9 ms·

I'm not sure if this is supposed to cause outrage or not. I know for example companies like Facebook recruit in places like Holland too [1]. I'm also aware that

by bArray 5y ago

I'm not sure if this is supposed to cause outrage or not. I know for example companies like Facebook recruit in places like Holland too [1]. I'm also aware that such jobs exist for checking child pornography too. These are not nice jobs, but they do need to be done. The important part is that people in these roles receive phycological support too, which I doubt they get when working for tech companies. I always thought that a better model for moderation would be to distribute the effort. There will be people in my social bubble with similar reactions to the same content and once an algorithm understands these connections, it can distribute the effort of moderation amongst these like-minded people. Another moderation tool would be to simply allow people to trade reputation (which has some value in terms of audience reach) for correctly tagging content. On a different note, if you outsource your censorship, you will undoubtedly end up being censored based on the political ideology of the person doing the censoring. [1] https://jobsfactor.eu/job/49057/dutch-content-moderator/ https://jobsfactor.eu/job/49057/dutch-content-moderator/

vanusa 5y ago
The important part is that people in these roles receive phycological support too, That may be "the important part", but the article is very clear about the fact that, in you know, actual reality -- the workers at this company definitely are not receiving meaningful support.
ashwagary 5y ago
I think African leaders should quickly realize Facebook doesnt need to necessarily operate or be available in their country. Protecting the local population from immoral companies is a priority/duty and some large companies need to be given ultimatums immediately. Importing the sickness of the Western countries is not a requirement for Africa to continue rapid development.
DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
> There will be people in my social bubble with similar reactions to the same content I don't want reactionary right-wingers on Facebook moderating other reactionary right-wingers' content on Facebook.
csdvrx 5y ago
> I'm not sure if this is supposed to cause outrage or not. I agree with you, but for different reasons. A ""sweatshop"" is much better that the agricultural and industrial protectionism used by the US and the EU to prevent African crops from reaching their markets. If you think about it on a systemic level, these subsidies are quite evil: we subsidize agriculture so that we don't need to buy their crops, then even worse: we dump the leftovers under names like "international aid" which limits the opportunity for a local industry to grow (same with clothes "donations": the local industry can't compete with a price of 0) In an ideal world, we would not do such things, crops would be grown where the weather and the labor market provide a cost advantage (Africa is warmer than Europe!), the consumers would benefit from cheaper prices, and other countries would industrialize, grow their middle class and GDP.
- aliswe 5y ago
  dont attribute to malice what you can attribute to incompetence.
  - csdvrx 5y ago
    Usually, I would agree, but here I think we have malice done under the plausible deniability of incompetence.
    - lesuorac 5y ago
      Pretty sure its just grift and good security posture. It's not good for ones country to be dependent on another for survival (food) which is why they subsidize local production. This even occurs on the state level in the US where (I only lived in costal states) costal states enforce a minimum percentage of land towards farm usage. International aid is just not letting a disaster go to waste. Obviously you'd allocate federal money to go to some corporation to administer food in disaster area otherwise they'd go under and not donate to you. Any second order effect of wrecking economies and etc won't be attributed to you so there is only upside.
      - 5y ago
brimble 5y ago
> but they do need to be done. They do not need to be done. Facebook needs them to be done for its business model to work. You may have meant (surely did mean?) the latter, but I think the distinction is important. None of these people need to be subjected to psychologically harmful material on an industrial scale. We could always just not let Facebook do that, and they'd have to live or die as a company without doing those things. Possibly it would mean broadcast-type social media couldn't exist anymore. If so, then the cost of keeping that seems to be hurting people with this kind of work. But it is something we could stop doing if we wanted to.
- celtain 5y ago
  If regular people are allowed to share media with the world, and some kinds of content remain illegal, content moderation will need to exist. Unless you're suggesting that we return to an era in which the only way to publish content is with the approval of someone like a newspaper editor or book publisher, these jobs will need to be done.
  - brimble 5y ago
    Send messages directly to people you know, or become a publisher (on your own website). If social media as we know it dropped off the face of the Earth tomorrow, it'd still be easier than ever before in history to get one's message out, by a long shot. It'd be significantly tougher for advertisers and PR agencies, however.
    - specialist 5y ago
      Yes and: Before Facebook and Twitter, we had blogs. And before that zines and pamphlets. It's so weird that defenders of algorithmic hate machines accept them as some sort of natural law, forgetting that humanity somehow muddled along for millennial without the benefit of dopamine hijacking.
    - hn_version_0023 5y ago
      > It'd be significantly tougher for advertisers and PR agencies, however. Good. We shouldn’t allow habitual liars to determine what’s possible, or make their lives easier. I’d happily grind the social media, advertising, and public relations “industries” into dust for the good of us all.
pavlov 5y ago
A lot of moderation deals with actual legal requirements, e.g. detecting and reporting child porn. A company can't outsource that kind of responsibility to a bunch of algorithmically selected users.
- yholio 5y ago
  Sure it can, if those users enter a suitable legal contract that gives them rights and obligations similar to paid employees.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  You can outsource the work, but the responsibility is still yours.
acdha 5y ago
> I always thought that a better model for moderation would be to distribute the effort. There will be people in my social bubble with similar reactions to the same content and once an algorithm understands these connections, it can distribute the effort of moderation amongst these like-minded people. This can work in some scenarios, or when the junk is basically randomly distributed — e.g. flagging people spamming random business links — but it's a lot harder when you have coordinated attempts with resources. That's been heavily used to game things like Facebook or Twitter and it's not just bots — someone saying “go here and retweet it” can generate a lot of activity from humans who are decidedly not neutral. That can be done for profit, political reasons, or griefing and the latter two can be quite hard to detect. I'm not sure we have a great solution for this other than destroying the model those companies currently have of surfacing popular/trending content based on the activity of people you don't follow.
- wizardofdos 5y ago
  Yeah, that trending and content suggestion algorithmic feed idea seems to be at the heart of the problem. Maybe making that illegal would go a long way.

by bArray 5y ago

vanusa 5y ago

The important part is that people in these roles receive phycological support too, That may be "the important part", but the article is very clear about the fact that, in you know, actual reality -- the workers at this company definitely are not receiving meaningful support.

ashwagary 5y ago

I think African leaders should quickly realize Facebook doesnt need to necessarily operate or be available in their country. Protecting the local population from immoral companies is a priority/duty and some large companies need to be given ultimatums immediately. Importing the sickness of the Western countries is not a requirement for Africa to continue rapid development.

DaiPlusPlus 5y ago

> There will be people in my social bubble with similar reactions to the same content I don't want reactionary right-wingers on Facebook moderating other reactionary right-wingers' content on Facebook.

csdvrx 5y ago

> I'm not sure if this is supposed to cause outrage or not. I agree with you, but for different reasons. A ""sweatshop"" is much better that the agricultural and industrial protectionism used by the US and the EU to prevent African crops from reaching their markets. If you think about it on a systemic level, these subsidies are quite evil: we subsidize agriculture so that we don't need to buy their crops, then even worse: we dump the leftovers under names like "international aid" which limits the opportunity for a local industry to grow (same with clothes "donations": the local industry can't compete with a price of 0) In an ideal world, we would not do such things, crops would be grown where the weather and the labor market provide a cost advantage (Africa is warmer than Europe!), the consumers would benefit from cheaper prices, and other countries would industrialize, grow their middle class and GDP.

aliswe 5y ago
dont attribute to malice what you can attribute to incompetence.
- csdvrx 5y ago
  Usually, I would agree, but here I think we have malice done under the plausible deniability of incompetence.
  - lesuorac 5y ago
    Pretty sure its just grift and good security posture. It's not good for ones country to be dependent on another for survival (food) which is why they subsidize local production. This even occurs on the state level in the US where (I only lived in costal states) costal states enforce a minimum percentage of land towards farm usage. International aid is just not letting a disaster go to waste. Obviously you'd allocate federal money to go to some corporation to administer food in disaster area otherwise they'd go under and not donate to you. Any second order effect of wrecking economies and etc won't be attributed to you so there is only upside.
    - 5y ago

brimble 5y ago

> but they do need to be done. They do not need to be done. Facebook needs them to be done for its business model to work. You may have meant (surely did mean?) the latter, but I think the distinction is important. None of these people need to be subjected to psychologically harmful material on an industrial scale. We could always just not let Facebook do that, and they'd have to live or die as a company without doing those things. Possibly it would mean broadcast-type social media couldn't exist anymore. If so, then the cost of keeping that seems to be hurting people with this kind of work. But it is something we could stop doing if we wanted to.

celtain 5y ago
If regular people are allowed to share media with the world, and some kinds of content remain illegal, content moderation will need to exist. Unless you're suggesting that we return to an era in which the only way to publish content is with the approval of someone like a newspaper editor or book publisher, these jobs will need to be done.
- brimble 5y ago
  Send messages directly to people you know, or become a publisher (on your own website). If social media as we know it dropped off the face of the Earth tomorrow, it'd still be easier than ever before in history to get one's message out, by a long shot. It'd be significantly tougher for advertisers and PR agencies, however.
  - specialist 5y ago
    Yes and: Before Facebook and Twitter, we had blogs. And before that zines and pamphlets. It's so weird that defenders of algorithmic hate machines accept them as some sort of natural law, forgetting that humanity somehow muddled along for millennial without the benefit of dopamine hijacking.
  - hn_version_0023 5y ago
    > It'd be significantly tougher for advertisers and PR agencies, however. Good. We shouldn’t allow habitual liars to determine what’s possible, or make their lives easier. I’d happily grind the social media, advertising, and public relations “industries” into dust for the good of us all.

pavlov 5y ago

A lot of moderation deals with actual legal requirements, e.g. detecting and reporting child porn. A company can't outsource that kind of responsibility to a bunch of algorithmically selected users.

yholio 5y ago
Sure it can, if those users enter a suitable legal contract that gives them rights and obligations similar to paid employees.
jacquesm 5y ago
You can outsource the work, but the responsibility is still yours.

acdha 5y ago

> I always thought that a better model for moderation would be to distribute the effort. There will be people in my social bubble with similar reactions to the same content and once an algorithm understands these connections, it can distribute the effort of moderation amongst these like-minded people. This can work in some scenarios, or when the junk is basically randomly distributed — e.g. flagging people spamming random business links — but it's a lot harder when you have coordinated attempts with resources. That's been heavily used to game things like Facebook or Twitter and it's not just bots — someone saying “go here and retweet it” can generate a lot of activity from humans who are decidedly not neutral. That can be done for profit, political reasons, or griefing and the latter two can be quite hard to detect. I'm not sure we have a great solution for this other than destroying the model those companies currently have of surfacing popular/trending content based on the activity of people you don't follow.

wizardofdos 5y ago
Yeah, that trending and content suggestion algorithmic feed idea seems to be at the heart of the problem. Maybe making that illegal would go a long way.