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Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

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Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#491

Post by mikeash »

H8crilA wrote: post #482
Apocryphon wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s all or nothing thinking. The immediate alternative is to improve working conditions for moderators. Or impose more stringent bans and punishments on those who post that sort of material. Those are just for starters.

Look I wish everyone had a nice life, I really do, but markets set salaries while governments sometimes intervene (e.g. by setting a minimum wage). Don't know about the banning situation, that'd require insider Facebook knowledge. I'm sure they ban some people.

The Market Police don’t haul you off if you pay something different than the “market wage.” Markets set a floor on wages by making it so you won’t get enough workers if you pay less. But companies can easily pay more than the floor if they want to. Obviously they don’t want to, because they love money, but it’s ridiculous to frame this as some iron law of markets.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#492

Post by ummwhat »

cldellow wrote: post #12

This was a valuable article to read. Facebook is enormously valuable. They made something like $15B in net income in the last four quarters. Content moderators are a necessary condition for that profit. If kiddie porn, gore and animal cruelty flooded the network, it would cease to be a destination visited by people that advertisers will pay to reach. And yet, there are two sets of entry-level knowledge workers at Fac…

I've talked about this somewhere else. What you're seeing is just a manifestation of what I call "the fundamental problem of user created content." Said problem is that warehousing and distributing content scales insanely well but curation does not. Until we have strong AI, curation is a manual process. Moderators just aren't efficient enough at processing content for their output to pay for a full time salary. You can cut costs by making end users into moderators (the Reddit model) but results may vary.

This problem applies to other forms of sites and content as well. The app store gets hundreds of submissions in the game category per day. Hosting and distributing that content is easy. Only a tiny fraction of those games are going to be played and rated enough times to show up in a recommendation engine. The bulk of the incoming content stream isn't being matched to interested people at all (sorting by interesting is the same curation issue as filtering by offensive).

Literally every content platform is going to have some problem similar to Facebook. We can blame Facebook, but the reality is no one has a good solution. Not even me.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#493

Post by hashkb »

Miner49er wrote: post #121
cldellow wrote: post #12

This was a valuable article to read. Facebook is enormously valuable. They made something like $15B in net income in the last four quarters. Content moderators are a necessary condition for that profit. If kiddie porn, gore and animal cruelty flooded the network, it would cease to be a destination visited by people that advertisers will pay to reach. And yet, there are two sets of entry-level knowledge workers at Fac…

Facebook won't do anything to help these moderaters unless the cost of the negative PR exceeds the cost of doing something. Engineers at FB could help achieve this by causing agitation, for sure. Maybe the best solution is for the moderaters to unionize.

They don't actually meet the legal requirements of contractors. In CA, anyway, they'd have to be full time employees since they do the same thing every day, full time, they are required to be on-prem during dictated hours, and the business relies on their work (e.g. they can never finish their project.)

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#494

Post by b_tterc_p »

komali2 wrote: post #125
organsnyder wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A local healthcare system has a similar policy: PTO (paid time off) is not differentiated between sick days vs. other days off. They don't offer any sort of maternity/paternity leave, aside from what the US Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) requires, which is six weeks unpaid time off. Even worse, they require employees to burn up all of their accrued PTO days before taking any unpaid FMLA time. So you have new parents…

> How stupid are we as a nation that we don't mandate more humane/non-stupid policies, even for people in environments where coming to work unhealthy can often result in death? This is one of the rare times I believe malice trumps stupidity. Our healthcare industry generates billions and some of that money is being spent lobbying to keep things just as they are.

I don’t think I believe that healthcare companies lobby to prevent office condition reform from happening

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#495

Post by hashkb »

ummwhat wrote: post #492
cldellow wrote: post #12

This was a valuable article to read. Facebook is enormously valuable. They made something like $15B in net income in the last four quarters. Content moderators are a necessary condition for that profit. If kiddie porn, gore and animal cruelty flooded the network, it would cease to be a destination visited by people that advertisers will pay to reach. And yet, there are two sets of entry-level knowledge workers at Fac…

I've talked about this somewhere else. What you're seeing is just a manifestation of what I call "the fundamental problem of user created content." Said problem is that warehousing and distributing content scales insanely well but curation does not. Until we have strong AI, curation is a manual process. Moderators just aren't efficient enough at processing content for their output to pay for a full time salary. You c…

> We can blame Facebook, but the reality is no one has a good solution.

We can take a step backwards and eliminate Facebook, Insta, etc from our societies and enact legislation that will govern the second generation of social networks.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#496

Post by sonnyblarney »

ralusek wrote: post #170
cldellow wrote: post #12

This was a valuable article to read. Facebook is enormously valuable. They made something like $15B in net income in the last four quarters. Content moderators are a necessary condition for that profit. If kiddie porn, gore and animal cruelty flooded the network, it would cease to be a destination visited by people that advertisers will pay to reach. And yet, there are two sets of entry-level knowledge workers at Fac…

I don't understand how this isn't a problem perfectly solved by the market. If it's a shit job that isn't worth the pay, people won't do it. If it's an okay job that isn't really worth the pay, they will have high turnover. High turnover has a cost, maybe it's worth it to them. If the turnover is so high or the job is so undesirable, maybe they'll axe the role. If the role is so important to the business that it can'…

Below a certain level, people don't have any leverage at all.

Most people depend on their meagre income quite greatly, it's a bold thing to say someone could just 'quit' their job and spend 9 months looking for another one, especially if they don't have some pretty hard skills.

So in the realm of talent, yes, it would solve itself, which is why devs et. al. often get 'free lunch' among other things.

For most working people, it's much harder.

"All possibilities are fully encapsulated in very simple dynamics."

Yes, of course, but the incredible power asymmetry between FB and not hugely skilled workers is the dynamic that drives all of this.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#497

Post by erikpukinskis »

zodiac wrote: post #257
_bxg1 wrote: post #129

I think the most pertinent question is why don't they quit ? It says a great deal about how broken the United States' job market and social safety net are. If minimum wage were $15, they could find another job that paid their basic living expenses. If health care weren't left up to your employer, they wouldn't be out of luck while looking for a different job. If there were any alternative , they wouldn't stay in this…

> If minimum wage were $15, they could find another job that paid their basic living expenses. Why is this necessarily true? Couldn't it be the case that minimum wage were $15 but they still couldn't find any other job?

> > If minimum wage were $15, they could find another job that paid their basic living expenses.

> Why is this necessarily true?

It costs money to take a surveying class, or buy tools to practice your skills. It also takes having money saved so if there is a crisis, car repairs, etc you don’t have to constantly work overtime to keep your bills paid.

Please reach out to a friend who is making less than a “living wage” in their area and ask them about career development and what they need. I appreciate your question.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#499

Post by otterley »

hashkb wrote: post #493
Miner49er wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook won't do anything to help these moderaters unless the cost of the negative PR exceeds the cost of doing something. Engineers at FB could help achieve this by causing agitation, for sure. Maybe the best solution is for the moderaters to unionize.

They don't actually meet the legal requirements of contractors. In CA, anyway, they'd have to be full time employees since they do the same thing every day, full time, they are required to be on-prem during dictated hours, and the business relies on their work (e.g. they can never finish their project.)

The moderators are employees of the contracted organization (Cognizant, in this case). They’re not employees of FB.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#500

Post by lazyasciiart »

nonwifehaver3 wrote: post #487
cldellow wrote: post #12

This was a valuable article to read. Facebook is enormously valuable. They made something like $15B in net income in the last four quarters. Content moderators are a necessary condition for that profit. If kiddie porn, gore and animal cruelty flooded the network, it would cease to be a destination visited by people that advertisers will pay to reach. And yet, there are two sets of entry-level knowledge workers at Fac…

How can kiddie porn, gore and animal cruelty "flood the network" for people using Facebook? Don't you normally just see things from your friends, ads, and groups that you are a part of? If they post that, either call the cops, block them on Facebook, don't hang out with them irl, or leave the group as appropriate. Problem solved? I haven't used Facebook in 5+ years so maybe this is no longer accurate.

As you may have guessed from the downvotes, this is not even close to accurate. It should have been possible for you to realize this was inaccurate simply from how trivial the problem looked to you in comparison to how much effort is being spent on it.
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