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The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

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Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#71

Post by Wohlf »

kylecazar wrote: post #13
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'd wonder if frequents in these subreddits are typically professional and healthy people to have on a team, though (honestly no idea, never been). It's a strange conundrum because ideally you want good people who are comfortable watching things good people rarely want to watch. Don't have much experience with this demographic -- maybe there are more sane, emotionally healthy people watching snuff films for fun than…

For me it was more like watching nature documentaries, morbid curiosity and all that. There wasn't really anything I'd consider snuff on that subreddit, it was natural death, murder, and accidents, all of which are part of natural life.

I found most of the videos less offensive than extremely graphic horror movies, which ironically I have less stomach for. If anything that subreddit made me generally more aware of my surroundings and safer in my daily life.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#72

Post by AdmiralGinge »

CM30 wrote: post #46
untog wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's fair to say the sheer quantity has changed since Facebook first came around (FB predates smartphones for one!) I also think part of the objection here is around off-shoring. It's similar to other complaints about off-shored jobs: we're farming out unpleasant work to people that get paid less and have much less support (e.g. mental health).

> I also think part of the objection here is around off-shoring. It's similar to other complaints about off-shored jobs: we're farming out unpleasant work to people that get paid less and have much less support (e.g. mental health). That's an interesting point, and has me wondering something. If a site like Facebook opened up a volunteer moderator scheme where people could sign up to filter out stuff that broke their…

I'd consider volunteering to moderate a particular geographical area, when I was a student Facebook constantly took down the student confessions page I eventually ended up helping to run for the vaguest reasons, while letting actual hate posters run amok. I know I would say that, but we would genuinely get taken down for jokes that wouldn't even make sense out of the tiny university I attended. It was immensely frustrating having to build up the userbase again and again because the moderators of Facebook just weren't/aren't terribly good at their jobs. I'd happily have taken on actual moderation duties rather than had to constantly appeal and get a blank, inhuman "declined" message.

I think they tend to take an "if in doubt, remove it" approach which basically allows anyone who doesn't like a niche page for whatever reason to have it taken down through sheer attrition, if you report it enough it'll probably go down eventually even for stupid reasons. I actually ended up writing an app to cut Facebook out of our system altogether (it was kind of similar to Yik Yak with a much better moderation system and better anonymity protection - I really can't be arsed to deal with a GDPR lawsuit...) but we couldn't launch it in part because it took me ages to develop as I've since graduated and work as a full-time developer and because coronavirus meant our launch event got cancelled. I might take it live when students go back this year, but I'm concerned that with nothing much going on it'll fizzle and die because there's nothing interesting to post about. It'll all depend on how the Welsh government lift the coronavirus restrictions.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#73

Post by slg »

irrational wrote: post #66

I'm surprised there hasn't been a revenge movie where one of these moderators use their access to find out where these people live and start hunting them down like some sort of batman-like person. I could see a movie like this being a means of making the more general population aware of the terrible stuff content moderators have to watch.

This is totally not what you are talking about, but the closest thing I have seen to that is the Netflix docuseries Don't Fuck With Cats. It hits on a lot of the same topics. The primary differences are that the hunters are Facebook users and not moderators and they are hunting the person to get justice and not violent revenge.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#74

Post by ed25519FUUU »

I can't even barely read this article before becoming extremely sad for these people and the individuals (especially children) who were abused in these videos. I hope everyone involve gets the healing they need.

It's not the flat-earther and somesuch conspirary communities that worry me. It's the people who share and get enjoyment from this kind of content, and the networks which enable it.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#75

Post by henrygrew »

mschuster91 wrote: post #45
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's likely some confounding factors. Pressing "go" on the overpriced software tools and then entering into evidence what you find is the lowest level of work in that field so the churn is going to naturally be very high as people move up or out. The pay also isn't that great.

No, that is not the issue. Rather the issue is that even the hardest stuff on Facebook isn't remotely comparable to stuff of actual criminals, and the effort is wildly different: - Facebook: it's violating rules? Delete, next. - Forensic IT on a multi TB disk full with child porn: document every photo, what it shows, extract identifiable faces to cross reference with other content (to check for recurring places and v…

This sounds very grevious, it's sad that a human being has to do this work

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#76

Post by ece »

tmpz22 wrote: post #28
CM30 wrote: post #25

It's probably a bit controversial to say this, but haven't large sites had to deal with these problems for years by the time the likes of Facebook/Twitter/YouTube/Instagram/whatever came around? It's obviously horrible doing this as a job and it's obviously a bit more common on Facebook than say, a large old school internet forum, but... at least in this case people are paid to do this. Reddit mods and old school for…

Right but the difference is the sheer amount of money involved and the politicization that comes with that. If Facebook was worth 100m nobody would care. If facebook only has 10m users nobody would care. It's the scale that completely breaks the legal and political frameworks the our society leans on.

Yeah, monopolies can do that.

edit: https://qz.com/1704143/the-antitrust-case-against-facebook/

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#77

Post by jbrennan »

In my opinion this is an argument in favour of shutting Facebook (and every other large social network) down. This sort of work is damaging and abusive, and nobody should have to endure it just so we can have social networks.

I understand there are some jobs in the world that need to deal with dark stuff (like law enforcement), but social networks just aren’t worth the human cost.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#78

Post by indigochill »

CM30 wrote: post #25

It's probably a bit controversial to say this, but haven't large sites had to deal with these problems for years by the time the likes of Facebook/Twitter/YouTube/Instagram/whatever came around? It's obviously horrible doing this as a job and it's obviously a bit more common on Facebook than say, a large old school internet forum, but... at least in this case people are paid to do this. Reddit mods and old school for…

>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 to handle this kind of thing than in the general population).

The commercial moderation team I was on actually ended up separating out a task force for handling particularly gnarly content so that people had a way of opting out of being exposed to it (in our case we were responding to user reports rather than randomly stumbling on things, so manually filtering reports was feasible), which I think is the responsible approach since there are plenty of other moderation tasks to handle and some people are more or less sensitive to this content.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#79

Post by whymauri »

tmpz22 wrote: post #28
CM30 wrote: post #25

It's probably a bit controversial to say this, but haven't large sites had to deal with these problems for years by the time the likes of Facebook/Twitter/YouTube/Instagram/whatever came around? It's obviously horrible doing this as a job and it's obviously a bit more common on Facebook than say, a large old school internet forum, but... at least in this case people are paid to do this. Reddit mods and old school for…

Right but the difference is the sheer amount of money involved and the politicization that comes with that. If Facebook was worth 100m nobody would care. If facebook only has 10m users nobody would care. It's the scale that completely breaks the legal and political frameworks the our society leans on.

Another factor is the working conditions at Cognizant. The difference between Reddit moderators and Cognizant employees is that the former are allowed to have bathroom breaks and individual agency. The latter not only have to deal with fairly oppressive workplace policies, but they also rely on this work to live.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#80

Post by ece »

hinkley wrote: post #70
tmpz22 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right but the difference is the sheer amount of money involved and the politicization that comes with that. If Facebook was worth 100m nobody would care. If facebook only has 10m users nobody would care. It's the scale that completely breaks the legal and political frameworks the our society leans on.

From my time observing volunteer groups, it's also about leverage and force multipliers. I can go door to door asking people to change something, and dozens of my volunteers will feel useful but overwhelmed by how much work there is to do in a city of a million people. Or I can go to city council meetings, and get more leverage there. Or if I can convince one high profile citizen to participate, others will follow. O…

Do you know what community organizing is? How movements accomplish change? Everything does not have some easy optimization method, only in silicon valley does everyone think it does.

edit: What I mean to say is, people have been organizing against FB, AMZN, and tech in general for the past few years now. The last is reactionary but opposition to FB and AMZN has meaningful academia, ngo/gov, and general support.

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