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More than 140 Kenya Facebook moderators sue after diagnoses of PTSD
- xvector 2y agoThis is the one job we can probably automate now.
- decremental 2y ago[dead]
- fouronnes3 2y agoAbsolutely grim. I wouldn't wish that job on my worst enemy. The article reminded me of a Radiolab episode from 2018: https://radiolab.org/podcast/post-no-evil https://radiolab.org/podcast/post-no-evil
- nappy-doo 2y agoI worked at FB for almost 2 years. (I left as soon as I could, I knew it wasn't a good fit for me.) I had an Uber from the campus one day, and my driver, a twenty-something girl, was asking how to become a moderator. I told her, "no amount of money would be enough for me to do that job. Don't do it." I don't know if she eventually got the job, but I hope she didn't.
- narrator 2y agoYes, these jobs are horrible. However, I do know from accidently encountering bad stuff on the internet that you want to be as far away from a modern battlefield as possible. It's just kind of ridiculous how people think war is like Call of Duty. One minute you're sitting in a trench, the next you're a pile of undifferentiated blood and guts. Same goes for car accidents and stuff. People really underestimate how fragile we are as human beings. Becoming aware of this is super damaging to our concept of normal life.
- int_19h 2y agoIt's not that we're particularly fragile, given the kind of physical trauma human beings can survive and recover from. It's that we have technologically engineered things that are destructive enough to get even past that threshold. Modern warfare in particular is insanely energetic in the most literal, physical way - when you measure the energy output of weapons in joules. Partly because we're just that good at making things explode, and partly because improvements in metallurgy and electronics made it possible over time to locate targets with extreme precision in real time and then concentrate a lot of firepower directly on them. This, in particular, is why the most intense battlefields in Ukraine often look worse than WW1 and WW2 battles of similar intensity (e.g. Mariupol had more buildings destroyed than Stalingrad). But even our small arms deliver much more energy to the target than their historical equivalents. Bows and arrows pack ~150 J at close range, rapidly diminishing with distance. Crossbows can increase this to ~400 J. For comparison, an AK-47 firing standard issue military ammo is ~2000 J.
- llm_trw 2y agoWatch how a group of wild dogs kill their prey, then realise that for milenia human like apes were part of their diet. Even the modern battlefield is more humane than the African savannah.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoThat reminds me of this[0]. It's a segment of BBC's Planet Earth, where a pack of Cape Hunting Dogs are filmed, hunting. It's almost military precision. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRS4XrKRFMA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRS4XrKRFMA
- keybored 2y ago> Even the modern battlefield is more humane than the African savannah. On behalf of dead WWI soldiers I find this offensive.
- BehindBlueEyes 2y agoYeah, I tracked a lost dog and found the place it was caught by wolves and eventually eaten. Terrible way to go. I get now why the owner was so desperate to find it, even without any hope of the dog surviving - I'd want to end it quicker for my dogs too if this happened to them.
- LeftHandPath 2y agoEarlier this year, I was at ground zero of the Super Bowl parade shooting. I didn’t ever dream about it, but I spent the following 3-4 days constantly replaying it in my head in my waking hours. Later in the year I moved to Florida, just in time for Helene and Milton. I didn’t spend much time thinking about either of them (aside from during prep and cleanup and volunteering a few weeks after). But I had frequent dreams of catastrophic storms and floods. Different stressors affect people (even myself) differently. Thankfully I’ve never had a major/long-term problem, but I know my reactions to major life stressors never seemed to have any rhyme or reason. I can imagine many people might’ve been through a few things that made them confident they’d be alright with the job, only to find out dealing with that stuff 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week is a whole different ball game.
- sandworm101 2y agoA parade shooting is bad, very bad, but is still tame compared to the sorts of things to which website moderators are exposed on a daily/hourly basis. Footage of people being shot is actually allowed on many platforms. Just think of all the war footage that is so common these days. The dark stuff that moderators see is way way worse.
- wkat4242 2y ago> Footage of people being shot is actually allowed on many platforms. It's also part of almost every American cop and military show and movie. Of course it's not real but it looks the same.
- consumer451 2y agoI have often wondered what would happen if social product orgs required all dev and product team members to temporarily rotate through moderation a couple times a year.
- Teever 2y agoYeah I've wondered the same thing about jobs in general too. Society would be a very different place if everyone had to do customer service or janitorial work one weekend a month.
- ANewFormation 2y agoMany (all?) Japanese schools don't have janitors. Instead students clean on rotation. Never been much into Japanese stuff but I absolutely admire this about their culture, and imagine it's part of the reason that Japan is such a clean and at least superficially respectful society. Living in other Asian nations where there are often defacto invisible caste systems can be nauseating at times - you have parents that won't allow their children to participate in clean up efforts because their child is 'above handling trash.' That's gonna be one well adjusted adult...
- alex-korr 2y agoI can tell you that back when I worked as a dev for the department building order fulfillment software at a dotcom, my perspective on my own product has drastically changed after I had spent a month at a warehouse that was shipping orders coming out of the software we wrote. Eating my own dog food was not pretty.
- neilv 2y agoIf I was a tech billionaire, and there was so much uploading of stuff so bad, that it was giving my employee/contractors PTSD, I think I'd find a way to stop the perpetrators. (I'm not saying that I'd assemble a high-speed yacht full of commandos, who travel around the world, righting wrongs when no one else can. Though that would be more compelling content than most streaming video episodes right now. So you could offset the operational costs a bit.)
- DiggyJohnson 2y agoHow else would you stop the perpetrators?
- abdullahkhalids 2y agoLarge scale and super sick perpetrators exist (as compared to small scale ones who do mildly sick stuff) because Facebook is a global network and there is a benefit to operating on such a large platform. The sicker you are, while getting away with it, the more reward you get. Switch to a federated social systems like Mastodon, with only a few thousand or ten thousand users per instance, and perpetrators will never be able to grow too large. Easy for the moderators to shut stuff down very quickly.
- shadowgovt 2y agoTricky. It also gives perpetrators a lot more places to hide. I think the jury is out on whether a few centralized networks or a fediverse makes it harder for attackers to reach potential targets (or customers).
- abdullahkhalids 2y agoThe purpose of facebook moderators (besides legal compliance) is to protect normal people from the "sick" people. In a federated network, of course, such people will create their own instances, and hide there. But then no one is harmed from them, because all such instances will be banned quite quickly, same as all spam email hosts are blocked very quickly by everyone else. From a normal person perspective on not seeing bad stuff, the design of a federated network is inherently better than a global network.
- para_parolu 2y agoOne of few fields where AI is very welcome
- itake 2y agoMaybe.. apple had a lot of backlash using AI to detect CSAM.
- Cyph0n 2y agoWasn’t the backlash due to the fact that they were running detection on device against your private library?
- threeseed 2y agoYes. As opposed to running it on their servers like they do now. And it was only for iCloud synced photos.
- Zak 2y agoThere's a huge gap between "we will scan our servers for illegal content" and "your device will scan your photos for illegal content" no matter the context. The latter makes the user's device disloyal to its owner.
- aaomidi 2y agoAnd introduces avenues for state actors to force the scanning of other material. This was also during a time where Apple hadn’t pushed out e2ee for iCloud, so it didn’t even make sense.
- shadowgovt 2y agoThis ship has pretty much sailed. If you are storing your data in a large commercial vendor, assume a state actor is scanning it.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago[flagged]
- gklitz 2y agoIf you pay someone to deliver post, and they get their leg blown of because you order them to go through a minefield, you can’t just avoid responsibility by going “that’s what they signed up for” obviously the responsibility of ensuring that the job can be carried out not physically and r safe is with the employer and workers are well within reason to demand compensation if the employer hasn’t ensured the job can be safely carried out.
- eesmith 2y agoI think a better example is mining, where miners received no safety equipment, and the mines were not built with safety foremost. The idea was, if you didn't like it, leave. If you wanted safety equipment, buy it yourself. Or leave. Can't work due to black lung disease partially from poor ventilation the company was responsible for? You're fired; should have left years ago. There are still people who believe the contract is all that counts, nothing else matters, and if you don't like it, leave.
- AriedK 2y agoAt first glance you may have a point. Thing is they’re often recruited with very promising job titles and descriptions, training on mild cases. Once they fully realize what they got themselves into the damage has been done. If they’re unlucky, quitting also means losing their house. This may help empathize a bit with their side of this argument.
- prng2021 2y agoYou think people who took these jobs had a list of job offers and were jumping for joy to be able to pick this one out? Or that they stuck with it after the first 5 minutes of moderating necrophilia because they believed other jobs would have similar downsides? You’re so out of touch with the real world and hardships people face trying to make a living for themselves and their family.
- bdangubic 2y agoI wish they get trillion dollars but I am sure they signed their life away via waivers and whatnots when they got the job :(
- zuminator 2y agoMaybe so, but in places with good civil and human rights, you can't sign them away via contract, they're inalienable. If Kenya doesn't offer these protections, and the allegations are correct, then Facebook deserves to be punished regardless for profiting off inhumane working conditions.
- bdangubic 2y agoabsolutely!!
- shadowgovt 2y agoGood! I hope they get every penny owed. It's an awful job and outsourcing if to jurisdictions without protection was naked harm maximization.
- sneak 2y agoPerhaps if looking at pictures of disturbing things on the internet gives you PTSD than this isn’t the kind of job for you? Not everyone can be a forensic investigator or coroner, too. I know lots of people who can and do look at horrible pictures on the internet and have been doing so for 20+ years with no ill effects.
- luqtas 2y agoperhaps life on Kenya isn't easy as yours?
- wruza 2y agoIt isn’t known in advance though. These people went to that job and got psychiatric diseases that, considering the thirdworldiness, they are unlikely to get rid of. I’m not talking about obvious “scream and run away” reaction here. One may think that it doesn’t affect them or people on the internet, but then it suddenly does after they binge it all day for a year. The fact that not less than 100% got PTSD should be telling something here.
- eesmith 2y agoThe 100+ years of research on PTSD, starting from shell shock studies in WWI shows that PTSD isn't so simple. Some people come out with no problems, while their trenchmate facing almost identical situations suffers for the rest of their lives. In this case, the claim is that "it traumatised 100% of hundreds of former moderators tested for PTSD … In any other industry, if we discovered 100% of safety workers were being diagnosed with an illness caused by their work, the people responsible would be forced to resign and face the legal consequences for mass violations of people’s rights." Do those people you know look at horrible pictures on the internet for 8-10 hours each day?
- Sharlin 2y ago[flagged]
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoLeave these empty personal attacks off HN, please. Respond substantively.
- pluc 2y agoWorked at PornHub's parent company for a bit and the moderation floor had a noticeable depressive vibe. Huge turnover. Can't imagine what these people were subjected to.
- HenryBemis 2y agoYou don't mention the year(s), but I recently listened to Jordan Peterson's podcast episode 503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait. I will go ahead and assume that on the wild/carefree time of PornHub, when anyone could be able to upload anything and everything, from what that lady said, the numbers of pedophilia videos, bestiality, etc. was rampant.
- pluc 2y agoYeah, it was during that time, before the great purge. It's not just sexual depravity, people used that site to host all kinds of videos that would get auto-flagged anywhere else (including, the least of it, full movies).
- throwaway314155 2y ago[flagged]
- chimeracoder 2y ago> You don't mention the year(s), but I recently listened to Jordan Peterson's podcast episode 503. One Woman’s War on P*rnhub | Laila Mickelwait. Laila Mickelwait is a director at Exodus Cry, formerly known as Morality in Media (yes, that's their original name). Exodus Cry/Morality in Media is an explicitly Christian organization that openly seeks to outlaw all forms of pornography, in addition to outlawing abortion and many gay rights including marriage. Their funding comes largely from right-wing Christian fundamentalist and fundamentalist-aligned groups. Aside from the fact that she has an axe to grind, both she (as an individual) and the organization she represents have a long history of misrepresentating facts or outright lying in order to support their agenda. They also intentionally and openly refer to all forms of sex work (from consensual pornography to stripping to sexual intercourse) as "trafficking", against the wishes of survivors of actual sex trafficking, who have extensively document why Exodus Cry actually perpetuates harm against sex trafficking victims. > everything, from what that lady said, the numbers of pedophilia videos, bestiality, etc. was rampant. This was disproven long ago. Pornhub was actually quite good about proactively flagging and blocking CSAM and other objectionable content. Ironically (although not surprisingly, if you're familiar with the industry), Facebook was two to three orders of magnitude worse than Pornhub. But of course, Facebook is not targeted by Exodus Cry because their mission - as you can tell by their original name of "Morality in Media" - is to ban pornography on the Internet, and going after Facebook doesn't fit into that mission, even though Facebook is actually way worse for victims of CSAM and trafficking.
- jkestner 2y agoBorrowing the thought from Ed Zitron, but when you think about it, most of us are exposing ourselves to low-grade trauma when we step onto the internet now.
- rnewme 2y agoThat's the risk of being in a society in general, it's just that we interact with people outside way less now. If one doesn't like it, they can always be a hermit.
- jkestner 2y agoNot just that, but that algorithms are driving us to the extremes. I used to think it was just that humans were not meant to have this many social connections, but it's more about how these connections are mediated, and by whom. Worth reading Zitron's essay if you haven't already. It sounds obvious, but the simple cataloging of all the indignities we take for granted builds up to a bigger condemnation than just Big Tech. https://www.wheresyoured.at/never-forgive-them/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/never-forgive-them/
- rnewme 2y agoDefinitely. It's a perfect mix of factors to enable dark sides of our personas. I belive everyone has certain level of near sociopathic perverse curiosity, and certain amount of need to push the limits, if there are no consequences for such behaviors. Algorithms can only affect so much. But gore sites, efukt, countless whatsapp/facebook/signal/whatever group that teens post vile things in are mostly due to childish morbid curiosity and not due to everyone being a literal psycho. I'll take a look at the essay, thanks.
- kelseyfrog 2y agoIs there any way to look at this that doesn't resort to black or white thinking? That's a rather extreme view in itself that could use some nuance and moderation.
- blueflow 2y agoI'm curious about the contents that these people moderated. What is it that seeing it fucks people up?
- bdangubic 2y agothings that you cannot unsee, the absolute worst of humanity
- crystal_revenge 2y agoFrom the first paragraph of the article: > post-traumatic stress disorder caused by exposure to graphic social media content including murders, suicides, child sexual abuse and terrorism. If you want a taste of the legal portion of theses just got to 4chan.org/gif/catalog and look for a "rekt", "war", "gore", or "women hate" thread. Watch every video there for 8-10 hours a day. Now remember this is the legal portion of the content moderated as 4chan does a good job these days of removing illegal content mentioned in that list above. So all these examples will be a milder sample of what moderators deal with. And do remember to browse for 8-10 hours a day. edit: it should go without saying that the content there is deep in the NSFW territory, and if you haven't already stumbled upon that content, I do not recommend browsing "out of curiosity".
- dyauspitr 2y agoAs someone that grew up with 4chan I got pretty desensitized to all of the above very quickly. Only thing I couldn’t watch was animal abuse videos. That was all yers ago though, now I’m fully sensitized to all of it again.
- percentcer 2y agoit's kinda crazy that they have normies doing this job
- istjohn 2y agoNormies? As opposed to who?
- medvezhenok 2y ago[flagged]
- loriverkutya 2y agoI’m not sure what is behind your assumption, if it’s the Autistic people does not have empathy myth, please read up on the topic.
- wkat4242 2y agoAutistic people do have empathy, it just works differently. Most of them are actually really caring, just not very good at showing it. Nor at picking up others' feelings. But they do care about them in my experience. Most of them I know will have more difficulty with this type of work, not less. Because they don't tend to process it as well. This includes myself as I do have some autistic tendencies. No way I could do this.
- ternnoburn 2y agoAutistic people often have stronger empathy that neurotypical people, sometimes much much stronger. Especially towards animals.
- xvector 2y agoI'd wager they'd still have PTSD, but wouldn't be able to communicate it as well as a normal person. What you really want is AI doing this job. Or psychopaths/unempathetic people if that's not an option.
- 2y ago
- atleastoptimal 2y agoObvious job that would benefit everyone for AI to do instead of humans.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y agoPerhaps this is what happens when someone creates a mega-sized website comprising hundreds of millions of pages using other peoples' submitted material, effectively creating a website that is too large to "moderate". By letting the public publish their material on someone else's mega-sized website instead of hosting their own, perhaps it concentrates the web audience to make it more suitable for advertising. Perhaps if the PTSD-causing material was published by its authors on the authors' own websites, the audience would be small, not suitable for advertising. A return to less centralised web publishing would perhaps be bad for the so-called "ad ecosystem" created by so-called "tech" company intermediaries. To be sure, it would also mean no one in Kenya would be intentionally be subjected to PTSD-causing material in the name of fulfilling the so-called "tech" industry's only viable "business model": surveillance, data collection and online ad services.
- croissants 2y agoA return to less centralized web publishing would also be bad for the many creators who lack the technical expertise or interest to jump through all the hoops required for building and hosting your own website. Maybe this seems like a pretty small friction to the median HN user, but I don't think it's true for creators in general, as evidenced by the enormous increase in both the number and sophistication of online creators over the past couple of decades. Is that increase worth traumatizing moderators? I have no idea. But I frequently see this sentiment on HN about the old internet being better, framed as criticism of big internet companies, when it really seems to be at least in part criticism of how the median internet user has changed -- and the solution, coincidentally, would at least partially reverse that change.
- moomin 2y agoI mean, the technical expertise thing is solvable, it’s just no-one wants to solve it because SaaS is extremely lucrative."
- apitman 2y agoContent hosting for creators can be commoditized. Content discovery may even be able to remain centralized. No idea if there's a way for it to work out economically without ads, but ads are also unhealthy so maybe that's ok.
- oefrha 2y agoThey should probably hire more part time people working one hour a day? Btw, it’s probably a different team handling copyright claims, but my run-in with Meta’s moderation gives me the impression that they’re probably horrifically understaffed. I was helping a Chinese content creator friend taking down Instagram, YouTube and TikTok accounts re-uploading her content and/or impersonating her (she doesn’t have any presence on these platforms and doesn’t intend to). Reported to TikTok twice, got it done once within a few hours (I was impressed) and once within three days. Reported to YouTube once and it was handled five or six days later. No further action was needed from me after submitting the initial form in either case. Instagram was something else entirely; they used Facebook’s reporting system, the reporting form was the worst, it asked for very little information upfront but kept sending me emails afterwards asking for more information, then eventually radio silence. I sent follow-ups asking about progress, again, radio silence. Impersonation account with outright stolen content is still up till this day.
- wkat4242 2y agoI have several friends who do this work for various platforms. The problem is, someone has to do it. These platforms are mandated by law to moderate it or else they're responsible for the content the users post. And the companies can not shield their employees from it because the work simply needs doing. I don't think we can really blame the platforms (though I think the remuneration could be higher for this tough work). The work tends to suit some people better than others. The same way some people will not be able to be a forensic doctor doing autopsies. Some have better detachment skills. All the people I know that do this work have 24/7 psychologists on site (most of them can't work remotely due to the private content they work with). I do notice though that most of them do have an "Achilles heel". They tend to shrug most things off without a second thought but there's always one or two specific things or topics that haunt them. Hopefully eventually AI will be good enough to deal with this shit. It sucks for their jobs or course but it's not the kind of job anyone really does with pleasure.
- ternnoburn 2y agoSomeone has to do it is a strong claim. We could not have the services that require it instead.
- EdgeSlash 2y agoAbsolutely. The platforms could reasonably easy stop allowing anonymous accounts. They don’t because more users means more money.
- wkat4242 2y agoUhh no I'm not giving up my privacy because a few people want to misbehave. Screw that. My friends know who I am but the social media companies shouldn't have to. Also, it'll make social media even more fake than it already is. Everyone trying to be as fake as possible. Just like LinkedIn is now. It's sickening, all these people toting the company line. Even though they do nothing but complain when you speak to them in person. And I don't think it'll actually solve the problem. People find ways to get through the validation with fake IDs.
- azinman2 2y ago> The moderators from Kenya and other African countries were tasked from 2019 to 2023 with checking posts emanating from Africa and in their own languages but were paid eight times less than their counterparts in the US, according to the claim documents Why would pay in different countries be equivalent? Pretty sure FB doesn’t even pay the same to their engineers depending on where in the US they are, let alone which country. Cost of living dramatically differs.
- guerrilla 2y ago> Why would pay in different countries be equivalent? Because it's exploitative otherwise. It's just exploiting the fact that they're imprisoned within borders.
- jnwatson 2y agoIt is also exploiting the fact that humans need food and shelter to live and money is used to acquire those things.
- guerrilla 2y agoThat's only exploitation if you combine it with fact of the enclosure of the commons and that all land and productive equipment on Earth is private or state property and that it's virtually impossible to just go farm or hunt for yourself without being fucked with anymore, let alone do anything more advanced without being shut down violently.
- apitman 2y agoThat's actually an interesting question. I would love to see some data on whether it really is impossible for the average person to live off the land if they wanted to. An adjacent question is whether there are too many people on the planet for that to be an option anymore even if it were legal.
- 2y ago
- pllbnk 2y agoThere have been multiple instances where I would receive invites or messages from obvious bots - users having no history, generic name, sexualised profile photo. I would always report them to Facebook just to receive a reply an hour or a day later that no action has been taken. This means there is no human in the pipeline and probably only the stuff that's not passing their abysmal ML filter goes to the actual people. I also have a relative who is stuck with their profile being unable to change any contact details, neither email nor password because FB account center doesn't open for them. Again, there is no human support. BigTech companies must be mandated by law to have the number of live support people working and reachable that is a fixed fraction of their user number. Then, they would have no incentive to inflate their user numbers artificially. As for the moderators, there should also be a strict upper limit on the number of content (content tokens, if you will) they should view during their work day. Then the companies would also be more willing to limit the amount of content on their systems. Yeah, it's bad business for them but it's a win for the people.
- yodsanklai 2y agoI'm wondering if there are precedents in other domains. There are other jobs where you do see disturbing things as part of your duty. E.g. doctors, cops, first responders, prison guards and so on... What makes moderation different? and how should it be handled so that it reduces harm and risks? surely banning social media or not moderating content aren't options. AI helps to some extent but doesn't solve the issue entirely.
- whaleofatw2022 2y agoFrom those I know that worked in the industry, contractor systems are frequently abused to avoid providing the right level of counseling/support to moderators.
- sd9 2y agoI don’t have any experience with this, so take this with a pinch of salt. What seems novel about moderation is the frequency that you confront disturbing things. I imagine companies like Meta have such good automated moderation that what remains to be viewed by a human is practically a firehose of almost certainly disturbing shit. And as soon as you’re done with one post, the next is right there. I doubt moderators spend more than 30 seconds on the average image, which is an awful lot of stuff to see in one day. A doctor just isn’t exposed to that sort of imagery at the same rate.
- prng2021 2y ago“I would imagine that companies like Meta have such good automated moderation that what remains to be viewed by a human is practically a firehose of almost certainly disturbing shit.” This doesn’t make sense to me. Their automated content moderation is so good that it’s unable to detect “almost certainly disturbing shit”? What kind of amazing automation only works with subtleties but not certainties?
- sd9 2y agoI assumed that, at the margin, Meta would prioritise reducing false negatives. In other words, they would prefer that as many legitimate posts are published as possible. So the things that are flagged for human review would be on the boundary, but trend more towards disturbing than legitimate, on the grounds that the human in the loop is there to try and publish as many posts as possible, which means sifting through a lot of disturbing stuff that the AI is not sure about. There’s also the question of training the models - the classifiers may need labelled disturbing data. But possibly not these days. However, yes, I expect the absolute most disturbing shit to never be seen by a human. — Again, literally no experience, just a guy on the internet pressing buttons on a keyboard.
- bookofjoe 2y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42465459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42465459
- toomanyrichies 2y agoOne terrible aspect of online content moderation is that, no matter how good AI gets and no matter how much of this work we can dump in its lap, to a certain extent there will always need to be a "human in the loop". The sociopaths of the world will forever be coming up with new and god-awful types of content to post online, which current AI moderators haven't encountered before and which therefore won't know how to classify. It will therefore be up to humans to label that content in order to train the models to handle that new content, meaning humans will have to view it (and suffer the consequences, such as PTSD). The alternative, where AI labels these new images and then uses those AI-generated labels to update the model, famously leads to "model collapse" [1]. Short of banning social media at a societal level, or abstaining from it at an individual level, I don't know that there's any good solution to this problem. These poor souls are taking a bullet for the rest of us. God help them. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_collapse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_collapse
- efitz 2y agoI have a lot of questions. The nature of the job really sucks. This is not unusual; there are lots of sucky jobs. So my concern is really whether the employees were informed what they would be exposed to. Also I’m wondering why they didn’t just quit. Of course the answer is money, but if they knew what they were getting into (or what they were already into), and chose to continue, why should they be awarded more money? Finally, if they can’t count on employees in poor countries to self-select out when the job became life-impacting, maybe they should make it a temporary gig, eg only allow people to do it for short periods of time. My out-of-the-box idea is: maybe companies that need this function could interview with an eye towards selecting psychopaths. This is not a joke; why not select people who are less likely to be emotionally affected? I’m not sure anyone has ever done this before and I also don’t know if such people would be likely to be inspired by the images, which would make this idea a terrible one. My point is find ways to limit the harm that the job causes to people, perhaps by changing how people interact with the job since the nature of the job doesn’t seem likely to change.
- marcinzm 2y agoSo you're expecting these people to have the deep knowledge of human psychology to know ahead of time that this is likely to cause them long term PTSD, and the impact that will have on their lives, versus simply something they will get over a month after quitting?
- efitz 2y agoI don’t think it takes any special knowledge of human psychology to understand that horrific images can cause emotional trauma. I think it’s a basic due diligence question that when considering establishing such a position, one should consult literature and professionals to discover what impact there might be and what might be done to minimize it.
- throwaway48476 2y agoWhen people are protected from the horrors of the world they tend to develop luxury beliefs which leads them to create more suffering in the world.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoI tend to agree with growth through realism, but people often have the means and ability to protect themselves from these horrors. Im not sure you can systemically prevent this without resorting to big brother shoving propaganda in front of people and forcing them to consume it.
- throwaway48476 2y agoI don't think it needs to be forced, just don't censor so much.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoIsn't that forcing? Who decides how much censorship people can voluntarily opt into? If given control, I think many/most people would opt into a significant amount of censorship.
- kelseyfrog 2y agoConversely, those who are subjected to harsh conditions often develop a cynical view of humanity, one lacking empathy, which also perpetuates the same harsh conditions. It's almost like protection and subjection aren't the salient dimensions, but rather there is some other perspective that better explains the phenomenon.
- kdmtctl 2y agoJust scrolled a lot to find this. And I do believe that moderators in a not so safe country seen a lot in their lives. But this also should make them less vulnerable for this kind of exposures and looks like it is not.
- 2y ago
- Eumenes 2y agoWhat do you call ambulance chasers, but they go after tech companies? Cause this is that.
- quesomaster9000 2y agoThe Kenyan moderators' PTSD reveals the fundamental paradox of content moderation: we've created an enterprise-grade trauma processing system that requires concentrated psychological harm to function, then act surprised when it causes trauma. The knee-jerk reaction of suggesting AI as the solution is, IMO, just wishful thinking - it's trying to technologically optimize away the inherent contradiction of bureaucratized thought control. The human cost isn't a bug that better process or technology can fix - it's the inevitable result of trying to impose pre-internet regulatory frameworks on post-internet human communication that large segments of the population may simply be incompatible with.
- gadflyinyoureye 2y agoAny idea what our next steps are? It seems like we stop the experiment of mass communication, try to figure out a less damaging knowledge-based filtering mechanism (presently executed by human), or throw open the flood gates to all manner of trauma inducing content and let the viewer beware.
- noch 2y ago> Any idea what our next steps are? [..] try to figure out a less damaging knowledge-based filtering mechanism [..] It should cost some amount of money to post anything online on any social media platform: pay to post a tweet, article, image, comment, message, reply. (Incidentally, crypto social networks have this by default simply due to constraints in how blockchains work.)
- smokel 2y agoHow will this help?
- noch 2y agoThe article says: > The images and videos including necrophilia, bestiality and self-harm caused some moderators to faint, vomit, scream and run away from their desks, the filings allege. You might have heard the saying, common in policy and mechanism design: "Show me the incentives, and I'll show you the outcome." If you want to reduce spam, you increase the marginal cost of posting spam until it stops. In general if you introduce a small cost to any activity or service, the mere existence of the cost is often a sufficient disincentive to misuse. But, you can think through implications for yourself, no? You don't need me to explain how to think about cause and effect? You can, say, think about examples in real life, or in your own town or building, where a service is free to use compared to one that has a small fee attached, and look at who uses what and how.
- yazzku 2y ago[dead]
- omoikane 2y agoPossibly related, here is an article from 2023-06-29: https://apnews.com/article/kenya-facebook-content-moderation-lawsuit-8215445b191fce9df4ebe35183d8b322 https://apnews.com/article/kenya-facebook-content-moderation... - Facebook content moderators in Kenya call the work 'torture.' Their lawsuit may ripple worldwide I found this one while looking for salary information on these Kenyan moderators. This article mentioned that they are being paid $429 per month.
- CuriousRose 2y agoI wonder if using AI to turn images and video into a less realistic style before going to the moderators, while preserving the image content will work to reduce trauma as it creates an artificial barrier from seeing human torture. We used to watch cartoons as kids with people being blown to pieces.
- kittikitti 2y agoReddit mods could learn a thing or two from these people.