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> But what I never see is any of those Googlers taking the time to explain why they feel these seemingly-broken approaches are the only ways to solve the proble

> But what I never see is any of those Googlers taking the time to explain why they feel these seemingly-broken approaches are the only ways to solve the problem of moderation at scale. From my experience with a very large bureaucracy, I believe the answer to this is "the worker bees don't believe this; the requirement to implement automated moderation [in this way] is imposed by managers and/or executives" - and speaking up can get you retaliated against.

sombremesa 5y ago
Yup. Here’s a good video for what goes on behind the scenes at Amazon’s gaming org for example. https://youtu.be/aggk93Nazuk https://youtu.be/aggk93Nazuk I can verify this is true since I used to work there.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  That's apparently based on a Bloomberg article for those who'd prefer not sitting through a 40-minute re-reading of it: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-01-29/amazon-game-studios-struggles-to-find-a-hit https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-01-29/amazon-ga...
hackitup7 5y ago
It's probably not a singular insane executive who just hates good user experiences, either. It's probably a web of incentives that emerge to produce this poor experience: - CEO has a goal of getting support ticket resolution times to X - Some exec is tasked with flagging content, and allowing very little unapproved content through (creates lawsuits) - Some exec has a budget of Y for resolving support issues - Some other execc else wants to get a higher level technical win on their resume Then in total you get someone who builds an automatic flagging system. This creates support tickets. You need to drive them down, but you only have Y budget to do so (so you can't hire an army of high-quality reps). You hire a smaller amount of reps on a budget. They do a bad job from being undergunned; someone builds an internal product that will magically help them resolve issues faster but it basically just helps them resolve issues really fast by identifying the obviously innocent and denying appeal on most cases. At the end of the day an understaffed team closes a huge # of tickets without prejudice. But at no point did anyone say "F those users." This is actually worse than some tone deaf exec who hates users, because you can't solve it by replacing someone bad.

sombremesa 5y ago

Yup. Here’s a good video for what goes on behind the scenes at Amazon’s gaming org for example. https://youtu.be/aggk93Nazuk https://youtu.be/aggk93Nazuk I can verify this is true since I used to work there.

dredmorbius 5y ago
That's apparently based on a Bloomberg article for those who'd prefer not sitting through a 40-minute re-reading of it: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-01-29/amazon-game-studios-struggles-to-find-a-hit https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-01-29/amazon-ga...

hackitup7 5y ago

It's probably not a singular insane executive who just hates good user experiences, either. It's probably a web of incentives that emerge to produce this poor experience: - CEO has a goal of getting support ticket resolution times to X - Some exec is tasked with flagging content, and allowing very little unapproved content through (creates lawsuits) - Some exec has a budget of Y for resolving support issues - Some other execc else wants to get a higher level technical win on their resume Then in total you get someone who builds an automatic flagging system. This creates support tickets. You need to drive them down, but you only have Y budget to do so (so you can't hire an army of high-quality reps). You hire a smaller amount of reps on a budget. They do a bad job from being undergunned; someone builds an internal product that will magically help them resolve issues faster but it basically just helps them resolve issues really fast by identifying the obviously innocent and denying appeal on most cases. At the end of the day an understaffed team closes a huge # of tickets without prejudice. But at no point did anyone say "F those users." This is actually worse than some tone deaf exec who hates users, because you can't solve it by replacing someone bad.