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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

#291

Post by apitman »

guerrilla wrote: post #225
jnwatson wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also exploiting the fact that humans need food and shelter to live and money is used to acquire those things.

That's only exploitation if you combine it with fact of the enclosure of the commons and that all land and productive equipment on Earth is private or state property and that it's virtually impossible to just go farm or hunt for yourself without being fucked with anymore, let alone do anything more advanced without being shut down violently.

That's actually an interesting question. I would love to see some data on whether it really is impossible for the average person to live off the land if they wanted to.

An adjacent question is whether there are too many people on the planet for that to be an option anymore even if it were legal.

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

#292

Post by ajb »

sd9 wrote: post #218
yodsanklai wrote: post #215

I'm wondering if there are precedents in other domains. There are other jobs where you do see disturbing things as part of your duty. E.g. doctors, cops, first responders, prison guards and so on... What makes moderation different? and how should it be handled so that it reduces harm and risks? surely banning social media or not moderating content aren't options. AI helps to some extent but doesn't solve the issue en…

I don’t have any experience with this, so take this with a pinch of salt. What seems novel about moderation is the frequency that you confront disturbing things. I imagine companies like Meta have such good automated moderation that what remains to be viewed by a human is practically a firehose of almost certainly disturbing shit. And as soon as you’re done with one post, the next is right there. I doubt moderators s…

Also doctors are very frequently able to do something about it. Being powerless is a huge factor in mental illness.

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

#293

Post by sd9 »

gruez wrote: post #284
sd9 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assumed that, at the margin, Meta would prioritise reducing false negatives. In other words, they would prefer that as many legitimate posts are published as possible. So the things that are flagged for human review would be on the boundary, but trend more towards disturbing than legitimate, on the grounds that the human in the loop is there to try and publish as many posts as possible, which means sifting through…

>In other words, they would prefer that as many legitimate posts are published as possible. They'd prefer that as many posts are published, but they probably also don't mind some posts being removed if it meant saving a buck. When canada and australia implemented a "link tax", they were happy to ban all news content to avoid paying it.

Yes, Meta are economically incentivised to reduce the number of human reviews (assuming the cost of improving the model is worthwhile).

This probably means fewer human reviewers reviewing a firehose, not the same number of human reviewers reviewing content at a slower rate.

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

#294

Post by FireBeyond »

ocschwar wrote: post #259
FireBeyond wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'd be asking "how bad is the fentanyl situation in your are?"

Relatively speaking, not particularly.

What's interesting now is how many patients will say "You're not going to give me fentanyl are you? That's really dangerous stuff", etc.

Their perfect right, of course, but is sad that that's the public perception - it's extremely effective, and quite safe, used properly (for one, we're obviously only giving it from pharma sources, with actually properly dosed solutions for IV).

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

#295

Post by [deleted] »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #234
abduhl wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most audiences wouldn’t like freshly butchered cow - freshly butchered meat is tough and not very flavorful, it needs to be aged to allow it to tenderize and develop.

The point is that most Western audiences would likely find it unpleasant to be there for the slaughtering and butchering from scratch.

[deleted]

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

#296

Post by slothtrop »

Eisenstein wrote: post #276
slothtrop wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because there are no ways to appeal I already addressed this and you're talking over it. Why are you making the assumption that AI == no appeal and zero staff? That makes zero sense, one has nothing to do with the other. The human element comes in for appeal process.

> I already addressed this and you're talking over it. You didn't address it, you handwaved it. > Why are you making the assumption that AI == no appeal and zero staff? I explicitly stated the reason -- it is cheaper and it will work for the majority of instances while the edge cases won't result in losing a large enough user base that it would matter to them. I am not making assumptions. Google notoriously operates…

> I am not making assumptions. Google notoriously operates in this fashion -- for instance unless you are a very popular creator, youtube functions like that.

Their copyright takedown system has been around for many years and wasn't contingent on AI. It's a "take-down now, ask questions later" policy to please the RIAA and other lobby groups. Illegal/abuse material doesn't profit big business, their interest is in not having it around.

You deliberately conflated moderation & appeal process from the outset. You can have 100% AI handling of suspect uploads (for which the volume is much larger) with a smaller staff handling appeals (for which the volume is smaller), mixed with AI.

Frankly if your hypothetical upload is still rejected after that, it 99% likely violates their terms of use, in which case there's nothing to say.

> it is cheaper

A lot of things are "cheaper" in one dimension irrespective of AI, doesn't mean they'll be employed if customers dislike it.

> the money saved by removing support staff makes perfect sense and the two things are related to each other like identical twins are related to each other.

It does not make sense to have zero staff in as part of managing an appeal process (precisely to deal with edge cases and fallibility of AI), and it does not make sense to have no appeal process.

You're jumping to conclusions. That is the entire point of my response.

> What does a company have to gain by supplying the staff needed to listen to the appeals when the AI does a decent enough job 98% of the time?

AI isn't there yet, notwithstanding, if they did a good job 98% of the time then who cares? No one.

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

#297

Post by yodsanklai »

apitman wrote: post #278
yodsanklai wrote: post #215

I'm wondering if there are precedents in other domains. There are other jobs where you do see disturbing things as part of your duty. E.g. doctors, cops, first responders, prison guards and so on... What makes moderation different? and how should it be handled so that it reduces harm and risks? surely banning social media or not moderating content aren't options. AI helps to some extent but doesn't solve the issue en…

> surely banning social media or not moderating content aren't options Why not? What good has social media done that can't be accomplished in some other way, when weighed against the clear downsides? That's an honest question, I'm probably missing lots.

Billions of people use them daily (facebook, instagram, X, youtube, tiktok...). Surely we could live without them like we did not long ago, but there's so much interest at play here that I don't see how they could be banned. It's akin to shutting down internet.

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

#298

Post by graemep »

meiraleal wrote: post #230
graemep wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Humans can render other humans unrecognizable with a rock. They are much less likely to. We have instinctive repulsion to violence, especially extending it (e.g. if the rock does not kill at the first blow). It is much easier to kill with a gun (and even then people need training to be willing to do it), and easier still to fire a missile at people you cannot even see.

Than throwing a face punch or a rock? You should check public schools.

Not in public schools in the British sense. I assume it varies in public schools in the American sense, and I am guessing violence sufficient to render someone unrecognisable is pretty rare even in the worst of them.

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

#299

Post by graemep »

meiraleal wrote: post #279
ternnoburn wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Than killing with bare hands or a rock, which I believe is still pretty uncommon in schools.

GP didn't talk about killing

Extreme violence then? With rocks, clubs of bare hands? I was responding to "render other humans unrecognizable with a rock" which I am pretty sure is uncommon in schools.

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

#300

Post by 0_____0 »

itake wrote: post #249
sd9 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t have any experience with this, so take this with a pinch of salt. What seems novel about moderation is the frequency that you confront disturbing things. I imagine companies like Meta have such good automated moderation that what remains to be viewed by a human is practically a firehose of almost certainly disturbing shit. And as soon as you’re done with one post, the next is right there. I doubt moderators s…

I’d think the higher density/frequency of disturbing content would cause people to be desensitized. I never seen blood or gore in my life and find seeing it shocking. But I’d imagine gore is a weekly situation for surgeons.

I watch surgery videos sometimes, out of fascination. It's not gore to me - sure it's flesh and blood but there is a person whose life is going to be probably significantly better afterwards. They are also not in pain.

I exposed myself to actual gore vids in the aughts and teens... That stuff still sticks with me in a bad way.

Context matters a lot.

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