Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

More than 140 Kenya Facebook moderators sue after diagnoses of PTSD

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 500 posts

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

#381

Post by pizza »

tossandthrow wrote: post #301
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 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. On the contrary I would expect that it would be the edge cases that they were shown - why loop in a content moderator if you an be sure that it is prohibited ont he platform without exposing a content moderator? In this light, it might make sense…

> They are there more as a political org so that facebook can say: "We employ 140 moderators in Kenya alone!" while they do indifferent work that facebook already can filter out.

Why assume they're just token diversity hires who don't do useful work..?

Have you ever built an automated content moderation system before? Let me tell you something about them if not: no matter how good your automated moderation tool, it is pretty much always trivial for someone with familiarity with its inputs and outputs to come up with an input it mis-predicts embarrassingly badly. And you know what makes the biggest difference.. is humans specifying the labels.

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

#382

Post by gcr »

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…

Burnout, PTSD, and high turnover are also hallmarks of suicide hotline operators.

The difference? The reputable hotlines care a lot more about their employees' mental health, with mandatory breaks, free counseling, full healthcare benefits (including provisions for preventative mental health care like talk therapy).

Another important difference is that suicide hotlines are decoupled from the profit motive. As more and more users sign up to use a social network, it gets more profitable and more and more load needs to be borne by the human moderation team. But suicide and mental health risk is (roughly) constant (or slowly increasing with societal trends, not product trends).

There's also less of an incentive to minimize human moderation cost. In large companies, some directors view mod teams as a cost center that takes away from other ventures. In an organization dedicated only to suicide hotline response, a large share of the income (typically fundraising or donations) goes directly into the service itself.

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

#383

Post by sangnoir »

itake wrote: post #334
sd9 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. But that might be comorbid with PTSD. It’s probably not good for you to be _that_ desensitised to this sort of thing. I also feel like there’s something intangible regarding intent that makes moderation different from being a doctor. It’s hard for me to put into words, but doctors see gore because they can hopefully do something to help the individual involved. Moderators see gore but are powerless to help t…

There are many common situations where professionals are helpless, like people that needs to clean up dead bodies after an accident.

Imagine if this becomes a specialized, remote job where one tele-operates the brain and blood scrubbing robot all workday long, accident, after accident after accident. I am sure they'd get PTSD too, airey, sometime it's just oil and coolant, but there's still a lot of body-tissue involved.

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

#384

Post by magicalhippo »

fcmgr wrote: post #229
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…

A friend's friend is a paramedic and as far as I remember they can take the rest of a day off after witnessing death on duty and there's an obligatory consulation with a mental healthcare specialist. From reading the article, it seems like those moderators are seeing horrific things almost constantly throughout the day.

My friend has repeatedly mentioned his dad became an alcoholic due to what he saw as a paramedic. This was back in the late 80s, early 90s so not sure they got any mental health help.

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

#385

Post by portaouflop »

keybored wrote: post #208
noduerme wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

... okay. Emergency personnel might need to braze themselves for car accidents every day. That Kenyans need to be traumatized by Internet Content in order to make a living is just silly and unnecessary.

Car “accidents” are also completely unnecessary.

Even the wording is wrong - those aren’t accidents, it is something we accept as byproduct of a car-centric culture.

People feel it is acceptable that thousands of people die on the road so we can go places faster. Similarly they feel it’s acceptable to traumatise some foreigners to keep social media running.

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

#386

Post by int_19h »

com2kid wrote: post #302
newsclues wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are discounting the complexity of the logistics required for an AK47 army. You need ammo, spare parts, lubricant and cleaning tools. You need a factory to build the weapon, and churn out ammunition. Or, gather a group of people, tell them to find a rock, and go bash the other sides head.

> You need ammo, spare parts, lubricant and cleaning tools. The ak-47 famously only needs the first item in that list. That being the key to its popularity.

It should be noted that the purported advantages of AK action over its competitors in this regard are rather drastically overstated in popular culture. E.g. take a look at these two vids showing how AK vs AR-15 handle lots of mud:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX73uXs3xGU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAneTFiz5WU

As far as cleaning, AK, like many guns of that era, carries its own cleaning & maintenance toolkit inside the gun. Although it is a bit unusual in that regard in that this kit is, in fact, sufficient to remove any part of the gun that is not permanently attached. Which is to say, AK can be serviced in the field, without an armory, to a greater extent than most other options.

But the main reason why it's so popular isn't so much because of any of that, but rather because it's very cheap to produce at scale, and China especially has been producing millions of AKs specifically to dump them in Africa, Middle East etc. But where large quantities of other firearms are available for whatever reason, you see them used just as much - e.g. Taliban has been rocking a lot of M4 and M16 since US left a lot of stocks behind.

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

#387

Post by efitz »

marcinzm wrote: post #313
efitz wrote: post #308

I have a lot of questions. The nature of the job really sucks. This is not unusual; there are lots of sucky jobs. So my concern is really whether the employees were informed what they would be exposed to. Also I’m wondering why they didn’t just quit. Of course the answer is money, but if they knew what they were getting into (or what they were already into), and chose to continue, why should they be awarded more mone…

So you're expecting these people to have the deep knowledge of human psychology to know ahead of time that this is likely to cause them long term PTSD, and the impact that will have on their lives, versus simply something they will get over a month after quitting?

I don’t think it takes any special knowledge of human psychology to understand that horrific images can cause emotional trauma. I think it’s a basic due diligence question that when considering establishing such a position, one should consult literature and professionals to discover what impact there might be and what might be done to minimize it.

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

#388

Post by lalalali »

fluoridation wrote: post #358
apitman wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you wouldn't accept a job to moderate Facebook for a million dollars a day? I would hope not.

Sorry, but I don't believe you. You could work for a month or two and retire. Or hell, just do it for one day and then return to your old job. That's a cool one mill in the bank. My point is, job shittiness can be priced in.

> work for a month or two and retire --> This is a dream of many, but there exist a set of people that really like their job and have no intention to retire

> just do it for one day and then return to your old job. --> Cool mill in the bank and dreadful images in your head. Perhaps Apitman feels he has enough cash and wont be happier with a million (more?).

Also your point is true but lacks of Facebook interest to elevate that number. I guess it was more a theorical reflexion than an argument for concrete economie.

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

#389

Post by throwaway48476 »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #342
throwaway48476 wrote: post #336

When people are protected from the horrors of the world they tend to develop luxury beliefs which leads them to create more suffering in the world.

I tend to agree with growth through realism, but people often have the means and ability to protect themselves from these horrors. Im not sure you can systemically prevent this without resorting to big brother shoving propaganda in front of people and forcing them to consume it.

I don't think it needs to be forced, just don't censor so much.

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

#390

Post by Cumpiler69 »

amelius wrote: post #238
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…

Don't forget judges, especially the ones in this case ... And it used to be priests who had to deal with all the nasty confessions.

Judges get loads of compensation and perks.
Post reply on HN