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Facebook not protecting content moderators from mental trauma: lawsuit
- jandrese 8y agoI'm curious what they expect Facebook to do in this situation. I get that these moderators have to look at disturbing imagery, but that's the job they signed up for. It's not like Facebook can only show them nice images, it's their job to look at those horrible images. I don't think Facebook was sugar coating the job description or anything. This feels like a class action lawsuit brought by garbage workers because they have to handle trash all day long.
- grogenaut 8y agoAnd I'm sure in the past those lawsuits and collective barganing got them provided PPE, equipment, training, showers etc that let them do their jobs better and more safely. As well as health coverage and other things for dealing with the after effects of accidents, sicknss, etc.
- jandrese 8y agoAccording to the article Facebook already offers mental health counseling and a full health plan for these workers.
- SolaceQuantum 8y agoWhat about more mental health days? More breaks? Are they pressured to consume more than that can handle for metrics? What exactly is the mental health care plan that Facebook provides?(eg. If it’s only one psychologist meeting a month, when standard therapy is often weekly) Etc.
- abakker 8y ago<not a mental health professional> It seems like maybe one way of improving conditions would be to purposely dilute suspect content with "Known OK" content. So, you would only moderate at most 10-15% of flagged content and the rest would be family photos, cat videos, cool stunts, etc. Sure, this would mean that people in these roles would be doing some useless work, but, you'd also be reminding them that most content is good content and that most people are posting cute, funny, happy, cool, or interesting things. I'd bet facebook could afford it. Also, it seems like having a 3 strikes policy on accounts that post this stuff would be a good idea, too. Protect workers by ensuring that they're not moderating one angry nazi that gets every other post flagged. (maybe they already do this?) </>
- SolaceQuantum 8y agoThere's a lot that could potentially be done, yeah. But we don't know exactly what FB has done. For example I'd be totally cool with a kitten room. FB could probably afford to foster a bunch of kittens and puppies, and allow the people dealing with horrific imagery to also take the time to hug a puppy (call it socialization) multiple times a day. FB could make the entire room painted some color that FB sponsored a study to determine was the most soothing. All sorts of things. Some of them over the top. Some of them intuitive. But the courts will decide if FB did enough. Looking forward for the courts to begin setting precedent for this sort of thing...
- toomuchtodo 8y ago> FB could probably afford to foster a bunch of kittens and puppies, and allow the people dealing with horrific imagery to also take the time to hug a puppy (call it socialization) multiple times a day. These are called emotional support animals, and they are totally a legit strategy for helping people cope with emotional trauma. Knowing someone who used to work on their moderation/graph integrity team, whatever they're doing, it's not enough.
- HarryHirsch 8y agoThey would say such things, wouldn't they? If the firehose of internet garbage can't be safely handled it's time to get rid of it. We've banned dangerous chemicals. Time to restrict Facebook, if it is a health hazard to its workers.
- gregpaul63 8y agoThis news is a clever marketing tool of a major ad strategy firm for an "AI" called.......typical MSM mind attack and impact startegis https://selenascola.com https://selenascola.com https://www.instagram.com/selena_scola/?hl=en https://www.instagram.com/selena_scola/?hl=en
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jandrese 8y agoYour solution is to turn off the Internet?
- nindalf 8y agoSounds like it. Let's try it next week. All in favour...
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- vinpetrol666 8y agoSelena scola is the employee name https://selenascola.com https://selenascola.com It is an AI
- detaro 8y agoIs that link supposed to tell us something? A person with the same name is working with AI in some capacity, and ...?
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- a_hypotehsis 8y agoWhy not hire more of them, and rotate people off the front line for a period of non-disturbing-imagery? It's not like there's a shortage of moderation work that needs doing. Of course, that would require Facebook to spend money, and add headcount. And we know that they only hired these people as a Public Relations exercise.
- zellyn 8y agoIt might be more similar to signing up unsuspecting people to operate a jackhammer, when _you_ know, because of past experience, that the vibration will give them nerve damage. Then you hire more people…
- 3pt14159 8y agoThere is a simple way to deal with shitty users. The problem is that it runs counter to the interests of the organization that hosts them. Require every user on the platform to use an invitation code from another user. They don't have to use their real names, but if they do something fraudulent or awful both the inviter and the invitee get banned. This is why Dribbble is still nice and most other places turn to garbage. HN is a rare exception. It's likely because the subject matter requires a certain degree of intelligence, which tends to negatively correlate with trashiness.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago>It's likely because the subject matter requires a certain degree of intelligence, which tends to negatively correlate with trashiness. I think you're confusing "more homogeneous" with "less trashy". Trashy is just whatever the local minority does that the local majority finds repulsive. A lot of the opinions conveyed in the commentary on HN that are reasonably well accepted would go over like a lead balloon in some other communities.
- neuroptera 8y agoWhile I see where you are coming from, I think we can all unanimously and irrevocably agree that posting child porn and snuff videos to social media is pretty damn trashy.
- antepodius 8y agoI think you're sort of missing the point. Posting gore/cp on, say, your public feed on a public internet social media site is trashy by the common idea of civil/moral behaviour, but it would be par for the course on liveleak social/ a tor hidden services pedophile social network. It can be taken for granted that most people think CP is bad, and that sending pictures of dismembered kids to thousands of strangers is rude. Anyone who doesn't agree* will hide anyway, or act anonymously. What's the point in a post like this?
- pizzetta 8y ago
- mankith 8y agoFacebook could ensure these people have access to mental health care and counseling. In the article Facebook claims that this is already the case, but I happen to know a Facebook content moderation contractor who tells me they do not have access to care, despite having to look at extremely distressing content all day, every day. I guess now it’s for the court to decide.
- Raphmedia 8y ago> I get that these moderators have to look at disturbing imagery, but that's the job they signed up for. It's one thing to look at naked selfies or bad taste political jokes. It's another thing altogether to look at rape, pedophilia and dismemberment. Hell, sometimes it's mix of those three in the same photo or video. The responsibility falls on the employer to provide adequate support.
- gldalmaso 8y agoThe moderators could perhaps not be looking directly at the video but a blurred version of it, along with a tool to reveal some part of it. That way they can infer what is going on without looking at the raw material. Another thing they could possibly do is to include fictional content in the bulk, so that the moderators could at some level believe no real person went through that. It is unrealistic to expect any normal person to have a grasp on what adverse effect will have on their mental health over time. You can walk away from being a garbage worker, but you can't unsee disturbing imagery.
- jandrese 8y agoI'm not sure it would be a good idea for Facebook to produce fake child porn in order to try to provide deniability to moderators. The moderators are sadly enough going to become experts on this stuff in a hurry, it's not likely that you'll be able to fool them anyway.
- antepodius 8y agoBesides, the people hired to produce fictional child porn would just end up suing facebook for the mental damage incurred to them, same as the current case.
- vvanders 8y agoIf someone starts throwing radioactive waste in the garbage I'd sure has hell expect the garbage company to step up and help/protect workers. Don't see how it's any different here.
- jf- 8y agoLooks like it’s heading in the direction of verified identities being linked to social media accounts. That’s about the only action that would reduce the amount of transgressive actions performed on FB et al.
- talltimtom 8y agoI get that these miners have to risk their lives, but that's the job they signed up for. You don’t get to disregard putting your employees in physical or psychological danger just because you pay them money.
- blablabla123 8y ago> I'm curious what they expect Facebook to do in this situation. [...] > This feels like a class action lawsuit brought by garbage workers because they have to handle trash all day long. Yes. Why are people creating jobs in the first place that obviously suck? It would be far better if they worked 10% on these disturbing images and 90% on something different, like software QA for instance. I don't want to deep dive into political theory but the mere existence of people whose only job is to dispose garbage or clean toilets makes very little sense, is highly unfair and hardly works. It would be much better if people "cleaned their own sh."
- Nasrudith 8y agoBasic economics is why. Would you want to pay $125/hour for a janitor? Because that is what you get have brain surgeons cleaning toliets. While the jobs suck there are more people who can do them. It works perfectly well even if the job is less than desirable. It does tend to pay a bit more than non-sucky jobs of the same capabilities at least due to less people wanting to be sewage divers.
- blablabla123 8y ago> Would you want to pay $125/hour for a janitor? I'm not saying that I would pay $125/hour for a janitor. I'm saying that people who bring in dirt should every once in a while clean it themselves. Like in a flat share but scaled up. Decentralised somehow. > Because that is what you get have brain surgeons cleaning toliets. I guess I'm fine with Brain surgeons getting tumor's out of people's brains. Their job is quite exceptional. > It works perfectly well even if the job is less than desirable. It does not. People who work these jobs and work in overly dense areas like SV or NY cannot afford to live there - except if they live at their parent's...with 50. This needs to be thought through.
- Nasrudith 8y agoThe point is that the tasks are commodities and by pushing it onto others you effectively waste the specialized labor. Split it around all you like it is still waste. Sentiment doesn't change the math. As for things working I believe we are speaking of works in two entirely different ways. Having someone as a dedicated cleaner is perfectly functional even if it is a crappy way to make a living. Call it SBW - sucks but works. As long as there are people willing to work the job it is SBW at worst. If they have people willing to head in then it works. SV and NYC are both not the densest by a wide margin compared The issue there is a lack of willingness to upgrade transit and housing density sufficient. SV especially.
- AngryData 8y agoIf a soldier develops PTSD is it just 'the job the signed up for' and giving them some token support gestures is good enough when it happens?
- siruncledrew 8y agoI don’t see how anyone wins in this scenario. If workers win: FB puts freeze on hiring moderation staff. PR benefits begin outweighing the labor costs, and there’s not enough moderation capacity to block the vile content from getting through. If FB wins: Workers develop mental conditions, moderation staff quits from the job stress, and there’s lots of job churn and not enough moderators to fight the problem.
- GW150914 8y agoIt’s one of these classic situations that reveal the nature of a corporation as being distinct from an individual. An individual might follow the thinking you’ve outlined, but’s corporation comprised of endless layers of competing management, personal fiefdoms, and a collective case of shortsighted, goal-oriented thinking will not. It doesn’t matter if this is terrible for FB as a whole entity, or moderators. The mods aren’t making the call, and the people who do are possibly more concerned with showing they can minimize a source of overhead that doesn’t immediately add to their bottom line.
- lwhi 8y agoThey could offer support. Counselling comes to mind .. in the form of a regular debrief or supervision session
- kruczek 8y agoFrom the article: “We take the support of our content moderators incredibly seriously, ... ensuring that every person reviewing Facebook content is offered psychological support and wellness resources,” said Bertie Thomson, director of corporate communications. It looks like that's exactly what they do.
- lwhi 8y agoThe means might not justify the need. e.g. Psychological support could be via a webchat platform.
- harlanji 8y agoLet’s all just switch to RSS, social readers, and QR stickers and call it a day.
- beauzero 8y agoAfter reading the comments and thoughts about the job. This is just new territory. I am not sure that any company can prepare an employee for this kind of mental barrage. ...or counter that constant consumption of evil.
- zantana 8y agoI'm pretty sure a traumatized content moderator was extracting revenge on the people misbehaving on social media on a CSI Cyber episode, was it on Black Mirror too?
- neuroptera 8y ago> Facebook not protecting content moderators from mental trauma > Facebook in the past has said all of its content reviewers have access to mental health resources, including trained professionals onsite for both individual and group counseling, and they receive full health care benefits. ...which is it?
- klodolph 8y agoYou don’t get a free pass for injuring your workers just because you give them access to doctors, why would this be any different?
- jasonmaydie 8y agoBut that`s the job. It`s not like they were doing something else and this is a side effect. If i employ you to clean human feces, you can sure me for not providing adequate protection etc but you cant sure me because you had to deal with human feces. That is the job.
- morvita 8y agoYou've hit exactly what this lawsuit is about. They aren't saying "when I got a job as a content moderator I wasn't expecting to see traumatizing things", they're saying "my employer isn't providing adequate protections from the things I have to see as part of my job".
- jandrese 8y agoI wonder if maybe tighter integration with law enforcement would help the situation? Part of the problem may be that people feel so helpless when all they can do is ban the image and maybe send a copy up into the black hole of law enforcement. It has to be incredibly demoralizing to see yet another child sex slave image posted from that Kremlin IP range taken in what is clearly the same room they've been seeing for months. You can forward all of the pictures to the FBI, but they can't do anything about it and you're seeing victim after victim paraded around the Internet. Facebook's jurisdiction stops at the uplink from their datacenter.
- lawnchair_larry 8y agoWhere does it say anything about the Kremlin IP range posting child sex slave images?
- lawnchair_larry 8y agoMicrosoft had a similar lawsuit last year. It sounds like their moderators had to deal with even worse. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/11/microsoft-employees-child-abuse-lawsuit-ptsd https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/11/microsoft...
- brador 8y agoCould Reddit moderators have a case?
- lobotryas 8y agoThe ones who are actually employees? Maybe. The ones who are regular users who choose to moderate a community? No. There's no business relationship.
- gregpaul63 8y agoThis news is a clever marketing tool of a major ad strategy firm for an "AI" called....... https://selenascola.com https://selenascola.com https://www.instagram.com/selena_scola/?hl=en https://www.instagram.com/selena_scola/?hl=en
- drivingmenuts 8y agoWait, you just lost me. The whole thing is cooked up for an ad firm to sue on behalf of an AI?
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- maerF0x0 8y agoaccount created 15 minutes ago. No proof... Either just spam, or doing "spam" tongue and cheek to prove a point that it's hard to moderate w/o humans?
- 8y ago
- Timmah 8y agoHow is it any different from ER doctor, coroner, social worker, or investigator?
- asveikau 8y ago> How is it any different from ER doctor, coroner, social worker, or investigator? Yes. All those people should have support too. And many more. What is it with people and saying we need to race to the bottom? Like when people react to other people's high pay and benefits not by saying, "I should be up there with you", but instead, "why aren't you down here with me?" The implication being, I guess, we need to do more to spread the suffering and not lift people.
- Timmah 8y agoWhat is it with people saying we need to sugar coat, bubble wrap, and insulate our tender egoes from the reality of the world? Psychologists have a term for that. It's called denial.
- bluetidepro 8y agoAlt Onion Title: "City not protecting coroners from seeing dead bodies: lawsuit"
- DavidVoid 8y agohttps://www.wired.com/2014/10/content-moderation/ https://www.wired.com/2014/10/content-moderation/ You'd figure that four years after this article came out the larger social media companies would have solved this issue. A section that stood out to me: Eight years after the fact, Jake Swearingen can still recall the video that made him quit. He was 24 years old and between jobs in the Bay Area when he got a gig as a moderator for a then-new startup called VideoEgg. Three days in, a video of an apparent beheading came across his queue. "Oh fuck! I've got a beheading!" he blurted out. A slightly older colleague in a black hoodie casually turned around in his chair. "Oh," he said, "which one?" At that moment Swearingen decided he did not want to become a connoisseur of beheading videos. "I didn't want to look back and say I became so blasé to watching people have these really horrible things happen to them that I'm ironic or jokey about it," says Swearingen, now the social media editor at Atlantic Media.
- gregpaul63 8y ago"Selena scola" is an AI... Google it the employee suing is "Selena scola" Coincidence...or just clever MSM ad strategy???