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Personally, I skimmed the article and failed to see anything particularly bad about it. Typical unskilled office job, with handpicked horror stories. As usual,

Personally, I skimmed the article and failed to see anything particularly bad about it. Typical unskilled office job, with handpicked horror stories. As usual, the author manages to make the employer responsible for employee's life situation. But aside from an impulse of assigning blame on the closest most powerful actor related to situation, I don't see any reason to see Facebook in any kind of negative light for this. They need a service performed, they found people who're willing to do that service for the money offered, they gave them this money. They didn't create neither the job situation, neither the lack of education, neither the whole life of choices that lead these people toward this point: they aren't even in a any condition to control the labor market. And speaking of labor market, I really don't think that they would do anyone a favor if they pay significantly higher than the market going rate. In my experience, such an experiment creates a very unhealthy office politics: people realize that they won't get this kind of compensation anywhere else, and their concern for not getting fired becomes more influential than personal ethics or professionalism.

Nav_Panel 7y ago
The distinction between content moderation and other sorts of "unskilled office work" is the distressing nature of the content. My gut feeling is that these aren't "handpicked horror stories" but are instead the core of the job: facing video evidence of the worst aspects of human cruelty for 8 hours a day. Thus, the question raised isn't a simple "shouldn't these employees be treated better?" but something more like "how can we accept the existence of a job like this?" In my personal opinion, as someone who's moderated online communities before, Facebook needs to accept that any "system of [ethical] rules" is prone to being "lawyered", and ultimately serves to waste the time of content moderators like these. More importantly, few accept such a system of rules as legitimate: any rule set, even if "fair", is going to be judged by its edge cases, e.g. https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-hate-speech-censorship-internal-documents-algorithms https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-hate-speech-cens... The answer is to deploy an aggressive moderation AI, and tell users "too damn bad" if their post gets deleted (users will protest about "free speech" but that philosophical principle was created in a very different communication environment. If I had to create a new right more suited to the modern day, it'd be a right to "freedom from speech" instead), or else dramatically limit the sphere of content users are exposed to (although that would go against their whole ethos "connecting the world" or whatever).
daxterspeed 7y ago
Facebook is in charge of demanding that these people to re-watch the same gore videos over and over. I'd wager that the vast majority of gore videos uploaded to Facebook can be identified from a few couple keyframes. They shouldn't have to listen to the audio of the video unless absolutely necessary either. Facebook has actively designed this system that's extremely hostile and damaging towards their moderators and they should absolutely take all blame for the faults in that system.
pfortuny 7y ago
Clearly you just skimmed. Or perhaps in your office you deal constantly with anger, perversion, violence and gore? Where is that office?
save_ferris 7y ago
> Typical unskilled office job, with handpicked horror stories. Are you arguing that these stories aren't important because of the relative infrequency with which they occur? An employee died on the job in a brutally high-stress environment, and Cognizant is denying that his death had anything to do with the work he did. You're right in that cases like his are all too typical nowadays. But the fact that you don't "see anything particularly bad about it" says a lot. > They didn't create neither the job situation, neither the lack of education They created the jobs, didn't they? Those jobs exist because Facebook exists. How do they not bear responsibility for the conditions of those jobs? And nobody is criticizing FB for the lack of education or life choices of these workers. What do those have to do with this story at all? > they aren't even in a any condition to control the labor market. Disagree. They're in a position to constantly threaten thse workers with termination, that's about as close to total control as one can get in the free world. I'd wager that's far more control than your employer exercises with you. Can you imagine what would happen if Facebook tried that tactic with their SWEs? It's unbelievably disgusting that they treat their low skilled workers this way. > But aside from an impulse of assigning blame on the closest most powerful actor related to situation, I don't see any reason to see Facebook in any kind of negative light for this. If the company paying the employees isn't responsible for the working conditions of its facilities, then who is? Do companies not have a responsibility to provide a safe and healthy work environment? On top of that, these employees who make very little chose to break their NDAs, subjecting them to legal exposure, in order to talk about this. They're risking far more than just their jobs by going to the press. If a company isn't comfortable with employees talking, the onus is on them to create an environment in which workers aren't motivated to go to the press. That very clearly isn't happening here. > In my experience, such an experiment creates a very unhealthy office politics: people realize that they won't get this kind of compensation anywhere else, and their concern for not getting fired becomes more influential than personal ethics or professionalism. Logically, this makes no sense to me. In a healthy work environment, strong personal ethics and professionalism should inherently insulate a worker from termination. If a worker feels that they need to behave unethically to stay employed, that says a lot about the culture of the company. Good people in good work environments don't think this way. But I'd love to see some data on this if you have any.
ssully 7y ago
Personally, I find your response to be emblematic of what is wrong with our industry. Completely ignoring the quantity and power of the filth that social media is able to generate and being ok with shoveling this shit to "unskilled" workers and letting them handle the consequences of dealing with that garbage on a daily basis. Just brush it off as a by product of capitalism/the labor market - "They need a service performed, they found people willing to do that service for the money offered". You ignore the human cost of all of this and brush off peoples experiences as "handpicked horror stories" - you are completely detached from the real world. . Despite your claims, this is 100% a problem of Facebook's making.

Nav_Panel 7y ago

The distinction between content moderation and other sorts of "unskilled office work" is the distressing nature of the content. My gut feeling is that these aren't "handpicked horror stories" but are instead the core of the job: facing video evidence of the worst aspects of human cruelty for 8 hours a day. Thus, the question raised isn't a simple "shouldn't these employees be treated better?" but something more like "how can we accept the existence of a job like this?" In my personal opinion, as someone who's moderated online communities before, Facebook needs to accept that any "system of [ethical] rules" is prone to being "lawyered", and ultimately serves to waste the time of content moderators like these. More importantly, few accept such a system of rules as legitimate: any rule set, even if "fair", is going to be judged by its edge cases, e.g. https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-hate-speech-censorship-internal-documents-algorithms https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-hate-speech-cens... The answer is to deploy an aggressive moderation AI, and tell users "too damn bad" if their post gets deleted (users will protest about "free speech" but that philosophical principle was created in a very different communication environment. If I had to create a new right more suited to the modern day, it'd be a right to "freedom from speech" instead), or else dramatically limit the sphere of content users are exposed to (although that would go against their whole ethos "connecting the world" or whatever).

daxterspeed 7y ago

Facebook is in charge of demanding that these people to re-watch the same gore videos over and over. I'd wager that the vast majority of gore videos uploaded to Facebook can be identified from a few couple keyframes. They shouldn't have to listen to the audio of the video unless absolutely necessary either. Facebook has actively designed this system that's extremely hostile and damaging towards their moderators and they should absolutely take all blame for the faults in that system.

pfortuny 7y ago

Clearly you just skimmed. Or perhaps in your office you deal constantly with anger, perversion, violence and gore? Where is that office?

save_ferris 7y ago

> Typical unskilled office job, with handpicked horror stories. Are you arguing that these stories aren't important because of the relative infrequency with which they occur? An employee died on the job in a brutally high-stress environment, and Cognizant is denying that his death had anything to do with the work he did. You're right in that cases like his are all too typical nowadays. But the fact that you don't "see anything particularly bad about it" says a lot. > They didn't create neither the job situation, neither the lack of education They created the jobs, didn't they? Those jobs exist because Facebook exists. How do they not bear responsibility for the conditions of those jobs? And nobody is criticizing FB for the lack of education or life choices of these workers. What do those have to do with this story at all? > they aren't even in a any condition to control the labor market. Disagree. They're in a position to constantly threaten thse workers with termination, that's about as close to total control as one can get in the free world. I'd wager that's far more control than your employer exercises with you. Can you imagine what would happen if Facebook tried that tactic with their SWEs? It's unbelievably disgusting that they treat their low skilled workers this way. > But aside from an impulse of assigning blame on the closest most powerful actor related to situation, I don't see any reason to see Facebook in any kind of negative light for this. If the company paying the employees isn't responsible for the working conditions of its facilities, then who is? Do companies not have a responsibility to provide a safe and healthy work environment? On top of that, these employees who make very little chose to break their NDAs, subjecting them to legal exposure, in order to talk about this. They're risking far more than just their jobs by going to the press. If a company isn't comfortable with employees talking, the onus is on them to create an environment in which workers aren't motivated to go to the press. That very clearly isn't happening here. > In my experience, such an experiment creates a very unhealthy office politics: people realize that they won't get this kind of compensation anywhere else, and their concern for not getting fired becomes more influential than personal ethics or professionalism. Logically, this makes no sense to me. In a healthy work environment, strong personal ethics and professionalism should inherently insulate a worker from termination. If a worker feels that they need to behave unethically to stay employed, that says a lot about the culture of the company. Good people in good work environments don't think this way. But I'd love to see some data on this if you have any.

ssully 7y ago

Personally, I find your response to be emblematic of what is wrong with our industry. Completely ignoring the quantity and power of the filth that social media is able to generate and being ok with shoveling this shit to "unskilled" workers and letting them handle the consequences of dealing with that garbage on a daily basis. Just brush it off as a by product of capitalism/the labor market - "They need a service performed, they found people willing to do that service for the money offered". You ignore the human cost of all of this and brush off peoples experiences as "handpicked horror stories" - you are completely detached from the real world. . Despite your claims, this is 100% a problem of Facebook's making.