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How do these mods avoid the disturbing material? The information I've encountered on this topic is a pile of employees and journalists on one side painting a g
by uniqueid 6y ago
How do these mods avoid the disturbing material?
The information I've encountered on this topic is a pile of employees and journalists on one side painting a grim picture of life as a FB mod, and this one throwaway account on HN implying it's not so bad. Forgive me if I find that hard to believe.
- vorticalbox 6y agoBlind luck or maybe there isn't as much disturbing material on Facebook as one is lead to believe.
- uniqueid 6y agoThat would surprise me greatly. In my online life I've seen stomach-turning troll content everywhere from Duolingo to bitcoin forums. But really, hasn't everyone?
- herewegoagain2 6y agoNot really, no.
- uniqueid 6y agoI actually only added that line as a postscript to not sound like I was making some kind of feeble boast. Ie: 'I've seen things you people wouldn't believe: racist memes on Etsy, animal carcasses on glassdoor.com...'
- herewegoagain2 6y agoAnd I actually really wonder if other people see such things, because I really don't. Not saying they don't exist, but they don't seem to get pushed into my "timelines". What you could find if you were looking for it I don't know. I've seen Goatse, though - maybe it's just that everything else pales in comparison.
- mprev 6y agoDuolingo?
- uniqueid 6y agoDuolingo had (or perhaps still has?) language forums. Duolingo used 'move fast and break things' moderation, and as a result there was a constant trickle of posts by racists and perverts.
- maccard 6y agoThe barrier for entry to facebook is quite high compared to many other places on the internet, which probably helps!
- in_cahoots 6y agoIt’s a numbers game. For every piece of truly disturbing material there are probably thousands of dick pics.
- worker767424 6y agoYour feed is pretty much posts from friends, groups, things you follow, and ads. If your friends aren't sharing old rotten.com posts and posting dick pics, it's probably pretty good.
- ericbarrett 6y agoI was an early-ish Facebook employee, and started before they contracted out moderation. I once passed a content moderator in the lunch room, flipping through flagged images, about twenty per second. Presumably she was just reviewing user & automatic flags for accuracy. What they see is: Penis. Pages and pages of penis. Penis in all shapes and sizes and orientations and conditions. But it was all penis.
- bitL 6y agoPorn detection with Deep Learning is 99% solved problem, I bet those moderators only get to view content where the model reports lower confidence, the rest is automatically removed. The same for gore etc.
- ericbarrett 6y agoThink how many image posts and messages there are on Facebook and Messenger. Assume your Deep Learning model has 99.9% recall. It will still miss millions per day.
- phreack 6y agoThat's conceivably manageable if you're Facebook's size with tons and tons of moderators, while improving the data set.
- ericbarrett 6y agoWhich is exactly what they do! For better or worse.
- neurostimulant 6y ago20 images per second x 8 hours a day is half million images per day per employee (quoted by gp, though its seem to be unsustainable), and Facebook has an army of content moderators so they probably manage somehow.
- curiousllama 6y ago
- benbristow 6y agoMaybe some are more thick-skinned than others. After years of being on the internet and having seen all sorts of stuff I barely bat an eyelid nowadays but if you're not used to it I guess it would be more traumatising.
- uniqueid 6y agoI think it's more a function of age. People in highschool or college can stomach more than older adults. Younger adults don't shock easily because (a) they typically have less and feel less responsibility, (b) the thrill of breaking the rules tempers natural disgust at seeing edgy material, and (c) they have less life experience to have learned empathy for some kinds of people. Of course, I might be extrapolating foolishly from my own life. I used to have more stomach for cruelty.
- sneak 6y ago> natural disgust at seeing edgy material Disgust is a cultural learning, not a natural response.
- uniqueid 6y agoFair enough. The point about aging that I had in mind doesn't change if we redefine 'natural disgust' as 'culturally taught disgust' In general, the older you get, the further you get from mum and dad dictating your behavior, and so the less enjoyable it is to, for example, be rude/crude for its own sake.
- zzzmarcus 6y agoThat's just... false. Disgust is a response we evolved to keep us from eating things that could kill us.
- uniqueid 6y agoIt's probably a mixture, but who knows. Chomsky and Skinner could probably debate it for several lifetimes.