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India's female workers watching hours of abusive content to train AI

139 points by thisislife2 9mo ago

ares623 9mo ago
[flagged]
huflungdung 9mo ago
[dead]
alephnerd 9mo ago
> Murmu, 26, is a content moderator for a global technology company, logging on from her village in India’s Jharkhand state > With just four months left on her contract, which pays about £260 a month Earning US$350/mo working remotely in a village in one of the poorest states in India is an extremely competitive given that the alternative would be spending 12 hours sewing fast fashion for Zara earning US$130-150/mo [0], doing bit piece ag labor for around US$100/mo and participating in MGNREGA for US$50/mo, become a housewife, or become a Naxalite/Maoist insurgent to earn a couple thousand dollars when surrendering [1]. Content moderation means interacting with extremely depressing and horrid content, but someone needs to do it, and once models get good enough we would start seeing articles about how "all the good 100% remote first jobs with no barrier to entry" are being automated to oblivion. Yes it sucks, but the alternative is becoming a migrant worker or working in light manufacturing where QoL is worse. Heck, we used to see similar articles about Chinese workers for Apple barely 14 years ago in then equally poor Sichuan [2], but you don't see those kinds of articles anymore. Development takes time and the fact that US$350/mo remote data annotation and content moderation jobs are now penetrating into villages in what used to be the Naxalite/Maoist/Red Corridor where bombings and gun battles were a part of normal life just 10 years ago [3] is a massive step up developmentally - it means that there is robust enough internet, literacy, banking, and public services penetration for the seeds for a services economy to form. Edit: Thanks for the downvotes westerners - my family is from these kinds of villages in India and Vietnam. The alternatives are extremely bleak - especially for a tribal woman like Ms Murmu at the bottom of the social and patriarchal hierarchy. [0] - https://theprint.in/ground-reports/industries-finally-returning-to-bihar-there-is-britannia-zara-van-heusen-and-adani/2756276/ https://theprint.in/ground-reports/industries-finally-return... [1] - https://www.thehansindia.com/news/national/18-yr-old-maoist-surrenders-1045688 https://www.thehansindia.com/news/national/18-yr-old-maoist-... [2] - https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-ipad-and-the-human-costs-for-workers-in-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-... [3] - https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2016/Nov/23/six-maoist-rebels-gunned-down-by-cops-in-jharkhand-1541785.html https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2016/Nov/23/six-maoi...
- throwaway290 9mo ago
  There is an argument. but maybe you have an idea of how manual labor feels (people always do some of it) but no idea how this type of horror feels and what it does.
  - alephnerd 9mo ago
    The alternatives in these kinds of villages in rural Jharkhand's tribal and red corridor are literally 1.) bit-piece agriculture work for the local landlord who will never pay salaries on time because he has the power 2.) migrate to the nearest big city (in this case Ranchi, Dhanbad, or Patna) and work at a factory for 12 hours a week with the exact same risks 3.) get married off 4.) join a Maoist outfit in order to surrender and get government rehabilitation benefits. And all of this is assuming the men (and it's always men) who they are reporting to are not lecherous abusers which is a very real risk in these kinds of jobs for women in Ms Murmu's status. Like out of all the bad options, this is the least bad one - especially in an area that was a warzone barely a decade ago.
    - bdangubic 9mo ago
      > this is the least bad one not that I wish this on anyone but you would change your mind very quickly if you had to do this job for just one hour. it can fuck you up for life
      - alephnerd 9mo ago
        So can working in the unorganized sector in the heart of the Red Corridor. Like this is literally one of the least developed parts of one of the least developed states in India. A tribal woman like Murmu who is clearly living in the Red Corridor districts (based on surname and geographic location) doesn't have any better choice. Yes content moderation introduces you to horrid content, but the alternatives give the very real risk of physical and sexual violence.
      - golem14 9mo ago
        I don't think anyone is disputing that this job is terrible, it clearly is. The counter argument is that many other jobs are also terrible, and it's not clear whether you can really stack rank them and this one is at the bottom of the pole.
rvz 9mo ago
When VCs and investors keep saying 'There will be new jobs', they never tell you exactly what they are - on purpose. Now we know that it is actually being a data labeller, AI tutor and content moderator, but in very low wage countries such as in India. This is the post-AGI reality. 'Abundance', but not for you.
- alephnerd 9mo ago
  That's false. We expect that jobs are growing at both ends of the income distribution with AI [0][1] - yes there are a ton of data annotators and content moderators now, but literally the overwhelming majority of us also expect to see an expansion in standard SWE and SWE adjacent roles with AI/ML vibe coding becoming the norm. The reason you are facing job losses right now is because Joe in Cary who learnt to code at a bootcamp can't justify being paid $180k a year when I can hire Jan for $90k in Karlin [2] or Jamila for $60k in Koramangla [3] while maintaining equivalent performance and output. Having a president pass an executive order to distract from the Gold Card announcement [4] also played a role [5] just like we warned would happen. [0] - https://www.ft.com/content/267037e8-a71f-4025-acca-f441fe712212 https://www.ft.com/content/267037e8-a71f-4025-acca-f441fe712... [1] - https://www.ft.com/content/d6fdc04f-85cf-4358-a686-298c3de0e25b https://www.ft.com/content/d6fdc04f-85cf-4358-a686-298c3de0e... [2] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/prague-metropolitan-area https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/prague-... [3] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater-bengaluru https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater... [4] - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-signs-proclamation-that-adds-100k-annual-fee-to-h-1b-visas-for-high-skilled-workers https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-signs-proclamati... [5] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-03/alphabet-plots-big-expansion-in-india-as-us-restricts-visas https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-03/alphabet-...
unstyledcontent 9mo ago
This is an absolutely horrific thing to make a person do. I see comments that say "well someone needs to do it." Then why not volunteer?
- 827a 9mo ago
  Who is making them work this job?
  - SanjayMehta 9mo ago
    Mr Poverty and Ms Hunger This is not new. The British boast of banning slavery but they will never tell you about their invention of bonded labour. They imported bonded labour to South Africa, Guyana and other parts of their empire. Now companies can use the Internet to keep the labour remote. Doesn't even require a degree.
    - simianwords 9mo ago
      Do you not think a person who is literally in poverty and who is actually hungry needs the job?
      - sonofhans 9mo ago
        Of course. And since they truly need it, we may as well make it as cheap and abusive as possible, right?
        simianwords 9mo ago
        They should be paid a premium above market rate? Why? Generosity?
        mrguyorama 9mo ago
        "The market says this women is low value. Why should I disagree?" A take for the ages.
paulkon 9mo ago
How do humans with very little exposure to grotesque violence or extreme content universally label such content so well? This is not graduate level data that needs labeling. What is missing in an AI model for it to intuitively understand what content is extreme from very few labeled sample in training?
- hexaga 9mo ago
  A finely tuned set of heuristic triggers for fear, horror, disgust, etc. You might as well ask why pain is so painful.
simianwords 9mo ago
I’ve noticed that the type of people to have problems with these kind of jobs - people who think this is some type of neocolonialism - can not appreciate the difference between real material poverty and metaphysical problems with watching some abusive content. This person is earning a really competitive wage. She’s getting the power and independence to lead a materially good life. This will trump every other metaphysical concern you can have by watching these abusive videos. Some one has to moderate these videos and it’s great that it’s someone poor who’s getting the opportunity.
- glimshe 9mo ago
  People who raise these concerns don't understand true poverty. They might have seen it during trips but don't really "grok" it. That's one place where the expression "First world problems" is relevant. Being able to pay for housing, food and some degree of safety is an immense improvement in life quality versus the previous state with poverty and no videos.
  - whatshisface 9mo ago
    Maybe it's that we don't think people should be threatened with starvation to force them to perform degrading labor.
    - sudo_cowsay 9mo ago
      I agree with you but disagree with how you phrased your comment. They aren't being threatened, they were either born into poverty/starvation or went into poverty. In their perspective (or at least some of them), they view it as a sacrifice to lead their families into a better life.
      - whatshisface 9mo ago
        Everyone is born naked. Some people are then assigned stuff... by other people.
    - 9mo ago
maxglute 9mo ago
It's a well compensated job vs local opportunities but feels like it should be an extravagantly compensated job vs local opportunities. Someone has to do it, but also somewhere along the continuum of doing factory garment work for $100 and deep sea welding for $100k, it feels like this should be closer to latter. Seems like kind of job that needs physical filtering. Onboard bunch of candidates, measure their vitals, find low responders to abusive stimulus, hire them. I'm sure there's some poorly replicated psych study done on 1st years to draw from.
- nvch 9mo ago
  I see a contradiction. If they are not responsive, their psyche is safe and there are no reasons for them to be compensated much more than minimum wage workers.
  - maxglute 9mo ago
    "Safer" - I think essentially filtering for 1-2% of population high on sociopathy / anti social spectrum. Doesn't mean they're immune, just better equipped for job cognitively. I surmise compensation goes up when weeding out 98% of population.
    - nvch 9mo ago
      All right, the twist. They may hire Tantric Buddhists or Shaivites. Some of them even pay to meditate on stuff like that, and will be happy to do the practice and get paid for it. Oh, wait, India?
      - maxglute 9mo ago
        I'll get started on the business plan boss!
AussieWog93 9mo ago
I remember watching this kind of content for free on Liveleak back in the day. Maybe they should get edgy teenagers to do the content classification rather than third-world rural women with minimal media exposure.
- throwawaygmbno 9mo ago
  This is obviously a flippant comment that shouldn't be taken seriously. But the loss of LiveLeak seems like the loss of the journalism that the Internet was supposed to bring. There were a lot of odd things posted on there with some unneeded commentary but it was a place that would post unfiltered content that other places were scared to post. A lot of it was disgusting that I wouldn't watch, but it's weird to think that the Internet is censored now in a way where it's hard to even find it. You can find areas of propaganda where site rule breaking will be allowed if it serves the interest of the owner, but you really have to seek it out. It's even weirder that the latest generation is self censoring common words so they can show up on sites like TikTok. Billionaires buying newspapers to censor seems less strange but sadly something I also didn't expect.
  - permo-w 9mo ago
    Blame Visa and Mastercard and the puritanical-when-it's-convenient media
- Markoff 9mo ago
  I was not big fan of Liveleak, but I really enjoyed WatchPeopleDie community, one could learn a lot in the comments about how to be safer in the enviroment (I'm aware they moved to website, but it's not same anymore, too much friction to visit it) after being the regular visitor of WPD I stand at the junction waiting for my turn shielded by the traffic lights pole and always look in the eye of the driver when crossing the road, especially if it's tall truck some ppl don't realize how many lives actually WPD saved, but hey now we have victory nobody is exposed to this disturbing content and making silly jokes about death, right?
  - 9mo ago
burnt-resistor 9mo ago
Eww. Like 19th c. children in dangerous factories, abusing poor people's mental health sifting through the Global North's cavalcade of depravity. There must exist more productive and honest uses of people's time, and some jobs shouldn't be done for any amount of money. Some jobs done risky ways shouldn't be done by human beings at all in dangerous manners (coal mining without safety equipment, loom maintenance while running, carrying sulfur chunks out of active volcanoes) because they lower us all. "But they're making money" is not a good enough excuse because that's a false choice as there infinitely other activities, and any number of safer activities or similar tasks done with meaningful precautions are needed, desirable, and could be done instead.
compounding_it 9mo ago
> Sometimes, when I’m with my partner, I feel like a stranger in my own body. I want closeness, but my mind keeps pulling away. Dissociation. A classic sign of trauma and PTSD.
- rramadass 9mo ago
  This is well documented. In fact, Facebook was taken to court over this, admitted to the harm caused and paid out a hefty amount; Facebook will pay $52 million in settlement with moderators who developed PTSD on the job - https://archive.is/M4tdk#selection-1487.0-1487.89 https://archive.is/M4tdk#selection-1487.0-1487.89 Also watch the documentary i link to here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46921505 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46921505
jandrewrogers 9mo ago
When I was in my 20s I worked for a well-known global telco. In our office, we had a group of people whose literal job was watching streaming porn from around the world all day. They had walls of screens running simultaneously. Those streams were customers. Our people’s job was to monitor the streams for video and audio quality issues. When I would tell my friends that I worked with guys who’s literal job was watching porn on a sofa all day, they thought it must be the best job in the world. But when I talked to the guys that actually had the job, they said it was a terribly boring chore. Even worse, they said you quickly become so desensitized that it bled over into their non-work life in a negative way. Almost everyone that had that job eventually grew to hate it. These kinds of jobs have always existed. To some extent someone needs to do it. While we may be outsourcing it now, there is a long history of paying people in the US to do it.
- TitaRusell 9mo ago
  I can only imagine that watching abuse/porn all day long may cause a person to change- possibly even lead to suicide.
ghoul2 9mo ago
I long time ago, I was operating a "social network" which allowed image uploads. (India local, didn't amount to much as was shutdown.). Immediately at launch, we started having a huge amount of (image) pron being uploaded into the pages. We put in some rate limits etc, but did not want to put any major restrictions of user signups etc as that would hurt signup figures (important to the ceo!). We already had some content review people thru a temp agency on site, so we checked with them and they were fine doing this manual filtering of these images for us. All young (early 20s) women. While my team built a quick "dashboard" for them to be able to do this image filtering quickly and conveniently, I had a detailed conversation with them as I was very concerned about having them review this kinda stuff for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Truly nasty stuff. They were _perfectly_ clear that they had no issues with it, and they told me in so many words to not give it a second thought and to let them get back to work. It was a surprise, but it was a point of realization: there are much worse things they could be doing. And looking a porn has shock value only the first time. I was under-estimating these women and assuming they were some "snowflakes" who could not deal with something this silly and non-threatening. Just my own person anec-data.
- ura_yukimitsu 9mo ago
  It's good that you warned them in advance, but I don't think "there are much worse things they could be doing" really is a reason to discard those who are hurt by this as "snowflakes" and the content they're exposed to as "silly and non-threatening." From what you're saying, there's also a big difference between what you were dealing with and what this article is talking about: in your case it was only still images, and only "regular" porn (and I assume they probably had to monitor every image posted if it was "a long time ago" so overall they were not exposed only to that content); in this case they're reviewing videos content including not only porn but also violence and sexual abuse, that was pre-flagged by an AI so with way less rule-abiding content mixed in.
  - lazide 9mo ago
    The alternative is…. They don’t have a job? What else is going to happen? For many people, the alternatives can literally be death, wading unprotected through human excrement, sold into defacto slavery, etc. etc. AI can do some of it (now), but largely isn’t going to be more accurate and still needs humans to double check its work.
duxup 9mo ago
Is there a solution to this? Let's say these jobs are bad. What do we do then? Just not have people do this job? Not allow uploads?
- RegnisGnaw 9mo ago
  RealID + Ban + Legal Enforcement (depending on the content) It will cut this work down by 90%, but I doubt many people here will go for it.
  - duxup 9mo ago
    I think that would require someone looking at the content.
    - RegnisGnaw 9mo ago
      It does but way less. As I said "It will cut this work down by 90%, but I doubt many people here will go for it."
  - halapro 9mo ago
    You're thinking US. What happens when most of the world doesn't even have an ID? Does Facebook suddenly drop 80% of users? Do US Facebook users only see US content? The internet is not only "the west." What you're thinking is what's already happening in the Chinese internet, and even they cannot really limit the amount of disgusting content released by Chinese websites. As long as non-verified users have access to the same internet as you, that content will continue to exist.
    - RegnisGnaw 9mo ago
      I'm thinking most countries. Most countries have some kind of ID. Most countries in Europe does. If not its easy to setup one if there is will. I've never said is an 100% solution, nothing is an 100% solution. This is a 90% solution, which is already a huge improvement. Why would non-verified users have same access as you? Sure they can read, but no creation. I'm from China and use the Chinese Internet regularity. The amount of disgusting content is way less then the global internet and they have less people doing filtering for abusive content.
TitaRusell 9mo ago
None of the tech companies really want to moderate. Not because free peaches but because it costs a metric ton of money.
klaff 9mo ago
No one should have to do this job. And if you can't make your social network function or AI thing function without it, then maybe, just maybe, we shouldn't have that social network or AI thing.
rramadass 9mo ago
For a detailed understanding of the psychological harm and detrimental long-lasting effects of explicit image annotation see the following documentary (not specific to India). Undercover reporter does annotation of explicit images for AI but is so traumatized by what he sees that he quits in two weeks; The "Modern Day Slaves" Of The AI Tech World. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPSZFUiElls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPSZFUiElls
- rramadass 9mo ago
  Description of the above video; In 2027, virtual assistants like Sarah seamlessly handle our daily tasks, making life appear effortless. But behind this technological marvel lies a hidden reality. This documentary unveils the untold story of the ghost workers who power our digital world, performing the tedious and often traumatic tasks that machines can't handle. Meet the invisible workforce behind tech giants like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Uber. These underpaid and disposable workers label images, moderate content, and train AI systems, often earning less than minimum wage. Their work is essential yet remains in the shadows, unacknowledged by the companies that depend on them. 00:00 - Introduction: The Illusion of Effortless AI 02:15 - The Hidden Workforce: Who Are the Ghost Workers? 05:30 - Undercover: Life as a Content Moderator 09:45 - AI Training: The Tedious Tasks Behind Smart Machines 13:20 - The Psychological Toll: PTSD and Stress Among Moderators 17:00 - The Future of Work: What Lies Ahead for These Workers?

139 points by thisislife2 9mo ago

ares623 9mo ago

[flagged]

huflungdung 9mo ago

[dead]

alephnerd 9mo ago

> Murmu, 26, is a content moderator for a global technology company, logging on from her village in India’s Jharkhand state > With just four months left on her contract, which pays about £260 a month Earning US$350/mo working remotely in a village in one of the poorest states in India is an extremely competitive given that the alternative would be spending 12 hours sewing fast fashion for Zara earning US$130-150/mo [0], doing bit piece ag labor for around US$100/mo and participating in MGNREGA for US$50/mo, become a housewife, or become a Naxalite/Maoist insurgent to earn a couple thousand dollars when surrendering [1]. Content moderation means interacting with extremely depressing and horrid content, but someone needs to do it, and once models get good enough we would start seeing articles about how "all the good 100% remote first jobs with no barrier to entry" are being automated to oblivion. Yes it sucks, but the alternative is becoming a migrant worker or working in light manufacturing where QoL is worse. Heck, we used to see similar articles about Chinese workers for Apple barely 14 years ago in then equally poor Sichuan [2], but you don't see those kinds of articles anymore. Development takes time and the fact that US$350/mo remote data annotation and content moderation jobs are now penetrating into villages in what used to be the Naxalite/Maoist/Red Corridor where bombings and gun battles were a part of normal life just 10 years ago [3] is a massive step up developmentally - it means that there is robust enough internet, literacy, banking, and public services penetration for the seeds for a services economy to form. Edit: Thanks for the downvotes westerners - my family is from these kinds of villages in India and Vietnam. The alternatives are extremely bleak - especially for a tribal woman like Ms Murmu at the bottom of the social and patriarchal hierarchy. [0] - https://theprint.in/ground-reports/industries-finally-returning-to-bihar-there-is-britannia-zara-van-heusen-and-adani/2756276/ https://theprint.in/ground-reports/industries-finally-return... [1] - https://www.thehansindia.com/news/national/18-yr-old-maoist-surrenders-1045688 https://www.thehansindia.com/news/national/18-yr-old-maoist-... [2] - https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-ipad-and-the-human-costs-for-workers-in-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-... [3] - https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2016/Nov/23/six-maoist-rebels-gunned-down-by-cops-in-jharkhand-1541785.html https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2016/Nov/23/six-maoi...

throwaway290 9mo ago
There is an argument. but maybe you have an idea of how manual labor feels (people always do some of it) but no idea how this type of horror feels and what it does.
- alephnerd 9mo ago
  The alternatives in these kinds of villages in rural Jharkhand's tribal and red corridor are literally 1.) bit-piece agriculture work for the local landlord who will never pay salaries on time because he has the power 2.) migrate to the nearest big city (in this case Ranchi, Dhanbad, or Patna) and work at a factory for 12 hours a week with the exact same risks 3.) get married off 4.) join a Maoist outfit in order to surrender and get government rehabilitation benefits. And all of this is assuming the men (and it's always men) who they are reporting to are not lecherous abusers which is a very real risk in these kinds of jobs for women in Ms Murmu's status. Like out of all the bad options, this is the least bad one - especially in an area that was a warzone barely a decade ago.
  - bdangubic 9mo ago
    > this is the least bad one not that I wish this on anyone but you would change your mind very quickly if you had to do this job for just one hour. it can fuck you up for life
    - alephnerd 9mo ago
      So can working in the unorganized sector in the heart of the Red Corridor. Like this is literally one of the least developed parts of one of the least developed states in India. A tribal woman like Murmu who is clearly living in the Red Corridor districts (based on surname and geographic location) doesn't have any better choice. Yes content moderation introduces you to horrid content, but the alternatives give the very real risk of physical and sexual violence.
    - golem14 9mo ago
      I don't think anyone is disputing that this job is terrible, it clearly is. The counter argument is that many other jobs are also terrible, and it's not clear whether you can really stack rank them and this one is at the bottom of the pole.

rvz 9mo ago

When VCs and investors keep saying 'There will be new jobs', they never tell you exactly what they are - on purpose. Now we know that it is actually being a data labeller, AI tutor and content moderator, but in very low wage countries such as in India. This is the post-AGI reality. 'Abundance', but not for you.

alephnerd 9mo ago
That's false. We expect that jobs are growing at both ends of the income distribution with AI [0][1] - yes there are a ton of data annotators and content moderators now, but literally the overwhelming majority of us also expect to see an expansion in standard SWE and SWE adjacent roles with AI/ML vibe coding becoming the norm. The reason you are facing job losses right now is because Joe in Cary who learnt to code at a bootcamp can't justify being paid $180k a year when I can hire Jan for $90k in Karlin [2] or Jamila for $60k in Koramangla [3] while maintaining equivalent performance and output. Having a president pass an executive order to distract from the Gold Card announcement [4] also played a role [5] just like we warned would happen. [0] - https://www.ft.com/content/267037e8-a71f-4025-acca-f441fe712212 https://www.ft.com/content/267037e8-a71f-4025-acca-f441fe712... [1] - https://www.ft.com/content/d6fdc04f-85cf-4358-a686-298c3de0e25b https://www.ft.com/content/d6fdc04f-85cf-4358-a686-298c3de0e... [2] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/prague-metropolitan-area https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/prague-... [3] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater-bengaluru https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater... [4] - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-signs-proclamation-that-adds-100k-annual-fee-to-h-1b-visas-for-high-skilled-workers https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-signs-proclamati... [5] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-03/alphabet-plots-big-expansion-in-india-as-us-restricts-visas https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-03/alphabet-...

unstyledcontent 9mo ago

This is an absolutely horrific thing to make a person do. I see comments that say "well someone needs to do it." Then why not volunteer?

827a 9mo ago
Who is making them work this job?
- SanjayMehta 9mo ago
  Mr Poverty and Ms Hunger This is not new. The British boast of banning slavery but they will never tell you about their invention of bonded labour. They imported bonded labour to South Africa, Guyana and other parts of their empire. Now companies can use the Internet to keep the labour remote. Doesn't even require a degree.
  - simianwords 9mo ago
    Do you not think a person who is literally in poverty and who is actually hungry needs the job?
    - sonofhans 9mo ago
      Of course. And since they truly need it, we may as well make it as cheap and abusive as possible, right?
      - simianwords 9mo ago
        They should be paid a premium above market rate? Why? Generosity?
        mrguyorama 9mo ago
        "The market says this women is low value. Why should I disagree?" A take for the ages.

paulkon 9mo ago

How do humans with very little exposure to grotesque violence or extreme content universally label such content so well? This is not graduate level data that needs labeling. What is missing in an AI model for it to intuitively understand what content is extreme from very few labeled sample in training?

hexaga 9mo ago
A finely tuned set of heuristic triggers for fear, horror, disgust, etc. You might as well ask why pain is so painful.

simianwords 9mo ago

I’ve noticed that the type of people to have problems with these kind of jobs - people who think this is some type of neocolonialism - can not appreciate the difference between real material poverty and metaphysical problems with watching some abusive content. This person is earning a really competitive wage. She’s getting the power and independence to lead a materially good life. This will trump every other metaphysical concern you can have by watching these abusive videos. Some one has to moderate these videos and it’s great that it’s someone poor who’s getting the opportunity.

glimshe 9mo ago
People who raise these concerns don't understand true poverty. They might have seen it during trips but don't really "grok" it. That's one place where the expression "First world problems" is relevant. Being able to pay for housing, food and some degree of safety is an immense improvement in life quality versus the previous state with poverty and no videos.
- whatshisface 9mo ago
  Maybe it's that we don't think people should be threatened with starvation to force them to perform degrading labor.
  - sudo_cowsay 9mo ago
    I agree with you but disagree with how you phrased your comment. They aren't being threatened, they were either born into poverty/starvation or went into poverty. In their perspective (or at least some of them), they view it as a sacrifice to lead their families into a better life.
    - whatshisface 9mo ago
      Everyone is born naked. Some people are then assigned stuff... by other people.
  - 9mo ago

maxglute 9mo ago

It's a well compensated job vs local opportunities but feels like it should be an extravagantly compensated job vs local opportunities. Someone has to do it, but also somewhere along the continuum of doing factory garment work for $100 and deep sea welding for $100k, it feels like this should be closer to latter. Seems like kind of job that needs physical filtering. Onboard bunch of candidates, measure their vitals, find low responders to abusive stimulus, hire them. I'm sure there's some poorly replicated psych study done on 1st years to draw from.

nvch 9mo ago
I see a contradiction. If they are not responsive, their psyche is safe and there are no reasons for them to be compensated much more than minimum wage workers.
- maxglute 9mo ago
  "Safer" - I think essentially filtering for 1-2% of population high on sociopathy / anti social spectrum. Doesn't mean they're immune, just better equipped for job cognitively. I surmise compensation goes up when weeding out 98% of population.
  - nvch 9mo ago
    All right, the twist. They may hire Tantric Buddhists or Shaivites. Some of them even pay to meditate on stuff like that, and will be happy to do the practice and get paid for it. Oh, wait, India?
    - maxglute 9mo ago
      I'll get started on the business plan boss!

AussieWog93 9mo ago

I remember watching this kind of content for free on Liveleak back in the day. Maybe they should get edgy teenagers to do the content classification rather than third-world rural women with minimal media exposure.

throwawaygmbno 9mo ago
This is obviously a flippant comment that shouldn't be taken seriously. But the loss of LiveLeak seems like the loss of the journalism that the Internet was supposed to bring. There were a lot of odd things posted on there with some unneeded commentary but it was a place that would post unfiltered content that other places were scared to post. A lot of it was disgusting that I wouldn't watch, but it's weird to think that the Internet is censored now in a way where it's hard to even find it. You can find areas of propaganda where site rule breaking will be allowed if it serves the interest of the owner, but you really have to seek it out. It's even weirder that the latest generation is self censoring common words so they can show up on sites like TikTok. Billionaires buying newspapers to censor seems less strange but sadly something I also didn't expect.
- permo-w 9mo ago
  Blame Visa and Mastercard and the puritanical-when-it's-convenient media
Markoff 9mo ago
I was not big fan of Liveleak, but I really enjoyed WatchPeopleDie community, one could learn a lot in the comments about how to be safer in the enviroment (I'm aware they moved to website, but it's not same anymore, too much friction to visit it) after being the regular visitor of WPD I stand at the junction waiting for my turn shielded by the traffic lights pole and always look in the eye of the driver when crossing the road, especially if it's tall truck some ppl don't realize how many lives actually WPD saved, but hey now we have victory nobody is exposed to this disturbing content and making silly jokes about death, right?
- 9mo ago

burnt-resistor 9mo ago

Eww. Like 19th c. children in dangerous factories, abusing poor people's mental health sifting through the Global North's cavalcade of depravity. There must exist more productive and honest uses of people's time, and some jobs shouldn't be done for any amount of money. Some jobs done risky ways shouldn't be done by human beings at all in dangerous manners (coal mining without safety equipment, loom maintenance while running, carrying sulfur chunks out of active volcanoes) because they lower us all. "But they're making money" is not a good enough excuse because that's a false choice as there infinitely other activities, and any number of safer activities or similar tasks done with meaningful precautions are needed, desirable, and could be done instead.

compounding_it 9mo ago

> Sometimes, when I’m with my partner, I feel like a stranger in my own body. I want closeness, but my mind keeps pulling away. Dissociation. A classic sign of trauma and PTSD.

rramadass 9mo ago
This is well documented. In fact, Facebook was taken to court over this, admitted to the harm caused and paid out a hefty amount; Facebook will pay $52 million in settlement with moderators who developed PTSD on the job - https://archive.is/M4tdk#selection-1487.0-1487.89 https://archive.is/M4tdk#selection-1487.0-1487.89 Also watch the documentary i link to here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46921505 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46921505

jandrewrogers 9mo ago

When I was in my 20s I worked for a well-known global telco. In our office, we had a group of people whose literal job was watching streaming porn from around the world all day. They had walls of screens running simultaneously. Those streams were customers. Our people’s job was to monitor the streams for video and audio quality issues. When I would tell my friends that I worked with guys who’s literal job was watching porn on a sofa all day, they thought it must be the best job in the world. But when I talked to the guys that actually had the job, they said it was a terribly boring chore. Even worse, they said you quickly become so desensitized that it bled over into their non-work life in a negative way. Almost everyone that had that job eventually grew to hate it. These kinds of jobs have always existed. To some extent someone needs to do it. While we may be outsourcing it now, there is a long history of paying people in the US to do it.

TitaRusell 9mo ago
I can only imagine that watching abuse/porn all day long may cause a person to change- possibly even lead to suicide.

ghoul2 9mo ago

I long time ago, I was operating a "social network" which allowed image uploads. (India local, didn't amount to much as was shutdown.). Immediately at launch, we started having a huge amount of (image) pron being uploaded into the pages. We put in some rate limits etc, but did not want to put any major restrictions of user signups etc as that would hurt signup figures (important to the ceo!). We already had some content review people thru a temp agency on site, so we checked with them and they were fine doing this manual filtering of these images for us. All young (early 20s) women. While my team built a quick "dashboard" for them to be able to do this image filtering quickly and conveniently, I had a detailed conversation with them as I was very concerned about having them review this kinda stuff for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Truly nasty stuff. They were _perfectly_ clear that they had no issues with it, and they told me in so many words to not give it a second thought and to let them get back to work. It was a surprise, but it was a point of realization: there are much worse things they could be doing. And looking a porn has shock value only the first time. I was under-estimating these women and assuming they were some "snowflakes" who could not deal with something this silly and non-threatening. Just my own person anec-data.

ura_yukimitsu 9mo ago
It's good that you warned them in advance, but I don't think "there are much worse things they could be doing" really is a reason to discard those who are hurt by this as "snowflakes" and the content they're exposed to as "silly and non-threatening." From what you're saying, there's also a big difference between what you were dealing with and what this article is talking about: in your case it was only still images, and only "regular" porn (and I assume they probably had to monitor every image posted if it was "a long time ago" so overall they were not exposed only to that content); in this case they're reviewing videos content including not only porn but also violence and sexual abuse, that was pre-flagged by an AI so with way less rule-abiding content mixed in.
- lazide 9mo ago
  The alternative is…. They don’t have a job? What else is going to happen? For many people, the alternatives can literally be death, wading unprotected through human excrement, sold into defacto slavery, etc. etc. AI can do some of it (now), but largely isn’t going to be more accurate and still needs humans to double check its work.

duxup 9mo ago

Is there a solution to this? Let's say these jobs are bad. What do we do then? Just not have people do this job? Not allow uploads?

RegnisGnaw 9mo ago
RealID + Ban + Legal Enforcement (depending on the content) It will cut this work down by 90%, but I doubt many people here will go for it.
- duxup 9mo ago
  I think that would require someone looking at the content.
  - RegnisGnaw 9mo ago
    It does but way less. As I said "It will cut this work down by 90%, but I doubt many people here will go for it."
- halapro 9mo ago
  You're thinking US. What happens when most of the world doesn't even have an ID? Does Facebook suddenly drop 80% of users? Do US Facebook users only see US content? The internet is not only "the west." What you're thinking is what's already happening in the Chinese internet, and even they cannot really limit the amount of disgusting content released by Chinese websites. As long as non-verified users have access to the same internet as you, that content will continue to exist.
  - RegnisGnaw 9mo ago
    I'm thinking most countries. Most countries have some kind of ID. Most countries in Europe does. If not its easy to setup one if there is will. I've never said is an 100% solution, nothing is an 100% solution. This is a 90% solution, which is already a huge improvement. Why would non-verified users have same access as you? Sure they can read, but no creation. I'm from China and use the Chinese Internet regularity. The amount of disgusting content is way less then the global internet and they have less people doing filtering for abusive content.

TitaRusell 9mo ago

None of the tech companies really want to moderate. Not because free peaches but because it costs a metric ton of money.

klaff 9mo ago

No one should have to do this job. And if you can't make your social network function or AI thing function without it, then maybe, just maybe, we shouldn't have that social network or AI thing.

rramadass 9mo ago

For a detailed understanding of the psychological harm and detrimental long-lasting effects of explicit image annotation see the following documentary (not specific to India). Undercover reporter does annotation of explicit images for AI but is so traumatized by what he sees that he quits in two weeks; The "Modern Day Slaves" Of The AI Tech World. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPSZFUiElls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPSZFUiElls

rramadass 9mo ago
Description of the above video; In 2027, virtual assistants like Sarah seamlessly handle our daily tasks, making life appear effortless. But behind this technological marvel lies a hidden reality. This documentary unveils the untold story of the ghost workers who power our digital world, performing the tedious and often traumatic tasks that machines can't handle. Meet the invisible workforce behind tech giants like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Uber. These underpaid and disposable workers label images, moderate content, and train AI systems, often earning less than minimum wage. Their work is essential yet remains in the shadows, unacknowledged by the companies that depend on them. 00:00 - Introduction: The Illusion of Effortless AI 02:15 - The Hidden Workforce: Who Are the Ghost Workers? 05:30 - Undercover: Life as a Content Moderator 09:45 - AI Training: The Tedious Tasks Behind Smart Machines 13:20 - The Psychological Toll: PTSD and Stress Among Moderators 17:00 - The Future of Work: What Lies Ahead for These Workers?