Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#91

Post by pjc50 » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 1:53 PM UTC

hirundo wrote: post #67

> Nobody’s prepared to see a little girl have her organs taken out while she’s still alive and screaming. On the one hand, of course you don't want to see this and of course you want it removed from your social media feed. On the other hand, if it's hidden, it horrifies fewer people, and instead of rising social pressure to take action against it, it can fester in the dark. So if we manage to replace a significant ch…

Context matters: it's this kind of thing that was used to promote the massacres of the Rohingya. Or consider the various things that are posted about Syria. Pictures of atrocities without clear attribution of those responsible just make the situation worse and provoke reprisals against the wrong people.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#92

Post by arethuza » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 1:54 PM UTC

asark wrote: post #59

arethuza wrote: post #15

Maybe Facebook should make all of their own employees do 15 minutes of moderation per day - just to share the pain out a bit....

Make the users do a little every so often. Like Slashdot's "hey, go moderate some posts" thing but forced to before they can use the platform anymore. That'd be fun. Of course the real answer is that this sort of site is a bad idea and shouldn't exist. Wide-open signup and public visibility of content, or ease of sharing it with strangers. Bad combo, don't care how much money it's making them (and other, similar site…

Personally, I wouldn't go that far - just that I would think anyone doing this kind of job would need a lot of training, active support and monitoring and probably periodic breaks to do something else and decompress. Probably long term health care coverage as well.

Would that be expensive at the scale required by Facebook? Very.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#93

Post by r3vrse » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 1:54 PM UTC

Dipping into whimsical analogies: this is a digital abattoir where the meat = content.

Now, as before, no-one wants to see how the sausage gets made. Especially those selling it.

Can't kill demand or bear the visceral truth. So instead we'll pretend the seedy underbelly doesn't exist. Paper over dissonance with ethical codes and platitudes.

Not new. Just a context shift in production of sustenance for the collective, insatiable gaping maw.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#94

Post by creaghpatr » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 1:55 PM UTC

mcbits wrote: post #71

creaghpatr wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you really trying to gaslight me here? Why not address my argument instead?

Your argument being ... that they should simply get a new job if it's so bad, or that the article must be misrepresenting the job if they don't?

Both! It's right there at the beginning:

>But had his managers asked, they would have learned that Speagle had a history of anxiety and depression, and that he might not be suited well for the role. No one did.

Perhaps when he realized he was going to be viewing graphic content for the entire workday- he might have reconsidered whether the job was right for him? The framing is clearly trying to pin the blame on the company and/or facebook and while they definitely misrepresented the job (and the company sounds like they committed a lot of workplace violations in general),no one was forced him to be there.

And then he got laid off, he didn't even quit on his own.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#95

Post by jklinger410 » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 1:55 PM UTC

asark wrote: post #59

arethuza wrote: post #15

Maybe Facebook should make all of their own employees do 15 minutes of moderation per day - just to share the pain out a bit....

Make the users do a little every so often. Like Slashdot's "hey, go moderate some posts" thing but forced to before they can use the platform anymore. That'd be fun. Of course the real answer is that this sort of site is a bad idea and shouldn't exist. Wide-open signup and public visibility of content, or ease of sharing it with strangers. Bad combo, don't care how much money it's making them (and other, similar site…

Only if they dole out libra-bux

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#96

Post by cldellow » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 1:56 PM UTC

comboy wrote: post #82

dillonmckay wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that is only to protect IP rights.

I don't understand, can you elaborate? What difference does it make if a duplicate is spotted by a human vs by a machine?

If Facebook repeatedly permits copyright infringement on the same video, they might get sued by the rightsholder, which might be a very wealthy company with experience enforcing its rights in courts.

In they repeatedly make a $30,000/year employee view 15 seconds of the same child being beaten to a pulp (...the minimum time they are obligated to watch each clip before rendering a judgment), the employee will just quit after their health declines past a certain point.

So while the technology could be applied to both contexts, there's probably a lot more economic incentive to apply it to the first context than the second one.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#97

Post by pjc50 » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 1:57 PM UTC

phosphophyllite wrote: post #68

Maybe censoring is not effective? Why not to embrace any content and just make police raids when someone uploads questionable content? Is censorship solves anything?

Can't police raid someone in another country. Not that the police are particularly interested:

> Under the policy, the [animal cruelty] video was allowed to remain on Facebook. A manager told him that by leaving the video online, authorities would be able to catch the perpetrators. But as the weeks went on, the video continued to reappear in his queue, and Speagle realized that police were unlikely to look into the case.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#98

Post by close04 » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 1:58 PM UTC

> Florida law does not require employers to offer sick leave, and so Cognizant workers who feel ill must instead use personal leave time.

It seems that Facebook and Cognizant are not the only ones completely failing at protecting their people (employees, contractors, citizens).

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#99

Post by qudat » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 1:58 PM UTC

cldellow wrote: post #80

eswat wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking about this more but you’re right. I doubt there’s any acquired knowledge needed to know what’s repugnant to the human mind.

I don't have first-hand experience with the job, but I've read a few articles about these sort of teams, as they're widely deployed by all the large Internet companies. In my view, it's knowledge work. Sure, it's knowledge work that almost anyone can be trained to do, but there's a skill set required. For example, moderators need to make judgment calls that distinguish between offensive uses and artistic/journalistic…

> For example, moderators need to make judgment calls that distinguish between offensive uses and artistic/journalistic/parody uses. There are many cultures and in-groups on Earth, which makes this harder than it might seem at first blush. Not all nudity is obscenity, not all hate speech is blatant.

In these cases I'm not sure it really matters. Over-moderation is going to win overall and I don't think moderators are going to get into that much trouble for being slightly over-zealous. I could be wrong but I feel like after a week of being on the job you'd get the hang of it.

Re: Facebook moderators break NDAs to expose working conditions

#100

Post by pjc50 » Wed, Jun 19, 2019, 1:59 PM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #89

phosphophyllite wrote: post #68

Maybe censoring is not effective? Why not to embrace any content and just make police raids when someone uploads questionable content? Is censorship solves anything?

Um... police busting down your door for uploading a video kind of is censorship. But yeah, I'm now starting to see why more and more people are just wanting to go to the censor and police raid system. A lot of this stuff people are uploading just doesn't belong in a civilized society. What started off as maybe just content on making non violent jokes about blacks or gays has morphed into showing children being disemb…

> maybe just content on making non violent jokes about blacks or gays

The nonviolent "jokes" have a habit of escalating into real violence. If you let enough people post N-word rants without consequence and with validation from their hateful peers often enough they will egg each other on until eventually someone burns down or shoots up a church.