17 ms·

YouTube moderators forced to sign statement acknowledging job can give them PTSD

152 points by untog 7y ago

AndrewDucker 7y ago
I wonder what a good approach would be for jobs which need to be done, but are harmful to the people doing them? They talk about "the industry-leading wellness program and comprehensive support services we provide" - but should there be a basic standard of support set which they have to meet? I'm not sure of what a good answer would look like.
- SolaceQuantum 7y ago
  > They talk about "the industry-leading wellness program and comprehensive support services we provide" - but should there be a basic standard of support set which they have to meet? > I'm not sure of what a good answer would look like IMO the bare minimum is credit to cover any and all inpatient/outpatient therapy with LCSW/PsyD/Clinical Psy PhD/MD health professionals, as well as a generous amount of allowance for prescribed paid leave(from a LCSW/PsyD/Clinical PhD/MD) due to distress.
- untog 7y ago
  I'm not sure either, but things like this: > The PTSD form describes various support services available to moderators who are suffering, including a “wellness coach,” a hotline, and the human resources department. (“The wellness coach is not a medical doctor and cannot diagnose or treat mental health disorders,” the document adds.) do not inspire confidence. They sound very much like cut-price answers to very complicated questions. I'm sure a company like Facebook could afford to give its moderators access to fully qualified mental health professionals. But hey, they could also make those moderators full employees rather than third party contract workers, and show no signs of doing that either. (not to mention, suggesting you talk to HR? The second you do that liability alarms are going to start ringing and attached to your name. Terrible idea)
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  The existing standard in old industry was disability and workman's comp but the lines are a bit more fuzzy than just "x-ray says you have black lung" or "you don't have a right hand anymore". The ergonomics of what could actually prevent PTSD from developing other than massive churn would be an interesting area of study period.
- pgrote 7y ago
  >jobs which need to be done, but are harmful to the people doing them? Does this job need to be done? Perhaps we have learned that opening a platform for anyone to upload anything in an anonymous state is not good for society. Maybe it is time to force anyone uploading to YouTube to be approved prior. All the hand wringing concerning online services and the belief they should exist since everyone seems to like them is something society has to deal with. No one is practically looking at the ill the services are doing to the world. Why should anyone get PTSD to ensure YouTube can continue to offer videos? Wow.
  - toast0 7y ago
    Raising the bar on people uploading wouldn't eliminate the need for this work; at best, it would reduce it. Someone still needs to watch whatever gets uploaded, even if it's before that account is allowed to post publicly.
  - samatman 7y ago
    Approved... by content moderators, perhaps? Rearranging the deck chairs doesn't solve the fundamental dilemma.
    - goatinaboat 7y ago
      Rearranging the deck chairs doesn't solve the fundamental dilemma. Charging $10 or $100 per upload would kill this material stone dead. And ensure that everything could be traced to the person responsible if it did slip through.
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    Prescreening would massively damper speech to make it essentially Cable TV while not even solving the issue of PTSD as there would still be screeners. That isn't a solution - it is misguided spite. Second it is the price of a remotely free society - not having to ask of freedom of speech - letting the government decide what is "unacceptable for society" with speech is foregone conclusion of abuse. Besides even if it was miraculously representative society doesn't even know what is good for society! The Romans thought that their gladiatorial games were opposing decadence and that wearing pants was barbaric and worse for society than putting lead in wine.
- the_snooze 7y ago
  This take is a non-starter for these companies, but I'll say it: these problems come from the fact that these online services have massive reach and scale. These systems are designed to facilitate monetizing off of low-cost worldwide content creation and distribution. You get the good and the bad with that. Without changing that core goal, I feel any effort at "content moderation" is just PR lip service not actually done in good faith.
- matz1 7y ago
  >I wonder what a good approach would be for jobs which need to be done, but are harmful to the people doing them? So like any other job, only people who are suitable for the job should apply for the job. Not every one is harmed by gore video, thats why you select these kind of people to do the job.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
Mangalor 7y ago
Google reps should be forced to say it out loud to new employees. Some random sentence in a contract is far too casual.
- James_Henry 7y ago
  I get your point, but it doesn't seem to be a random sentence in a contract. For starter, "The PTSD statement comes at the end of the two-page acknowledgment form, and it is surrounded by a thick black border to signify its importance."
remote_phone 7y ago
Companies like Google, Facebook etc should force their executives, from VP to CEO, to do a week of content moderation every quarter. Then we would see how sympathetic they would be to the plight of these workers and how quickly the problem would be solved.
- jrimbault 7y ago
  It's basically reinventing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative and rotation of responsabilities. But yeah. That would be good.
  - AndrewUnmuted 7y ago
    To me, a more fair comparison would be how Amazon requires all office workers to shadow a customer support representative for one week out of each year. I don't think the OP's suggestion does anything close to reinventing the concept of a worker cooperative.
    - mewpmewp2 7y ago
      Amazon really is not a good example of a successful employee management. Their attrition is horrible, worst work life balance culture out of FAANGs, their reputation is horrible and working there is most disliked. They cast a wide net, but lose employees fast.
      - AndrewUnmuted 7y ago
        Have you worked there? I have quite a different experience than this. I found Amazon's hiring practices and employee management to be very effective compared to other places I've worked. In general, I found their whole dogma really worked in practice, which surprised me at first.
        mewpmewp2 7y ago
        I have not worked there. It is what I hear from other people's experience. Of course it will vary between teams, but the reputation is still low and attrition rate very high.
ronilan 7y ago
If this was up to me, each and every employee of YouTube (and Google, for as long as YouTube is not set free) would be trained as a content moderator and would be required to do so for a couple of weeks (or as sufficient to complete the task) every year. Edit: yes. Every single one.
- youareostriches 7y ago
  Why the employees rather than the shareholders and executives who profit the most from it? The returns in their portfolios literally come at the expense of lifelong psychological wounding (which the corp is directly admitting in this contract).
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    You are not wrong. Why not both, or all?
- mrits 7y ago
  I wouldn't work for a company that doesn't value my time as much as I do. Working on a platform I wished didn't exist would be very insulting. Your statement sounds like a typical out of touch high level manager that didn't think through an idea.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    Being forced to do a low-level job for a somewhat extended period that is probably not directly to your day-to-day is a bit much. However, depending on the situation/company etc., having employees work support or otherwise put themselves in the shoes of people using the products they're involved with making every now and then shouldn't be something they view as beneath them.
    - mewpmewp2 7y ago
      Not beneath me, but I do value using my time as optimally as possible. Maybe a week of customer support once in life or few years would be great, but why should I choose a company that forces me to spend my time unwisely? It is not about being beneath me. I just want to solve problems programmatically, not be customer support. You know engineers can not be forced either, they can leave any time due to market demand so good luck to anyone trying to make their employees do something like that.
chooseaname 7y ago
How sad is it that moderators are even needed. Why can't people just be nice?
- douglasisshiny 7y ago
  I would imagine it's more for things like illegal content (i,e. child sexual exploitation) as opposed to people being "mean". But I'm sure abusive behavior is a component.
- tremon 7y ago
  Because there aren't sufficient repercussions. You can see this everywhere: lack of social accountability leads to more openly incivil behaviour. This isn't just online, but offline it works the same: if the cost of being incivil is low enough, there is a lot gain from it. See for example: backroom deals, mob behaviour, road rage. A few years ago someone pointed me to https://ncase.me/trust/ https://ncase.me/trust/ (I think I learned about it here), which captures the problem very well for me: if social cohesion goes down (i.e. fewer interactions but with more different people), the penalty for inciviliy goes down but the rewards stay the same.
  - numpad0 7y ago
    Also: there is really no central, balanced standard for justice/justness scale, but only an illusion of it(probably generated through said cohesion). I learned it being an non-American with some English literacy on internet, and am being reminded of it every week. Justice and/or “being nice” perceived scale is just an AI model of events around you that one uses to predict certain outcomes, and most of logic you see in it are purely coincidental correlations to aid in footprint reduction.
- LookAtThatUgGuy 7y ago
  Max Woolf (@minimaxir on twitter and here) has downvoted you, screenshotted your comment, and posted it on twitter for public shaming ️
  - 7y ago
superbrane 7y ago
This is just to protect the corporation from potential legal action. It s like a disclaimer on a police agent job that you might get shot when doing your job. Problem is when you don t care enough to take care of the ones who are affected by the stress.
Shish2k 7y ago
"Forced" is a weirdly charged word - like "garbage disposal workers forced to sign statement acknowledging that their work will involve handling garbage". What's the alternative here? Yeah, it's awful, dirty work, and we should give them as much support as possible (definitely more support than they are getting right now) - but at the end of the day, "dealing with things most people don't want to touch" is literally the reason that the job exists... TBH I'd be more concerned if YouTube was signing up moderators WITHOUT telling them that they're in for a life of emotional torture :/
- meddlin 7y ago
  > What's the alternative here? Not a popular one, but another alternative is to fundamentally change the service. But that involves possibly losing YouTube. Assuming Alphabet/Google (and most others) won't even consider that option...yeah, you're pretty on point.
  - extropy 7y ago
    Automate it away? Or 99.5% of it?
    - frandroid 7y ago
      As if they haven't tried that anyway
  - csallen 7y ago
    "When you invent the plane, you invent the plane crash."
- SolaceQuantum 7y ago
  Garbage workers have used labor organization to stand up to unfair treatment. Do YouTube Moderators?
  - tantalor 7y ago
    Explain how this is unfair treatment.
dredmorbius 7y ago
There are risks that people can understand and appreciate up front. There are risks that simply are not fully conciously appreciated until they've been experienced directly. There are risks whose cumulative effects only build with time, often taking years, even decades, to fully manifest. And there are risks which fundamentally change the capacity of the affected to even recognise or admit their existence or severity. PTSD is all of these. Self-monitoring, encouragement to seek help, and provision of a nonclinical "wellness coach" is grossly insufficient. The companies, and in this case, contractors (Accenture), providing such services, as well as outside oversight entities such as government regulators, physical and mental health services, unions, and insurers, know (or damned well should), can monitor, and impose regulations, limits, risk premiums, compensation and settlement systems, and collective bargaining powers, for such work. Business is a risk-externalising engine. Some risks absolutely need to be fully internalised. This is a prime case. NB: I've worked at various times as a moderator, on spam-detecting and reporting systems which entail seeing some unpleasantness. And on a large social media network where I was tasked with removing flagged images from the storage network. The flagging process hadn't been explained in any detail, and as I would be deleting millions of items of user content, I spot-checked a small handful to confirm the flagging was accurate. After no more than a half dozen (and probably fewer) I simply didn't want to see any more -- the image from over a decade of a young girl still lodges in my mind, though I've never wiped, nuked, and shredded files on disk harder. I'm satisfied with the fact that the scripts I created wiped all that content from our and our CDN's storage not in the weeks or months of the initial estimate (our CDN vendor apparently had never considered widespread deletions, or experienced them), but less than two days, with verification. Never heard any reports of unwarranted deletion either. Somewhere else within the organisation, unknown to me, others had seen and verified those images. I think of who they might have been and the impacts on them.
- anon9001 7y ago
  I really don't understand how images or even videos are causing PTSD. Maybe it's because I grew up on 4chan in the age of goatse, but shocking content is a tiny fraction of how disturbing real life can be. I understand that looking at disturbing content is going to have some impact on people, and that they may not be able to evaluate that risk properly, but it's nowhere near what every nurse, doctor, firefighter, police officer, soldier, and even teacher will live through over the course of their career. I've been diagnosed with PTSD after seeing some deeply disturbing medical shit. I'm definitely impacted for life, but there were doctors and nurses there too, and they're impacted too. Maybe I've been on the internet too long, but there's a massive delta, at least in my view, between seeing a disturbing video and living through real-life trauma. I'd take the video moderation job over being an ER nurse any day.
moomin 7y ago
Mr Burns is currently getting Homer to sign something saying that his job may give him inoperable cancer and a third arm.
PaulHoule 7y ago
Making repetitive decisions over a long period of time can make your mind get weird. This counts for the "normal" development of training sets but it gets much worse when the detailed semantics are challenging and hairs must be split carefully. For instance I was filtering images on my tablet while lying in bed in a dark room and by the time I got to the 2000th image my visual system started getting weird. (e.g. I would see an image that was photocomposited and feel strong cognitive dissonance... I would see the photocompositing and not see the image I was supposed to see) When you put a group of people in a room and have them label things that require careful discriminations, some of which are critically important, others of which are necessary for the process but not necessary for the product, you will see people get emotionally disturbed. I haven't seen punches flying but I think I could make it happen if the group was compressed enough in space and the stakes were high. I also had a toxic data set that was derived from Wikipedia where if you started clicking on things from the first record, you would quickly come to various phrases involving the "F-word". Just about everyone who looked at this data set would soon be sitting in a daze in front of the computer repeating the "F-word". I'd tell them that they have the "F---s" and they should get a grip on itself.
sparker72678 7y ago
This feels like an externality that needs to be internalized by these platforms. It shouldn't be legal to destroy people's minds, then drop them back off into society with no help. If you want to run a massive platform where anyone can upload anything, then you should have to pay for it, at least insofar as financially supporting the potentially life-long therapy someone is going to need after doing a moderation job. One of many, many, externalities these platforms create, I realize.
- gfo 7y ago
  Isn't this the same risk anyone enlisting in the military also runs? Still, I agree - it would be a lot easier to avoid these awful posts if people had to pay to be on the platform. It wouldn't be perfect of course, but it at least provides a barrier to entry and a slightly harsher consequence if you forfeit your membership fee when banned for inappropriate content.
  - sparker72678 7y ago
    I'd say that the military places a massive externality on society as well, so, yes. I guess at least enlisting gets you better benefits than sitting in a mod-farm in Phoenix will.
  - tremon 7y ago
    Isn't this the same risk anyone enlisting in the military also runs? Yes, and we've been slowly forcing the military to acknowledge to own up to that. When PTSD was first recognized (as shell shock in WWI), the initial response of the (UK) military was to declare these people physically healthy and return them to the front, or execute them for desertion. I'd say the armed forces have come a long way since.
- nexuist 7y ago
  >If you want to run a massive platform where anyone can upload anything, then you should have to pay for it, at least insofar as financially supporting the potentially life-long therapy someone is going to need after doing a moderation job. But this is so tricky though, isn't it? Anyone can run a media sharing platform. Hacker News is a media sharing platform. Mandating these sort of laws...makes the Internet less free. The same sort of horrifying content that is moderated out today could have just been easily been uploaded to the BBS's and phpbb's of the early 90s-2000s. Does it make sense to make Facebook pay for lifetime care of moderators? Sure - they make billions of dollars - but what about a regional car club forum, or a subreddit about cat pictures? Should reddit be paying anyone who makes and runs a subreddit because they will inevitably have to moderate something grotesque? It's not an easy problem.
ma2rten 7y ago
The PTSD form describes various support services available to moderators who are suffering, including a “wellness coach,” a hotline, and the human resources department. (“The wellness coach is not a medical doctor and cannot diagnose or treat mental health disorders,” the document adds.) They don't even provide a licensed therapist? Most tech companies have an employee assistance program where employees can talk a licensed mental health professional 24/7. It seems like Accenture didn't even provide that here.
thinkingemote 7y ago
Using AI to replace human moderators doing this stressful work must be morally good, right?
- fapjacks 7y ago
  There's mountains of money to be made if you can fulfill this political promise Google and Facebook have so far failed make good on. Go for it.
fapjacks 7y ago
No amount of technology will be able to stop all people from being exposed to all forms of content at all times which may one day trigger PTSD symptoms. Social media shitholes use blacklists when they "should be" crowdsource-whitelisting content and not moderating anything at all. And then users decide for themselves if they wish to turn off the whitelist content filter and expose themselves to the content that may one day trigger PTSD symptoms. Prepare your child for the path, not the path for your child.
oceanghost 7y ago
I have PTSD. Believe me, you don't want it.

152 points by untog 7y ago

I wonder what a good approach would be for jobs which need to be done, but are harmful to the people doing them? They talk about "the industry-leading wellness program and comprehensive support services we provide" - but should there be a basic standard of support set which they have to meet? I'm not sure of what a good answer would look like.

SolaceQuantum 7y ago
> They talk about "the industry-leading wellness program and comprehensive support services we provide" - but should there be a basic standard of support set which they have to meet? > I'm not sure of what a good answer would look like IMO the bare minimum is credit to cover any and all inpatient/outpatient therapy with LCSW/PsyD/Clinical Psy PhD/MD health professionals, as well as a generous amount of allowance for prescribed paid leave(from a LCSW/PsyD/Clinical PhD/MD) due to distress.
untog 7y ago
I'm not sure either, but things like this: > The PTSD form describes various support services available to moderators who are suffering, including a “wellness coach,” a hotline, and the human resources department. (“The wellness coach is not a medical doctor and cannot diagnose or treat mental health disorders,” the document adds.) do not inspire confidence. They sound very much like cut-price answers to very complicated questions. I'm sure a company like Facebook could afford to give its moderators access to fully qualified mental health professionals. But hey, they could also make those moderators full employees rather than third party contract workers, and show no signs of doing that either. (not to mention, suggesting you talk to HR? The second you do that liability alarms are going to start ringing and attached to your name. Terrible idea)
Nasrudith 7y ago
The existing standard in old industry was disability and workman's comp but the lines are a bit more fuzzy than just "x-ray says you have black lung" or "you don't have a right hand anymore". The ergonomics of what could actually prevent PTSD from developing other than massive churn would be an interesting area of study period.
pgrote 7y ago
>jobs which need to be done, but are harmful to the people doing them? Does this job need to be done? Perhaps we have learned that opening a platform for anyone to upload anything in an anonymous state is not good for society. Maybe it is time to force anyone uploading to YouTube to be approved prior. All the hand wringing concerning online services and the belief they should exist since everyone seems to like them is something society has to deal with. No one is practically looking at the ill the services are doing to the world. Why should anyone get PTSD to ensure YouTube can continue to offer videos? Wow.
- toast0 7y ago
  Raising the bar on people uploading wouldn't eliminate the need for this work; at best, it would reduce it. Someone still needs to watch whatever gets uploaded, even if it's before that account is allowed to post publicly.
- samatman 7y ago
  Approved... by content moderators, perhaps? Rearranging the deck chairs doesn't solve the fundamental dilemma.
  - goatinaboat 7y ago
    Rearranging the deck chairs doesn't solve the fundamental dilemma. Charging $10 or $100 per upload would kill this material stone dead. And ensure that everything could be traced to the person responsible if it did slip through.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  Prescreening would massively damper speech to make it essentially Cable TV while not even solving the issue of PTSD as there would still be screeners. That isn't a solution - it is misguided spite. Second it is the price of a remotely free society - not having to ask of freedom of speech - letting the government decide what is "unacceptable for society" with speech is foregone conclusion of abuse. Besides even if it was miraculously representative society doesn't even know what is good for society! The Romans thought that their gladiatorial games were opposing decadence and that wearing pants was barbaric and worse for society than putting lead in wine.
the_snooze 7y ago
This take is a non-starter for these companies, but I'll say it: these problems come from the fact that these online services have massive reach and scale. These systems are designed to facilitate monetizing off of low-cost worldwide content creation and distribution. You get the good and the bad with that. Without changing that core goal, I feel any effort at "content moderation" is just PR lip service not actually done in good faith.
matz1 7y ago
>I wonder what a good approach would be for jobs which need to be done, but are harmful to the people doing them? So like any other job, only people who are suitable for the job should apply for the job. Not every one is harmed by gore video, thats why you select these kind of people to do the job.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

Mangalor 7y ago

Google reps should be forced to say it out loud to new employees. Some random sentence in a contract is far too casual.

James_Henry 7y ago
I get your point, but it doesn't seem to be a random sentence in a contract. For starter, "The PTSD statement comes at the end of the two-page acknowledgment form, and it is surrounded by a thick black border to signify its importance."

remote_phone 7y ago

Companies like Google, Facebook etc should force their executives, from VP to CEO, to do a week of content moderation every quarter. Then we would see how sympathetic they would be to the plight of these workers and how quickly the problem would be solved.

jrimbault 7y ago
It's basically reinventing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative and rotation of responsabilities. But yeah. That would be good.
- AndrewUnmuted 7y ago
  To me, a more fair comparison would be how Amazon requires all office workers to shadow a customer support representative for one week out of each year. I don't think the OP's suggestion does anything close to reinventing the concept of a worker cooperative.
  - mewpmewp2 7y ago
    Amazon really is not a good example of a successful employee management. Their attrition is horrible, worst work life balance culture out of FAANGs, their reputation is horrible and working there is most disliked. They cast a wide net, but lose employees fast.
    - AndrewUnmuted 7y ago
      Have you worked there? I have quite a different experience than this. I found Amazon's hiring practices and employee management to be very effective compared to other places I've worked. In general, I found their whole dogma really worked in practice, which surprised me at first.
      - mewpmewp2 7y ago
        I have not worked there. It is what I hear from other people's experience. Of course it will vary between teams, but the reputation is still low and attrition rate very high.

ronilan 7y ago

If this was up to me, each and every employee of YouTube (and Google, for as long as YouTube is not set free) would be trained as a content moderator and would be required to do so for a couple of weeks (or as sufficient to complete the task) every year. Edit: yes. Every single one.

youareostriches 7y ago
Why the employees rather than the shareholders and executives who profit the most from it? The returns in their portfolios literally come at the expense of lifelong psychological wounding (which the corp is directly admitting in this contract).
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  You are not wrong. Why not both, or all?
mrits 7y ago
I wouldn't work for a company that doesn't value my time as much as I do. Working on a platform I wished didn't exist would be very insulting. Your statement sounds like a typical out of touch high level manager that didn't think through an idea.
- ghaff 7y ago
  Being forced to do a low-level job for a somewhat extended period that is probably not directly to your day-to-day is a bit much. However, depending on the situation/company etc., having employees work support or otherwise put themselves in the shoes of people using the products they're involved with making every now and then shouldn't be something they view as beneath them.
  - mewpmewp2 7y ago
    Not beneath me, but I do value using my time as optimally as possible. Maybe a week of customer support once in life or few years would be great, but why should I choose a company that forces me to spend my time unwisely? It is not about being beneath me. I just want to solve problems programmatically, not be customer support. You know engineers can not be forced either, they can leave any time due to market demand so good luck to anyone trying to make their employees do something like that.

chooseaname 7y ago

How sad is it that moderators are even needed. Why can't people just be nice?

douglasisshiny 7y ago
I would imagine it's more for things like illegal content (i,e. child sexual exploitation) as opposed to people being "mean". But I'm sure abusive behavior is a component.
tremon 7y ago
Because there aren't sufficient repercussions. You can see this everywhere: lack of social accountability leads to more openly incivil behaviour. This isn't just online, but offline it works the same: if the cost of being incivil is low enough, there is a lot gain from it. See for example: backroom deals, mob behaviour, road rage. A few years ago someone pointed me to https://ncase.me/trust/ https://ncase.me/trust/ (I think I learned about it here), which captures the problem very well for me: if social cohesion goes down (i.e. fewer interactions but with more different people), the penalty for inciviliy goes down but the rewards stay the same.
- numpad0 7y ago
  Also: there is really no central, balanced standard for justice/justness scale, but only an illusion of it(probably generated through said cohesion). I learned it being an non-American with some English literacy on internet, and am being reminded of it every week. Justice and/or “being nice” perceived scale is just an AI model of events around you that one uses to predict certain outcomes, and most of logic you see in it are purely coincidental correlations to aid in footprint reduction.
LookAtThatUgGuy 7y ago
Max Woolf (@minimaxir on twitter and here) has downvoted you, screenshotted your comment, and posted it on twitter for public shaming ️
- 7y ago

superbrane 7y ago

This is just to protect the corporation from potential legal action. It s like a disclaimer on a police agent job that you might get shot when doing your job. Problem is when you don t care enough to take care of the ones who are affected by the stress.

Shish2k 7y ago

"Forced" is a weirdly charged word - like "garbage disposal workers forced to sign statement acknowledging that their work will involve handling garbage". What's the alternative here? Yeah, it's awful, dirty work, and we should give them as much support as possible (definitely more support than they are getting right now) - but at the end of the day, "dealing with things most people don't want to touch" is literally the reason that the job exists... TBH I'd be more concerned if YouTube was signing up moderators WITHOUT telling them that they're in for a life of emotional torture :/

meddlin 7y ago
> What's the alternative here? Not a popular one, but another alternative is to fundamentally change the service. But that involves possibly losing YouTube. Assuming Alphabet/Google (and most others) won't even consider that option...yeah, you're pretty on point.
- extropy 7y ago
  Automate it away? Or 99.5% of it?
  - frandroid 7y ago
    As if they haven't tried that anyway
- csallen 7y ago
  "When you invent the plane, you invent the plane crash."
SolaceQuantum 7y ago
Garbage workers have used labor organization to stand up to unfair treatment. Do YouTube Moderators?
- tantalor 7y ago
  Explain how this is unfair treatment.

dredmorbius 7y ago

There are risks that people can understand and appreciate up front. There are risks that simply are not fully conciously appreciated until they've been experienced directly. There are risks whose cumulative effects only build with time, often taking years, even decades, to fully manifest. And there are risks which fundamentally change the capacity of the affected to even recognise or admit their existence or severity. PTSD is all of these. Self-monitoring, encouragement to seek help, and provision of a nonclinical "wellness coach" is grossly insufficient. The companies, and in this case, contractors (Accenture), providing such services, as well as outside oversight entities such as government regulators, physical and mental health services, unions, and insurers, know (or damned well should), can monitor, and impose regulations, limits, risk premiums, compensation and settlement systems, and collective bargaining powers, for such work. Business is a risk-externalising engine. Some risks absolutely need to be fully internalised. This is a prime case. NB: I've worked at various times as a moderator, on spam-detecting and reporting systems which entail seeing some unpleasantness. And on a large social media network where I was tasked with removing flagged images from the storage network. The flagging process hadn't been explained in any detail, and as I would be deleting millions of items of user content, I spot-checked a small handful to confirm the flagging was accurate. After no more than a half dozen (and probably fewer) I simply didn't want to see any more -- the image from over a decade of a young girl still lodges in my mind, though I've never wiped, nuked, and shredded files on disk harder. I'm satisfied with the fact that the scripts I created wiped all that content from our and our CDN's storage not in the weeks or months of the initial estimate (our CDN vendor apparently had never considered widespread deletions, or experienced them), but less than two days, with verification. Never heard any reports of unwarranted deletion either. Somewhere else within the organisation, unknown to me, others had seen and verified those images. I think of who they might have been and the impacts on them.

anon9001 7y ago
I really don't understand how images or even videos are causing PTSD. Maybe it's because I grew up on 4chan in the age of goatse, but shocking content is a tiny fraction of how disturbing real life can be. I understand that looking at disturbing content is going to have some impact on people, and that they may not be able to evaluate that risk properly, but it's nowhere near what every nurse, doctor, firefighter, police officer, soldier, and even teacher will live through over the course of their career. I've been diagnosed with PTSD after seeing some deeply disturbing medical shit. I'm definitely impacted for life, but there were doctors and nurses there too, and they're impacted too. Maybe I've been on the internet too long, but there's a massive delta, at least in my view, between seeing a disturbing video and living through real-life trauma. I'd take the video moderation job over being an ER nurse any day.

moomin 7y ago

Mr Burns is currently getting Homer to sign something saying that his job may give him inoperable cancer and a third arm.

PaulHoule 7y ago

Making repetitive decisions over a long period of time can make your mind get weird. This counts for the "normal" development of training sets but it gets much worse when the detailed semantics are challenging and hairs must be split carefully. For instance I was filtering images on my tablet while lying in bed in a dark room and by the time I got to the 2000th image my visual system started getting weird. (e.g. I would see an image that was photocomposited and feel strong cognitive dissonance... I would see the photocompositing and not see the image I was supposed to see) When you put a group of people in a room and have them label things that require careful discriminations, some of which are critically important, others of which are necessary for the process but not necessary for the product, you will see people get emotionally disturbed. I haven't seen punches flying but I think I could make it happen if the group was compressed enough in space and the stakes were high. I also had a toxic data set that was derived from Wikipedia where if you started clicking on things from the first record, you would quickly come to various phrases involving the "F-word". Just about everyone who looked at this data set would soon be sitting in a daze in front of the computer repeating the "F-word". I'd tell them that they have the "F---s" and they should get a grip on itself.

sparker72678 7y ago

This feels like an externality that needs to be internalized by these platforms. It shouldn't be legal to destroy people's minds, then drop them back off into society with no help. If you want to run a massive platform where anyone can upload anything, then you should have to pay for it, at least insofar as financially supporting the potentially life-long therapy someone is going to need after doing a moderation job. One of many, many, externalities these platforms create, I realize.

gfo 7y ago
Isn't this the same risk anyone enlisting in the military also runs? Still, I agree - it would be a lot easier to avoid these awful posts if people had to pay to be on the platform. It wouldn't be perfect of course, but it at least provides a barrier to entry and a slightly harsher consequence if you forfeit your membership fee when banned for inappropriate content.
- sparker72678 7y ago
  I'd say that the military places a massive externality on society as well, so, yes. I guess at least enlisting gets you better benefits than sitting in a mod-farm in Phoenix will.
- tremon 7y ago
  Isn't this the same risk anyone enlisting in the military also runs? Yes, and we've been slowly forcing the military to acknowledge to own up to that. When PTSD was first recognized (as shell shock in WWI), the initial response of the (UK) military was to declare these people physically healthy and return them to the front, or execute them for desertion. I'd say the armed forces have come a long way since.
nexuist 7y ago
>If you want to run a massive platform where anyone can upload anything, then you should have to pay for it, at least insofar as financially supporting the potentially life-long therapy someone is going to need after doing a moderation job. But this is so tricky though, isn't it? Anyone can run a media sharing platform. Hacker News is a media sharing platform. Mandating these sort of laws...makes the Internet less free. The same sort of horrifying content that is moderated out today could have just been easily been uploaded to the BBS's and phpbb's of the early 90s-2000s. Does it make sense to make Facebook pay for lifetime care of moderators? Sure - they make billions of dollars - but what about a regional car club forum, or a subreddit about cat pictures? Should reddit be paying anyone who makes and runs a subreddit because they will inevitably have to moderate something grotesque? It's not an easy problem.

ma2rten 7y ago

The PTSD form describes various support services available to moderators who are suffering, including a “wellness coach,” a hotline, and the human resources department. (“The wellness coach is not a medical doctor and cannot diagnose or treat mental health disorders,” the document adds.) They don't even provide a licensed therapist? Most tech companies have an employee assistance program where employees can talk a licensed mental health professional 24/7. It seems like Accenture didn't even provide that here.

thinkingemote 7y ago

Using AI to replace human moderators doing this stressful work must be morally good, right?

fapjacks 7y ago
There's mountains of money to be made if you can fulfill this political promise Google and Facebook have so far failed make good on. Go for it.

fapjacks 7y ago

No amount of technology will be able to stop all people from being exposed to all forms of content at all times which may one day trigger PTSD symptoms. Social media shitholes use blacklists when they "should be" crowdsource-whitelisting content and not moderating anything at all. And then users decide for themselves if they wish to turn off the whitelist content filter and expose themselves to the content that may one day trigger PTSD symptoms. Prepare your child for the path, not the path for your child.

oceanghost 7y ago

I have PTSD. Believe me, you don't want it.