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I always wondered why they don't have a system where the videos or images are shown first filtered, like blurred, and then at the discretion of the operator, th
by scoutt 8y ago
I always wondered why they don't have a system where the videos or images are shown first filtered, like blurred, and then at the discretion of the operator, they can take "several levels of blurring" off until they see the original image. That way, for some images/videos/ you can tell if it's violent/inappropriate right away, and the operator may see "less" of whatever is disturbing for them.
I've also wondered how they deal with long videos that may seem correct for the first minutes, but the real inappropriate content is interlaced for a few frames in-between or later in the video.
- perbu 8y agoIt's low-value work. Facebook doesn't value these people enough to employ them so they likely don't have access to properly engineered tools.
- dymk 8y agoWhat makes you think that? How can you say that with such confidence? Are you letting your pre-existing negative feelings color your assumptions about what people actually think at the company? I used to work there, and I built tools for these workers. Every one of the other engineers that I knew had nothing but respect for them, and everybody recognized that it was important work.
- agentdrtran 8y agoSo important their bathroom breaks are timed, they get inadequate counseling, and they get paid $28k a year!
- tjkrusinski 8y agoYou have to remember that those are policies put in place by the contracting company, not Facebook or the engineers that make the tools that these people use.
- thebradbain 8y agoAnd yet if Facebook really valued these contractors as much as their regular employees, they would be hired as regular employees and not contractors. The fact such crucial staff are contractors shows how much Facebook values them.
- tjkrusinski 8y agoYeah I don't disagree, ultimately though, it's a scaling problem. It's unrealistic to hire thousands of people in a high churn context. Cognizant, Accenture, et al are companies designed to do that and they do it well.
- anigbrowl 8y ago'it's unrealistic' = 'we don't want to do it'
- cmiles74 8y agoIf they were treated better and had access to better tools, it might not be such a "high-churn context." Facebook makes literally billions of dollars, they could easily pay more and provide better support to these people. They simply do not wish to do so.
- sjg007 8y agoFacebook should mandate that the contractor companies have nicer and better policies. The use of "contractors" in general is a shell game of abject responsibility.
- lucideer 8y agoThis isn't the case. Facebook takes a hands on approach to vendor management: many of these policies are agreed with vendors at contract negotiation stage, but even beyond that, many are set and enforced day-to-day by Facebook employees working as vendor managers. The other thing to note (and this is true of most outsourcing arrangements) is that, while engineers may respect these people and wish to provide good tooling, they're kept at arms length by management in terms of communication channels. Outsourced workers don't have access to internal ticketing tools, aren't party to any internal meetings on tooling (even those at management level in the contracted company). Engineers can mean well but that means little if they don't have any means to understand the needs of these indirect employees.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- rconti 8y agoI kind of hate how they play up how little these folks are being paid in Arizona relative to how much FB employees are being paid in California. Yes, it's not a lot of money regardless, but it's frustrating that people either complain about centralizing jobs in an unaffordable area, but then when they contract out to cheaper places, they're underpaying people. Even in Phoenix, yes, I think $28k is being underpaid for this job, but you can't tell me they wouldn't also call them underpaid at twice the money, and take the opportunity to compare that salary to a Menlo Park salary.
- thatoneuser 8y agoOK they'd call them underpaid at 56k. Regardless, they are being underpaid at 28k.
- egypturnash 8y agoWell, yeah. Why should all the money Facebook makes from slipping ads into every conversation they can only go to SF techies? These people are doing a pretty important job for Facebook and yet they're getting paid close to minimum wage, with a highly Taylorist environment that barely gives them time to go pee, let alone to take a break and calm down after seeing something really horrible.
- taurath 8y agoBecause when they contract out its ONLY about the bottom line, so they don't go reasonably low, they go as low as possible
- gjs278 8y agoit’s not important at all. moderators ruin all social media.
- skywhopper 8y agoMaybe you did, but the people making the decisions about how to treat them and how much to pay them obviously don't.
- cmroanirgo 8y agoPerhaps if it were FB itself doing the hiring, rather than a 3rd party company, there would be better metrics being sent back to management about things that needed to change. I don't think OP meant to disparage the good honest work, but really, if FB (as a company) did value the work, it'd be in-house, wouldn't it? There's too much opportunity for mangement to 'tone down' issues when metrics are shared between companies, whereas in-house there'd be no hiding from the problems. That said, it's great to hear that you devs were very mindful of the problems that face these people. I certainly didn't not realise how bad it was, so kudos to all involved really.
- therealdrag0 8y agoHow much do the janitors in your own office complex get paid/valued? Janitorial work always has been under-appreciated. But cleaning up shit tends not to be high skill work.
- arthur_pryor 8y agothe janitors at my office don't get paid enough, and don't get valued enough. AFAIK, we contract out our janitorial work, so that we don't have to pay benefits, etc. it's shameful. > Janitorial work always has been under-appreciated. But cleaning up shit tends not to be high skill work. the latter is a non-sequitur, IMO. work that causes that sort of personal injury should be well compensated, regardless of the skill level. it takes a lot of a person. we should try our best to make that person whole again, or to not take so much from them.
- rock_hard 8y agoAFAIK that is how it actually works
- darkpuma 8y agoIf such a system were created, facebook would no doubt instrument it. Or at least the employees would suspect that facebook instrumented it. Then you'll have employees worrying if they are deblurring "too much" or "too little".
- anigbrowl 8y agoBy the time you can mentally fill int he blanks on content to assess it properly it's effectively getting into your head anyway.
- darkpuma 8y agoThe blurred images would convey the concept and the concept in many cases would be psychologically damaging, as you say. However I strongly suspect that the vivid details would only compound that damage. Progressive unblurring wouldn't prevent psychological damage, but surely it should help alleviate it to some degree. It may even be possible to selectively blur only parts of images for some classes of content. For instance, a filter that blurs portions of the image that are vivid red. If the red blur is on a dinner plate, then it's probably just a plate of pasta with tomato sauce. If the red blur is where somebody's head should be, that's probably gore and witnessing even that could be disturbing. But I know I'd rather see the blurred version.
- dontbenebby 8y agoAlso maybe save hashes of "known terrible" images so they don't get moderated by a human at all. It's done with child abuse imagery, it could easily be expanded to gore, blatant hate memes, etc.
- dymk 8y agoThis is already done.