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The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

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Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#81

Post by jbrennan »

rosywoozlechan wrote: post #33
pantaloony wrote: post #19

Radical idea: if your service requires subjecting lots and lots of workers to scarring images, the correct solution is for that service not to exist. Facebook doesn’t have to let people post material to their site with very low barriers to entry. Granted they have to if they want to continue to be what they are and to make tons of money... but maybe they shouldn’t continue to be what they are and make tons of money i…

Any place anyone can add any user content has this problem. Anything with an input box and a file upload would qualify as your not existing solution.

I think there’s a difference that depends on scale and privacy. If your network is private (or something more akin to p2p / messaging) this is much less of an issue, especially if you have strong blocking controls. Users moderate themselves.

I think the problems that Facebook, Youtube, etc are seeing stem from the fact that the content is much more public, thus in much more need of moderation.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#82

Post by dhosek »

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…

MySpace had to deal with this. They also had content moderators who were kept in a separate room at HQ who had to view all manner of flagged videos/photos. The turnover was really high even though at the time, MySpace had the kind of cool factor that developers would pick up women at bars with the promise of taking them into the offices after hours (which is a whole other weirdness and the corporate higher ups had to ban the practice after a drunk couple were injured after falling off a table one Saturday night). I don't know that there was anything acting at this kind of scale before MySpace.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#83

Post by teddyh »

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…

> 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.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#85

Post by hinkley »

ece wrote: post #80
hinkley wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I worked with a group that got 100 volunteers at each event who did the work while the regular members provided coordination and resources. I am trying to do something similar on my own now and learning in a very visceral way just how important spreading that load out is.

But... that group wouldn't be able to do nearly what it has if it weren't for funding from foundations and the department of neighborhoods, and resources on permanent loan from another public sector organization. You might argue it couldn't exist at all.

I think I would say that both are necessary but insufficient.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#86

Post by SaltyLemonZest »

ece wrote: post #80
hinkley wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the point is that, if I as an activist am aiming to maximize the number of content moderators treated well, the highest leverage way to push for that is getting people mad at Facebook. There may be a preexisting system of unpaid content moderators who are supported even less, but that's much harder for anyone to address.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#87

Post by uniqueid »

anonu wrote: post #2

Can we build better AI off of the data these moderators have generated to make their lives easier? Can you crowdsource the moderation task to double check what the ai is flagging?

    > Can we build better AI
Nope. That's what the people in charge of our social media companies keep trying, over and over, and it doesn't work at all. AI-moderation is like the Ring is to Golem for them. They can't accept that "cheap and fair" moderation isn't currently possible.

    > Can you crowdsource the moderation task
This is the clear answer, imo, and it isn't obvious to me why these C-level execs avoid it. If I had to make a guess, maybe they think engaging with millions of their users about moderation would open a can of worms.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#88

Post by dangus »

jbrennan wrote: post #77

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.

That’s a non-solution.

What you’re proposing is not just shutting down social networks, it’s shutting down any website that involves user content, anything that allows photo/video upload, comments, or any kind of user interaction. That’s impossible.

You point out that public safety jobs are view more “worth it,” and certainly they are, but that logic brings up the question of who judges what job is worth undergoing trauma.

In other words, is a subway or freight train driver’s job “worth it,” if they have to see someone commit suicide on the tracks? What about crime scene cleanup companies? Funeral services? Bus drivers? Truck drivers? Nobody’s going to agree on where to draw the line in the sand.

A more realistic solution might be to make comprehensive support systems, mental health resources, and treatment a legally mandated, completely free service provided to any employee that works in these kinds of fields.

Finally, I think there are most certainly people out there who are not as sensitive and affected by this content who would be candidates for these kinds of roles. Perhaps there’s a way to test for that sensitivity before the real job starts.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#89

Post by cvhashim »

dhosek wrote: post #82
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…

MySpace had to deal with this. They also had content moderators who were kept in a separate room at HQ who had to view all manner of flagged videos/photos. The turnover was really high even though at the time, MySpace had the kind of cool factor that developers would pick up women at bars with the promise of taking them into the offices after hours (which is a whole other weirdness and the corporate higher ups had to…

Facebook was a zoo in its early years. Basically a frat house. Google was also a complete boys club and full of misconduct. But you have to be a complete nerd to take your date to your office, even if it’s a nice office.

Re: The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators

#90

Post by latchkey »

op03 wrote: post #34

Given auto translate works reasonably well these days, how much commonality does Negative Content over different regions and languages have? Anyone know? Is it like 10%? 80%? There must be, by now, a whole lot of data on whats getting flagged region/language wise. Maybe we need a Cloudflare for Content.

Depends on the language. In my experience Vietnamese -> English is horrid and comes out as mostly garbage. Interestingly, the reverse has been better from what my Vietnamese friends tell me.
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