experience is like Band of Brothers or Full Metal Jacket. I remember an interview with a WWII vet who had been on omaha beach: "I don't remember anything happening in slow motion ... I do remember eating a lot of sand." The reality of war is often just not visually interesting enough to put on the screen.

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

#178

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…

Speaking as a paramedic, two things come to mind: 1) I don't have squeamishness about trauma. In the end, we are all blood and tissue. The calls that get to me are the emotionally traumatic, the child abuse, domestic violence, elder abuse (which of course often have a physical component too, but it's the emotional for me), the tragic, often preventable accidents. 2) There are many people, and I get the curiosity, tha…

That’s an excellent way to put it, resonates with my (non medical) experience. It’s the emotional stuff that will try to follow me around and be intrusive.

I won’t watch most movies or TV because they are just some sort of tragedy porn.

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

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You're not grasping the point, which I don't necessarily blame you. Imagine that to cook that pork chop, the chef starts by butchering a live pig. Also imagine that he does that in view of everyone in the restaurant rather than in the "backyard" kitchen let alone a separate butchering facility hundreds of miles away. That's the sushi chef butchering and serving a live fish he grabbed from the tank behind him. When yo…

I grasp the point just fine, but you haven't convinced me that it is correct.

The issue most people would have with seeing the sausage being made isn't necessarily watching the slaughtering process but with seeing pieces of the animal used for food that they would not want to eat.

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

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone that grew up with 4chan I got pretty desensitized to all of the above very quickly. Only thing I couldn’t watch was animal abuse videos. That was all yers ago though, now I’m fully sensitized to all of it again.

Did your parents know what you were seeing? Advice to others to not have kids see this kind of stuff, let alone get desensitized to it? What drew you to 4chan?

Of course not. What drew me in was the edginess. What kept me there was the very dark but funny humor. This was in 2006-2010, it was all brand new, it was exciting.

I have a kid now and my plan is to not give her a smartphone/social media till she’s 16 and heavily monitor internet access until she’s atleast 12. Obviously I can’t control what she will see with friends but she goes to a rigorous school and I’m hoping that will keep her busy. Other than that I’m hoping the government comes down hard on social media access to kids/teenagers and all the restrictions are legally codified by the time she’s old enough.

Post reply on HN