3 ms·

There is probably no way to ask this question that doesn't sound dismissive at best, so please understand that is not the spirit this is intended in, but: it w

There is probably no way to ask this question that doesn't sound dismissive at best, so please understand that is not the spirit this is intended in, but: it would be unsurprising that a subset of moderators develop PTSD-like symptoms related to that experience. Is that really the case? Most moderation is done on textual-based forums, like the one we're on right now. I'm having a hard time imagining the right combination of words on a screen to generate trauma in the requisite quantities for someone to wind up with a clinical disorder because of it. Personally, I've been on both sides of this coin. I've been the guy kicking trolls off of a decent sized board, I've been the guy getting kicked off because I annoyed the wrong person. At no point did it ever progress beyond internet drama. The meanest, nastiest person I could imagine could type in words along the lines of how they'd like to kill and fornicate with my mother, and my, and most other people's response I wager, would be "That's cool, kid. Bye now. Ban" Maybe there's a case to be made for becoming jaded after a while of dealing with the worst (hang out on the meta Stack Exchange sites for a publicly visible example) - but PTSD symptoms? To me, that both overly glorifies the troll "i can type words so good that I can make other people have legitimate mental breakdowns!" and makes light of the suffering by people who actually have PTSD (who have seen things like people dying). It feels like a lack of perspective, brought on by spending a lot of time online. Unlike real life, disconnecting from online drama is always a button press away.

jrapdx3 11y ago
I'm sorry, but I do believe you misunderstood the article and perhaps my comments on it as well. The article clearly describes moderators watching videos flagged as offensive, and these videos included "amateur and profession pornography" and many that contained "child abuse, beatings, and animal cruelty". Furthermore the article discusses moderators having to deal with videos shot during the Iranian revolution in 2009, including the murder of a young woman, "a shaky cell-phone video captured her horrific last moments: in it, blood pours from her eyes, pooling beneath her." The article presents many more examples of the enormously disturbing tasks assigned to moderators. Based on tens of years in clinical practice I'd consider it likely that viewing such material, especially seeing it frequently, can precipitate acute and chronic stress disorders in vulnerable individuals. I understand the point this is only hypothetical in the absence of systematically collected data, call it a clinician's hunch if you want, but still I'd put money on it. Rereading the article confirms for me that it is an excellent piece of journalism, perhaps even exceptional in the current era. Moderators were exposed to far more than words, in a way similar to 911 operators suffering exposure to trauma without being at the scene. Forum moderation has very little in common with the subject of the article. You are severely underestimating the effects of this kind of experience on people in such positions. You should learn more about stress disorders, the complexity of which is bound up with the unique and highly variable attributes of individuals. Some people are much more resilient than others making it misleading to generalize about how people will respond to given situations. Most of all, I strong suggest you (re)read the story and if capable, allow yourself to empathize with the plight of the moderators.
- mbrutsch 11y ago
  > You should learn more about stress disorders Uh, why? Am I a counselor? > allow yourself to empathize with the plight of the moderators To what end? What possible constructive purpose is served by allowing myself to share (or wallow) in the negative emotions described by others? Does it stop "bad things" from happening? Does it lessen their pain? Does it lessen anyone's pain? Or does it increase the overall amount of suffering in the world? brb, going to voluntarily take a job that makes me feel bad, so I can cry about it on the internet...
  - jacalata 11y ago
    Perhaps he addressed that comment to someone who seemed to feel they already knew enough to have an opinion on the topic, and meant to imply that you should learn more about this if you intend to have opinions on it
- groovy2shoes 11y ago
  Relatedly, I had a co-worker who'd once worked for the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department doing data entry. He frequently had to review images or video footage (not all of which was produced by police, but sometimes collected as evidence) and classify it before entering it into their database. He didn't last long, only a few months before he quit, and he said that 10 years later he still sometimes had nightmares about the things he saw while on the job.
paganel 11y ago
> Is that really the case? Most moderation is done on textual-based forums, like the one we're on right now. Even on a textual-based forum like reddit there are two subreddits which I usually visit (/r/syriancivilwar and /r/combatfootage) where one can see links to videos of dead people or worse (that's because very nasty things happen during wars). I could very well imagine someone getting PTSD-like symptoms after having moderated videos/links to videos of children who have just died because of chemical-weapons attacks. That is what nightmares are made of.
Mz 11y ago
It feels like a lack of perspective, brought on by spending a lot of time online. Unlike real life, disconnecting from online drama is always a button press away. For starters, this is not true. Stuff that happens online has real world consequences. People get hired, fired, meet people they marry, get doxed and have their personal contact info put out there and on and on. The Internet is not disconnected from real life to the degree that your comment makes it sound. I was a military wife for two decades. I lived in the High Desert where I dealt routinely with coyotes and large spiders and poisonous snakes, etc. I have spent time on health forums where deaths were so routinely reported that they had their own practices for how to deal with death, their own culture surrounding that so to speak. These experiences have left me somewhat thick skinned. I read accident claims for over five years at an insurance company. Because of the aforementioned background, it was rare for me to be disturbed by the detailed medical and police reports that I read for up to 8 hours a day, five days a week. Many of my coworkers found the work far more stressful than I did. But I would absolutely not want to have to moderate the photo and video stuff described in this article. And I would absolutely feel personally threatened by people making ugly threats of the sort that you dismiss with "That's cool, kid. Bye now. *Ban". I'm pretty thick skinned, but I'm also a woman. Most of the people who are moderators are women. A lot of this nastiness is absolutely aimed at women. I think it hits a lot closer to home for most women than it does for most men. Women tend to routinely deal with genuine threats to their welfare, such as stalking, harassment and rape, that men tend to be largely exempt from. When you recognize that your work impacts real people and how safe they are, that also can be a burden. When I read accident claims, in most cases, no lives hung in the balance. That is part of the reason it did not bother me to read them: I was not deciding whether or not to report anything to the police or otherwise take an action that impacted someone's personal safety. I was only deciding whether or not to cut someone a check and whether or not to refer the claim to the fraud department. In a few cases, I was trying to get it paid rapidly because the customer was broke and facing having their power cut off and nothing to eat in the house. But, really, what I did mostly did not have a sense of "And if I do the wrong thing, someone could wind up killed, raped, fired from their job etc." What moderators do can have such impacts. That kind of responsibility can wear on a person. Perhaps not you, but plenty of people would find it wearing. The Internet is something of a Pandora's box, it seems.
- 11y ago
yomly 11y ago
I think the downvotes on this post are unfair. While, the tone could be construed as lacking in empathy, and the article clearly states that users are exposed to videos, the question can definitely be rephrased as a valid one. When reading the accounts of the moderators, I of course immediately felt sorry for them - it must be pretty harrowing to watch a constant barrage of child porn, murders and gore (think being on /b/).I imagine it would leave you feeling pretty jaded and losing faith in humanity. But my second thought went to all my friends who are doctors and see terrible injuries and ailments on a daily basis, or criminal lawyers who review cases which revolve around the gutter of human behaviour. What is the PTSD incidence rate amongst these two professions? What sparks PTSD? Is it the context by which the triggering events are presented? Are lawyers and doctors more resilient to this as there is an expectation to be exposed to these types of things, and therefore the professions are self-selecting? Is it the relentless barrage of content which affected the moderators? Or was it the lack of empowerment wrt doctors/lawyers to make an impact on these things? Going forward what can we do to better prepare moderators for this?

jrapdx3 11y ago

I'm sorry, but I do believe you misunderstood the article and perhaps my comments on it as well. The article clearly describes moderators watching videos flagged as offensive, and these videos included "amateur and profession pornography" and many that contained "child abuse, beatings, and animal cruelty". Furthermore the article discusses moderators having to deal with videos shot during the Iranian revolution in 2009, including the murder of a young woman, "a shaky cell-phone video captured her horrific last moments: in it, blood pours from her eyes, pooling beneath her." The article presents many more examples of the enormously disturbing tasks assigned to moderators. Based on tens of years in clinical practice I'd consider it likely that viewing such material, especially seeing it frequently, can precipitate acute and chronic stress disorders in vulnerable individuals. I understand the point this is only hypothetical in the absence of systematically collected data, call it a clinician's hunch if you want, but still I'd put money on it. Rereading the article confirms for me that it is an excellent piece of journalism, perhaps even exceptional in the current era. Moderators were exposed to far more than words, in a way similar to 911 operators suffering exposure to trauma without being at the scene. Forum moderation has very little in common with the subject of the article. You are severely underestimating the effects of this kind of experience on people in such positions. You should learn more about stress disorders, the complexity of which is bound up with the unique and highly variable attributes of individuals. Some people are much more resilient than others making it misleading to generalize about how people will respond to given situations. Most of all, I strong suggest you (re)read the story and if capable, allow yourself to empathize with the plight of the moderators.

mbrutsch 11y ago
> You should learn more about stress disorders Uh, why? Am I a counselor? > allow yourself to empathize with the plight of the moderators To what end? What possible constructive purpose is served by allowing myself to share (or wallow) in the negative emotions described by others? Does it stop "bad things" from happening? Does it lessen their pain? Does it lessen anyone's pain? Or does it increase the overall amount of suffering in the world? brb, going to voluntarily take a job that makes me feel bad, so I can cry about it on the internet...
- jacalata 11y ago
  Perhaps he addressed that comment to someone who seemed to feel they already knew enough to have an opinion on the topic, and meant to imply that you should learn more about this if you intend to have opinions on it
groovy2shoes 11y ago
Relatedly, I had a co-worker who'd once worked for the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department doing data entry. He frequently had to review images or video footage (not all of which was produced by police, but sometimes collected as evidence) and classify it before entering it into their database. He didn't last long, only a few months before he quit, and he said that 10 years later he still sometimes had nightmares about the things he saw while on the job.

paganel 11y ago

> Is that really the case? Most moderation is done on textual-based forums, like the one we're on right now. Even on a textual-based forum like reddit there are two subreddits which I usually visit (/r/syriancivilwar and /r/combatfootage) where one can see links to videos of dead people or worse (that's because very nasty things happen during wars). I could very well imagine someone getting PTSD-like symptoms after having moderated videos/links to videos of children who have just died because of chemical-weapons attacks. That is what nightmares are made of.

Mz 11y ago

It feels like a lack of perspective, brought on by spending a lot of time online. Unlike real life, disconnecting from online drama is always a button press away. For starters, this is not true. Stuff that happens online has real world consequences. People get hired, fired, meet people they marry, get doxed and have their personal contact info put out there and on and on. The Internet is not disconnected from real life to the degree that your comment makes it sound. I was a military wife for two decades. I lived in the High Desert where I dealt routinely with coyotes and large spiders and poisonous snakes, etc. I have spent time on health forums where deaths were so routinely reported that they had their own practices for how to deal with death, their own culture surrounding that so to speak. These experiences have left me somewhat thick skinned. I read accident claims for over five years at an insurance company. Because of the aforementioned background, it was rare for me to be disturbed by the detailed medical and police reports that I read for up to 8 hours a day, five days a week. Many of my coworkers found the work far more stressful than I did. But I would absolutely not want to have to moderate the photo and video stuff described in this article. And I would absolutely feel personally threatened by people making ugly threats of the sort that you dismiss with "That's cool, kid. Bye now. *Ban". I'm pretty thick skinned, but I'm also a woman. Most of the people who are moderators are women. A lot of this nastiness is absolutely aimed at women. I think it hits a lot closer to home for most women than it does for most men. Women tend to routinely deal with genuine threats to their welfare, such as stalking, harassment and rape, that men tend to be largely exempt from. When you recognize that your work impacts real people and how safe they are, that also can be a burden. When I read accident claims, in most cases, no lives hung in the balance. That is part of the reason it did not bother me to read them: I was not deciding whether or not to report anything to the police or otherwise take an action that impacted someone's personal safety. I was only deciding whether or not to cut someone a check and whether or not to refer the claim to the fraud department. In a few cases, I was trying to get it paid rapidly because the customer was broke and facing having their power cut off and nothing to eat in the house. But, really, what I did mostly did not have a sense of "And if I do the wrong thing, someone could wind up killed, raped, fired from their job etc." What moderators do can have such impacts. That kind of responsibility can wear on a person. Perhaps not you, but plenty of people would find it wearing. The Internet is something of a Pandora's box, it seems.

11y ago

yomly 11y ago

I think the downvotes on this post are unfair. While, the tone could be construed as lacking in empathy, and the article clearly states that users are exposed to videos, the question can definitely be rephrased as a valid one. When reading the accounts of the moderators, I of course immediately felt sorry for them - it must be pretty harrowing to watch a constant barrage of child porn, murders and gore (think being on /b/).I imagine it would leave you feeling pretty jaded and losing faith in humanity. But my second thought went to all my friends who are doctors and see terrible injuries and ailments on a daily basis, or criminal lawyers who review cases which revolve around the gutter of human behaviour. What is the PTSD incidence rate amongst these two professions? What sparks PTSD? Is it the context by which the triggering events are presented? Are lawyers and doctors more resilient to this as there is an expectation to be exposed to these types of things, and therefore the professions are self-selecting? Is it the relentless barrage of content which affected the moderators? Or was it the lack of empowerment wrt doctors/lawyers to make an impact on these things? Going forward what can we do to better prepare moderators for this?