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Facebook moderator: ‘Every day was a nightmare’
- sharken 5y agoNot sure much can be added here that was not already discussed before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20222594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20222594 If you care about your own well-being, then don't become a Facebook moderator.
- edent 5y ago> If you care about your own well-being, then don't become a Facebook moderator. Do you realise that not everyone has a choice of which jobs they can take? We require health and safety assessments in physically hazardous jobs to make them safer for workers. You aren't allowed to work in a nuclear power station without a dosimeter - we don't say "if you care about not getting cancer, then don't work with nuclear."
- zdkl 5y agoThe argument here is to refuse to join as long as you're not supplied with a trustworthy dosimeter.
- cyphar 5y agoSome people are (unfortunately) desperate enough for work that they won't refuse a job despite the lack of a dosimeter. Which is why you should legislate that power plants must give dosimeters to their employees -- to ensure that those who cannot refuse cannot be placed in that position in the first place. And this is entirely common-sense -- if a company doesn't provide protections for its workers, "just don't work there" won't solve the problem of the company not protecting the workers it does have. The workers who can refuse to work will (probably) do so, the company will then hire more desperate people, and the steady-state of this system is that such companies will be full of people who were unable to refuse -- thus the company can just continue not protecting its employees. This is basically the fundamental argument behind all employment protections -- substitute "dosimeters" for "lunch breaks", "minimum wage", "paid leave", or "overtime pay" and the same argument applies.
- eru 5y agoCompare (and contrast) https://pseudoerasmus.com/2017/10/02/ijd/ https://pseudoerasmus.com/2017/10/02/ijd/
- rjmunro 5y agoBut what is the equivalent of a dosimeter for this job?
- johncoltrane 5y agoGarbage collector: `Every day stunk’ (vaguely reputable source desperate for clicks)
- afarrell 5y agoAs a hard-of-smelling person, I enjoy cleaning gross things and collecting garbage. I'd hate to be one of these moderators.
- johncoltrane 5y agoI would hate to be a garbage collector or a Facebook moderator so I leave those jobs to people who can stomach them. And also to people who can't, apparently, and "go public" about it.
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- joelbluminator 5y agoWhy do so many devs use React if it's the spawn of an evil empire? Rails got so much shit talk lately because of Basecamp yet React keeps churning out new devs.
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- martini333 5y agoShadow ban + fake likes = ez win
- krapp 5y agoDoesn't work with illegal content, because you'd have to keep hosting it to keep up the facade of the shadowban.
- strogonoff 5y agoEvery time I imagine what it must be like to watch countless highly disturbing photos and videos, with the only goal being to prevent the public from seeing what you’ve seen (and not even being able to privately vent about it), I shudder. Timelines with your friends’ baby photos come at a cost. I wonder whether content moderation jobs at Facebook et al. include sufficiently stringent pre-screening of candidates for mental fitness.
- arkitaip 5y agoYou probably don't want to employ the type of people who have no problems dealing with the worst type of content the web has to offer.
- strogonoff 5y agoPerhaps some of the people you’re referring to are otherwise unemployable for related reasons—by giving them paid work, FB could do public good. Of course, that is assuming they truly have “no problems dealing with” that content, and won’t be triggered by it to do something terrible in real life. Not sure if mental health care is/can be advanced enough to tell precisely.
- rightbyte 5y agoLike clinical psycopaths? I mean I guess psychopaths don't have to be bad persons. I read a story about a cop that watched all seized child pornography to catalogize the victims and perpetrators. It probably requires a certain kind of person.
- maxehmookau 5y agoThe idea that _any_ humans could be screened to do this job is questionable. Otherwise mentally fit people can become mentally unfit when constantly bombarded with images of child abuse, or worse. It is the least bad solution we have to the most bad problem. I'm not saying you're wrong, but the discourse around how we can find the "right" people to do this job assumes that such people exist and aren't just desperate for a job.
- thom 5y agoI knew a woman who worked with soldiers suffering post-traumatic stress, who was hired by Facebook to counsel some of these people. On the one hand a good sign they’re at least trying to look after them, but still a pretty grim indictment of the work.
- pfortuny 5y agoHonestly, I think it is high time people uploading content to the web were subjected to standard laws, as any other citizen trying to share something on the public square: You are pasting graphic content on the square: try it and see how soon the police come after you and you have to at least answer before a judge. You are uploading graphic content to the web? We call the police, nice and simple. And let the judiciary deal with it. Otherwise what you have is this: people with absolutely no training, with no real support and with bad salaries doing something they should not: policing.
- simmerup 5y agoIs it time for the internet to get something like maritime law? I could see each power controlling their own section in that case
- nerdponx 5y agoAs long as there are protected places where you can still legally post or distribute such material (there are legitimate reasons for doing so), I'm happy for it to be illegal in "most" places.
- krapp 5y agoPeople uploading to the web are subject to standard laws - graphic content is already illegal in many cases, as well as against the terms of service of many websites. "You are uploading graphic content to the web? We call the police, nice and simple. And let the judiciary deal with it" is already what moderators do. The problem here isn't that there aren't enough laws, it's that the scale of illegal content being uploaded is vast and moderators are unprepared, untrained and underpaid because their jobs are considered unskilled, low value labor. that is what needs to change.
- pfortuny 5y agoYes: what I am trying to convey is: "Facebook must call the authorities whenever any attempt at doing so within their site happens". Yes, it is troublesome and costly but it is the lawful thing to do.
- tester34 5y agoWeb 2.0 was a mistake I guess
- krapp 5y agoThe ability to upload illegal content to the web long predates "Web 2.0"
- tester34 5y agohow about ability to post anything on almost any website? forums, social medias, meme sites, youtube, comment sections everywhere, hn or its brother reddit, etc...
- krapp 5y agoIt's never been possible to post anything onto almost any website. It's always been possible to post anything to any website that allows user uploaded content, and it's always been necessary for moderators to moderate that content. "Web 2.0" changed nothing in that regard except making asynchronous requests possible with AJAX, allowing sites to become more complex and allow for realtime updating. But yeah, people have been posting gore, porn and CP everywhere since the dark ages.
- op03 5y agoBack in the day few people had the capacity to Broadcast. Even on a college campus with a decent network, you ran the risk of getting kicked off if you misused the Broadcast address. Why? Cause there were software and hardware limitations that would bring down or cripple the network. All that has been overcome. And now everyone on the planet can broadcast 24x7 almost for free. This is the big issue. If every neuron in the brain had Broadcast capability how would such a brain work? Some food for thought - https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10464 https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10464
- sergiosgc 5y agoWe do not allow traffic controllers to work full 40h work weeks because the job is taxing. Moderators should get the same treatment. Have the same 40h pay for a much more limited exposure time. Have psychologists weigh in, and legislate to protect workers.
- jakub_g 5y agoI think it's a good analogy. Ideally something like this should make it into a law or something similar, because trusting FB to do the right thing is probably not the way to go. (Having said that, that law would apply to only a handful of companies might be difficult to put in place; and then they'd outsource the job to "friendlier" country...)
- eru 5y agoWe don't need to trust Facebook. You need to 'trust' individual employees to look for a better job, or not sign up in the first place.
- dkarp 5y agoWe do not allow traffic controllers to work full 40h work weeks because the job is taxing and they're directly responsible for the lives of thousands of people. I'm not sure the analogy really holds even though I agree that it is not reasonable to expect these people to perform this role full time.
- holistio 5y agoI would argue that there is enough crap going on on social media that the people moderating are at least indirectly responsible for actual lives. Bullying, threats, the list goes on.
- stuartbman 5y agoI'd further add to this "We do not allow traffic controllers to work full 40h work weeks because the job is taxing and they have a strong union". Many other jobs (e.g. in healthcare) are just as taxing and equally responsible for lives, but fail to enjoy these protections.
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- afarrell 5y ago"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it" -- John Gilmore "On the internet, nobody knows you are a dog" -- Peter Steiner I think this is the pointy end of a deeper problem in the design of the internet. If a priest or paediatric oncologist knows how to use tor and can maintain anonymity skilfully enough that it would be too effortful for the law to track him down... then his ability to upload graphic content will scale faster than the ability to censor it. I do not have a solution.
- misterremote 5y agoTBH, of course I do know that moderators exist, but I've never consciously thought that it can be really awful what they see (children stuff, suicide, etc)
- ionwake 5y agoIs the content she viewed every day worse than an average page on 4chan? I am just wondering if because of filters she is exposed to a higher level of bad material, or if its the same kind of environment.
- oblio 5y agoDoes 4chan have absolutely 0 filters? Including for illegal content.
- forgotpwd16 5y agoIllegal content, such as child pornography, goes against the rules and is removed. But graphic content (gore) is allowed on the random board.
- user-the-name 5y agoViewing 4chan all day is also mentally damaging.
- nsonha 5y agoI don't understand the hate for facebook, proportiately to that for twitter. One is a joke platform where no one really take each other seriously, and the other is a group of people who think of themselves too seriously, but really communicate in the same patterns, pretending to solve problems of the world bunch of morons.
- LinuxBender 5y agoI can help Facebook with this. Stop using traditional recruiters to find people for this. Advertise exclusively on 4chan. Yes, this will come with other risks but the moderators will not be traumatized. This will just be another day on the internet. Have the moderators utilize a group voting and incentivizing system to remove content so that those too desensitized or into the content won't just ignore it. Better yet, add an achievement system for those finding the content worth the most points. Let them earn ranks and titles. What should the monthly winner with the most achievement points get?
- emmap21 5y agoThey does have an army of people to moderate content, however the fact that it is too overwhelming. Honestly, this really hurts mental health in a long term to run this job.