3 ms·

Interesting how "because COVID" has become the thinly veiled excuse here. A similar manifestation of the "think of the children" trope that can be used to manip

Interesting how "because COVID" has become the thinly veiled excuse here. A similar manifestation of the "think of the children" trope that can be used to manipulate emotions and shut down dissent.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dredmorbius 5y ago
This seems to be a wildly incongrous conclusion based on a clear indication that a global pandemic is impacting operational efficacy and staffing levels. Not that it's an excuse or justification for blanket censorship.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
breakingcups 5y ago
If there's one job that doesn't exactly depend on what location you're working from...
- matthewmacleod 5y ago
  …then it's not content moderation, which AFAIK companies like Facebook and Google require to take place on-site, in a controlled environment with no electronic devices, due to the potential data security issues involved.
- deltree7 5y ago
  It is more nuanced. FB team can be overwhelmed with Covid related misinformation. A lot of content moderation is outsourced to countries like India where productivity, availability may have degraded due to covid that ravaged through the country. Many firms still have backlogs from Covid disruption. If you have worked at / started any half-decent sized company you'd have known
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  I disagree with the notion that anyone anywhere can do the job. These moderators don't just moderate the rants your grandma posts about shopping malls. There's a documentary about what the content moderation people do, and they end up seeing horrific stuff like (sexual) child abuse, gore, and all the other worst thing humanity has to offer. Many of these people end up depressed or in therapy. I don't know if Facebook has their stuff together, but I think it's unethical to have people review random user uploaded content without close access to a mental health specialist. You can have several degrees of intensity a reviewer might be able to see (to not expose all reviewers to the very worst on a regular basis), but no algorithm can clearly identify the nastiest of the nasty content. The algorithm sees "government pedo club", flags it as fake news, and who knows what the shared content actually contains. It could be a conspiracy nut, it could just as well be actual child porn. The probability is low, but you need someone standing by just as well, in my opinion.
  - jimbob45 5y ago
    Isn’t it a bit silly that these Big Brother companies (e.g. Facebook, Twitter) are so afraid of global communication being taken over by small, yet persuasive groups, that they set about to take over global communication by their…small, yet persuasive company?
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > If there's one job that doesn't exactly depend on what location you're working from... No, the opposite is true: Any job that requires reviewing potentially private content must be done in a controlled environment. I wouldn't be surprised if content reviewers weren't even allowed to have cameraphones at their desks. Can't risk having someone snap photos of the screen while reviewing content flagged as sensitive. Doing this job from home is not an option.
matthewmacleod 5y ago
That seems like a much more complex line of thinking than "a combination of lots of ongoing misinformation campaigns combined with global staffing and availability issues means content moderation teams are less responsive".
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> Interesting how "because COVID" has become the thinly veiled excuse here. The message says it triggered spam filters. It's not related to COVID misinformation. The only place COVID appears is in the warning that their manual review queues are longer than normal due to COVID.
- exporectomy 5y ago
  Yes, that's the excuse. It's equivalent to "because we don't want to pay for it."
swiley 5y ago
At this point anything done with covid as an excuse should be thought of as a power grab. We have vaccines for those that want them. We have drugs that treat it very well. There’s no reason to censor information or shut things down over it.

Interesting how "because COVID" has become the thinly veiled excuse here. A similar manifestation of the "think of the children" trope that can be used to manipulate emotions and shut down dissent.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dredmorbius 5y ago

This seems to be a wildly incongrous conclusion based on a clear indication that a global pandemic is impacting operational efficacy and staffing levels. Not that it's an excuse or justification for blanket censorship.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

breakingcups 5y ago

If there's one job that doesn't exactly depend on what location you're working from...

matthewmacleod 5y ago
…then it's not content moderation, which AFAIK companies like Facebook and Google require to take place on-site, in a controlled environment with no electronic devices, due to the potential data security issues involved.
deltree7 5y ago
It is more nuanced. FB team can be overwhelmed with Covid related misinformation. A lot of content moderation is outsourced to countries like India where productivity, availability may have degraded due to covid that ravaged through the country. Many firms still have backlogs from Covid disruption. If you have worked at / started any half-decent sized company you'd have known
jeroenhd 5y ago
I disagree with the notion that anyone anywhere can do the job. These moderators don't just moderate the rants your grandma posts about shopping malls. There's a documentary about what the content moderation people do, and they end up seeing horrific stuff like (sexual) child abuse, gore, and all the other worst thing humanity has to offer. Many of these people end up depressed or in therapy. I don't know if Facebook has their stuff together, but I think it's unethical to have people review random user uploaded content without close access to a mental health specialist. You can have several degrees of intensity a reviewer might be able to see (to not expose all reviewers to the very worst on a regular basis), but no algorithm can clearly identify the nastiest of the nasty content. The algorithm sees "government pedo club", flags it as fake news, and who knows what the shared content actually contains. It could be a conspiracy nut, it could just as well be actual child porn. The probability is low, but you need someone standing by just as well, in my opinion.
- jimbob45 5y ago
  Isn’t it a bit silly that these Big Brother companies (e.g. Facebook, Twitter) are so afraid of global communication being taken over by small, yet persuasive groups, that they set about to take over global communication by their…small, yet persuasive company?
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> If there's one job that doesn't exactly depend on what location you're working from... No, the opposite is true: Any job that requires reviewing potentially private content must be done in a controlled environment. I wouldn't be surprised if content reviewers weren't even allowed to have cameraphones at their desks. Can't risk having someone snap photos of the screen while reviewing content flagged as sensitive. Doing this job from home is not an option.

matthewmacleod 5y ago

That seems like a much more complex line of thinking than "a combination of lots of ongoing misinformation campaigns combined with global staffing and availability issues means content moderation teams are less responsive".

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> Interesting how "because COVID" has become the thinly veiled excuse here. The message says it triggered spam filters. It's not related to COVID misinformation. The only place COVID appears is in the warning that their manual review queues are longer than normal due to COVID.

exporectomy 5y ago
Yes, that's the excuse. It's equivalent to "because we don't want to pay for it."

swiley 5y ago

At this point anything done with covid as an excuse should be thought of as a power grab. We have vaccines for those that want them. We have drugs that treat it very well. There’s no reason to censor information or shut things down over it.