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The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

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Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#211

Post by teddyh »

justanotheranon wrote: post #171
teddyh wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wo…

Snuff films are, fortunately, still only a subject of urban legends, since those films you mention do not meet the definition. Were those films made in order to entertain other people than the person who made them? Were the films ever distributed to any of those people? Was anyone ever actually killed in any of these movies? If the answer to any one of those three questions is “no”, then the movies, horrible as they may be, were not “snuff” films, as commonly defined. From what I can see in your reference, the first two of those things are decidedly not true, and the reference is unclear regarding the third.

(The films were, according to your reference, made only for blackmail purposes, and therefore certainly not made for enjoyment of any viewer, nor were they ever distributed to other people for their enjoyment. The reference does claim that people were killed in a specific place which was also filmed, but does not, what I can see, explicitly state that any murders were actually filmed, other than incorrectly calling all the films “snuff” films.)

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#212

Post by mirimir »

remcob wrote: post #115
indigochill wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>at least in this case people are paid to do this. I've done commercial moderation before and I would sooner go jobless than go back to exposing myself to the kinds of things people have to when doing this professionally. It's the kind of things you wish there was a brain cleaning solution for, but there isn't so it's stuck there basically forever (though I suspect the alcoholism rate is higher among people who have…

> wish there was a brain cleaning solution 'Drug-induced amnesia' to reduce long term memory generation is a thing and is sometimes used before traumatic surgical procedures. It needs to be taken in advance and is probably not very healthy. Plus I would have serious ethical concerns with jobs that would encourage that.

I've read that ~high-dose opioids after trauma reduces PTSD.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#213

Post by jquery »

zacharycohn wrote: post #186
stickfigure wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like something specific to the individual. Maybe this isn't the job for you, but there's probably enough people "made of different stuff" that could handle it? I feel like there's a subtext in this discussion that "nobody can handle it" or "you have to be a monster to work this job" but that's just not true. Just out of college in the mid-90s, I worked for a few months at a small local software company in…

Have you ever had a job where you have to look at pictures of mutilated children all day long? I don't think many people are immune to PTSD, but I suppose sociopaths need jobs too. But I'm not sure you want to hire a department of sociopaths.

Is this not the same type of thinking that’s convinced people who do all sorts of dirty but necessary jobs are “real sickos”? Jobs like homicide/sex crime investigation, fixing the sewers, exterminating pests, and so on. I would probably get PTSD if I had to investigate bleeding anuses digitally but my doctor seems to manage and I doubt she’s a sociopath.

My point is, some people simply aren’t traumatized by photos/videos, either via talent or training, and because of this they can process it enough to categorize it and keep their emotional/social/intellectual distance. That doesn’t make them sociopaths and it certainly doesn’t make them bad people.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#214

Post by wheelie_boy »

Nasrudith wrote: post #172
wheelie_boy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd be interested to see if the tooling around moderation could also be improved. For example, could the images start heavily blurred, with a circle of clarity that opens when you click. Or something like that, which would harm throughput, but be more humane.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#215

Post by asddubs »

Nasrudith wrote: post #172
wheelie_boy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

tbh I've been a moderator on various old school forums for over a decade, and I've never had to deal with anyone posting any gore at all. I think they're usually too tight knit and reputation based for anyone to feel like they could get away with it. it's not like people posting gore on facebook are doing it to mess with the moderators, that's just a side effect

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#216

Post by tomatotomato37 »

jfax wrote: post #195
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.

I was thinking more of 4chan moderators.

But we want these people to actually do their job

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#217

Post by intopieces »

falcrist wrote: post #208
intopieces wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the problem doesn't go away when you shrink the size of the social media site. The same people will still try to post disturbing content. In fact, you're giving them more places to post that content, so potentially more people will have to moderate it. I’m not sure I follow. A site like Facebook already has mechanisms for detecting multiple accounts, and in any case, multiple accounts don’t mean that there are…

And again, you run into the problem where nobody wants their website to work like that. In fact, limiting the person's audience really only works with facebook's system where people post content specifically to their friends. Other sites like Hacker News, Reddit, youtube, and various other forums aren't even designed with the concept of friends that are the sole consumers of your content. You're specifically posting…

>And again, you run into the problem where nobody wants their website to work like that.

Cancer patients don't want chemo, but it's better than dying, some might say.

>Other sites like Hacker News, Reddit, youtube, and various other forums aren't even designed with the concept of friends that are the sole consumers of your content.

Right, which is why those sites (besides HackerNews) would require slightly different solutions.

Reddit: Limit subreddits to 500 participants at most. Eliminate the number next to upvotes. Verify accounts. Limit posting.

YouTube: Not sure. This one is video-forward, probably the most difficult problem in terms of bad content. Definitely remove the algorithm for targeting people based on interest, though.

>That's not a social media thing. That's just an internet thing where most things are visible to everyone.

This is not any feature inherent to the Web, it's a function of sites that purposefully link together and allow people to rapidly post information. Pre-social media, to get your idea out you had to build a website. There was friction. The earl y web had little moderation because you really had to go searching for bad stuff.

>And again, people still post horrible content to small groups just like they post it in large ones. You've divided the problem up, but you haven't really solved anything. Someone has to moderate the content.

Dividing the problem up is a strategy that I propose lessens the impact to both the users (because content can't spread as fast) and the moderators (because there will be less content to moderate).

Elimination of advertisers and the implementation of cost (as a form of friction), I think, would also go a long way. Cost per post would be ideal.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#218

Post by intopieces »

twblalock wrote: post #188
intopieces wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HackerNews is a limited-focus link aggregation and comment platform. It doesn't require the kind of moderation that larger scale, broad-focus social media platforms do. 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: "…

So you think the only ethical sites are the ones that operate a small scale?

I can't say for sure, since I don't know every site. But I would posit that ethical operation is inversely correlated with user base size.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#219

Post by enneff »

jquery wrote: post #213
zacharycohn wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever had a job where you have to look at pictures of mutilated children all day long? I don't think many people are immune to PTSD, but I suppose sociopaths need jobs too. But I'm not sure you want to hire a department of sociopaths.

Is this not the same type of thinking that’s convinced people who do all sorts of dirty but necessary jobs are “real sickos”? Jobs like homicide/sex crime investigation, fixing the sewers, exterminating pests, and so on. I would probably get PTSD if I had to investigate bleeding anuses digitally but my doctor seems to manage and I doubt she’s a sociopath. My point is, some people simply aren’t traumatized by photos/v…

> I would probably get PTSD if I had to investigate bleeding anuses digitally but my doctor seems to manage

A bleeding anus is just a thing that happens to people. It's a bit gross but I don't know why anyone should be traumatized by it.

The kind of content that these moderators have to deal with goes well beyond the mere abject.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#220

Post by intopieces »

ativzzz wrote: post #179
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.

>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.

I agree with that. But I also assert that people have an ethical obligation to opt-out of systems that cause harm when / if they are able, or at least advocate to change them.

I don't have the ability to change Facebook. But I have the ability to opt out of it, though my actions on the Internet, and the ability to advocate for others to do the same. So, here I am.

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