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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 di
by 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 agoPeople 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 agoMaybe it's that we don't think people should be threatened with starvation to force them to perform degrading labor.
- sudo_cowsay 9mo agoI 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 agoEveryone is born naked. Some people are then assigned stuff... by other people.
- kortilla 9mo agoThey aren’t being threatened. They are already starving and this is giving them an opportunity out.
- nicbou 9mo agoI am thinking that giving them an opportunity is just a happy side effect. To big tech, they are the opportunity.
- permo-w 9mo agoI think it's perfectly reasonable to have distaste for farming out unpleasant work to poorer countries. But also I think it's perfectly reasonable to accept that it's a fact of life and realise that it's literally redirecting wealth from the richest companies in the world to some of the poorer people in the world. I'm more bothered by the fact that once again an article focuses on the plight of an identity deemed oppressed rather than broader concern for working classes. All it does is sell it as pandering rather than exposing a genuine issue. And as usual from the post-modern left, dividing rather than uniting. The article's entire justification for this is the absolute cop-out: >Women form half or more of this workforce. As another example, I read an article the other day complaining about an advertising campaign from a colossal multinational company replacing the "o"s in London tube stop names with "0.0"s. Why? Not because of excessive corporate encroachment into public spaces, but because it might be confusing for disabled people. Maybe it would be, but once again the broader problem of capitalist overreach is ignored in favour of identity. Corporate exploitation is fine as long as it doesn't impact people who aren't able white men
- glimshe 9mo agoIt is perfectly reasonable to not like it. But it's important to point out that generally you don't go from mass starvation to Starbucks on every corner in one step. There are coal mines and abusive videos in between.
- permo-w 9mo agoThere are some countries in East Asia that would be able to disagree with this
- unmole 9mo agoMaybe we can hold hands in a circle and sing Kumbaya. That would be as helpful as these vacuous takes.
- falkensmaize 9mo agoWatching this stuff all day can literally cause you to have lifelong PTSD. I want poor people to have enough money to provide for themselves, but this is exploitative - they should get paid a LOT more to do this kind of work, the same way someone who does something physically dangerous gets paid more for the risk.
- simianwords 9mo agoAre you suggesting that the same people in India (the same woman) be employed but be paid, say, 2x her salary and the company would do it out of generosity (2x the market rate).
- s_trumpet 9mo agoI am a lower caste Indian one generation removed from being farmhands. I have seen my parents go without for decades until I became successful. I still think this is utter cruelty and another way the poor are taken advantage of. Mr Paternal westerner, I reject your false dichotomy.
- lamename 9mo agoI generally agree with the broader point you're making, but I also think there's nothing wrong with pointing out how messed up it is that that's the reality of the choice. The whole point of improving society is to eliminate this kind of dilemma
- simianwords 9mo agoIt’s messed up that this has to be done. But overall positive change.
- pinnochio 9mo agoWhy does it have to be done?
- simianwords 9mo agoThat poor people get the worst of the jobs? What’s the alternative?
- pinnochio 9mo agoWho says this particular job is a necessary one?
- simianwords 9mo agoWhat’s your alternative?
- evsimonisretar 9mo ago[dead]
- jhanschoo 9mo agoJury duty for all online fora maybe?
- pinnochio 9mo agoI'm not sure what you mean by 'metaphysical' here, but I get the impression that you're dismissively trivializing real psychological problems by using that word. An improvement in material conditions does not straightforwardly make up for these problems. What if they cause the viewer to commit suicide, or be so distraught they can no longer continue to work? People who do this work tend not to be able to do it for very long. You also seem to be evaluating this by taking the current order of things for granted, as if it were not possible for this kind of thing to not be necessary in the first place. Quite a stunted imagination.
- simianwords 9mo ago_you_ don’t know what it means to be under material poverty. Look up farmer suicides in India an you can understand how material poverty leads to even more suicides statistically. These people don’t even have food to sustain. One of the biggest problems is that poor people in India have low IQ because they literally can’t afford food with vitamins. Low IQ leads to irrational decisions, low productivity and they get equal vote so they vote in idiots that slow progress. These jobs are the best deal for overall progress of India. Sure they have to struggle in the middle but at least they have good food on the plate. Some safety net to make long term decisions and vote for better leaders. You wouldn’t get it. You would just show concern. But Indians have to deal with the problems.
- pinnochio 9mo ago_you_ don't seem to understand what I wrote, or are not attempting to genuinely respond to it. But you've demonstrated a certain thickheadedness, potentially willful, so I can't say I was expecting better.
- simianwords 9mo ago[flagged]
- permo-w 9mo ago
- Spooky23 9mo agoI think that it is grotesque to take some moral high ground while global companies are exploiting the most desperate workers that they can find. They don’t give a shit about poor people in India, they need people with marginal English language ability whom have little or no worker protections. People will do what they have to do to survive. But this is hurting these people who long suffer long after the social media company’s contractor discards them.
- simianwords 9mo agoWhat’s your alternative? The people in villages are struggling without jobs and they are poor. They don’t even have food to put on their plate. They make irrational decisions - don’t send their kids to school, make them work in farms. They are mentally stunted because of low quality food. They vote for idiots which stall progress even more. You show concern but what is the alternative? Ask the capitalists for even more money?
- ath92 9mo agoEnding world hunger isn’t that expensive: https://wfpusa.org/news/how-much-would-it-cost-to-end-world-hunger/ https://wfpusa.org/news/how-much-would-it-cost-to-end-world-... Nvidia’s profit alone would’ve been more than enough to end world hunger by these estimates.
- simianwords 9mo agothis article is false
- kelipso 9mo agoBaseless accusation. The article is true of course.
- evsimonisretar 9mo ago[dead]
- 9mo ago
- Markoff 9mo agoYeah, let's save these poor women by taking their jobs away...
- AlecSchueler 9mo agoThat's verging on a white man's burden kind of argument. We can help tackle global income disparity without telling poorer people that they should be happy we're offering them the jobs we don't want to do ourselves.
- seanmcdirmid 9mo agoWe could but we don’t. Like, let’s buy artificial diamonds so kids in the Congo aren’t mining blood diamonds, but you never hear about the follow-up of helping those kids out of poverty. I’m all for ethical sourcing, but we are horrible at the other things we should be doing to alleviate poverty around the world. I can see why many think that our global social activism would be better redirected at simply making poorer people less poor as opposed to their exploitation. It’s definitely a jaded view though.
- billy99k 9mo ago"We can help tackle global income disparity " As long as it doesn't involve just giving them money. This experiment has been done in Africa for as long as I can remember and there's only more poverty and a higher birth rate. "without telling poorer people that they should be happy we're offering them the jobs we don't want to do ourselves" A corrupt government is usually the reason a country doesn't prosper. There's no jobs because businesses end up just getting ripped off and move elsewhere (along with anyone smart). What's left is a broken infrastructure and abject poverty. Until this is fixed, things will never change.
- AlecSchueler 9mo ago> there's only more poverty That's simply not true. > A corrupt government is usually the reason a country doesn't prosper You're probably ignoring the centuries of corporate rule in India that systematically removed wealth to Britain, and which left behind a traumatised and humiliated population that was allowed to play in a game of capitalism they didn't start with the cards already stacked against them.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- mayukh 9mo agoIm with you... to some extent. I come from parts of the world where there is real material poverty and so this is tangible food on the table and a better life in some sense...at least for her family if not for her. The question though is why that material poverty exists in so many parts of the world that were once pretty advanced civilizations.... Colonialism def had a part to play there. So the irony isn't lost that western powers exploited and extracted from civilizations and cultures that were different from theirs..all in the name of progress of course..and now those parts of the world are dependent on the breadcrumbs thrown their way by different western powers.
- lxgr 9mo ago> Some one has to moderate these videos Do they? Maybe you can never get to zero, but I'd be surprised if there weren't any ways to materially reduce the frequency of such videos being uploaded. Of course, many of these ways will probably affect growth metrics, and since these directly translate into revenue, I can imagine how the economic tradeoff that was made here looks like...
- blackoil 9mo agoThere are other trade offs, requiring a real world id to connect to the Internet and fragmenting it to connect only aligned countries will mostly take away problem of illegal porn, fraud and spam. But at some cost.
- louiereederson 9mo agoIt is true that employment and pay are good. The question is a) are proper protections in place for workers and b) does pay adequately compensate for traumatic stress. Studying the issue is valuable, particularly given the potential for labor exploitation given the power imbalance between the largest, most powerful organizations in the world and a labor base which as you point out could otherwise be disenfranchised. I think with this info we can assess whether the wage is indeed competitive. Otherwise claiming "well they're getting paid" can be used to justify exploitative labor practices or negate the need for ethical inquiry. Also calling psychological harm metaphysical is questionable. Is PTSD experienced by American troops coming back from deployment metaphysical? Not necessarily comparing these cases in degree. I'm not sure what invoking neocolonialism adds to the discussion. Best to engage on a factual rather than ideological basis.
- program_whiz 9mo agoThis argument is somewhat true in the small case (e.g. if you are starving and the only job for you is shoveling bodies into a furnace, may as well). But I think the reason people have a problem is that giant multi-national corps have created a system where shoveling bodies into the furnace is the most profitable option for these desperate people. The wealth available in the world right now is completely unfathomable, and its mostly going to ads, privacy invasion, burning massive amounts of energy to make fake videos and articles and more adware, etc. Its not wrong to think "is something wrong with having droves of poor people wading through our shit so they don't starve?" Similar to how the coal mining companies were happy to watch miners die in the mines from blacklung, and their services were indeed useful, and they were quite proud of it. Its a complex issue because it was critical work at the time. However, only a little while later, we realize the system we had was broken and poisoning the planet, ourselves, and the workers. I'm sure many coal miners are remiss that they no longer can work the mines, and many companies would be happy to employ them if it was profitable enough, but ultimately its not a good system for anyone. And if I hear that "coal miners in high demand in China" I'm not going to say "oh I'm so glad they have employment" I'm going to ask "why aren't they using a clearly better alternative for those people?"
- KellyCriterion 9mo ago>> giant multi-national corps have created a system where they didnt do by intention - "market forces" drove them there to do this, i.e. competition / costs etc.
- paulryanrogers 9mo agoGovernments allowed corporations to gain enough control that they are defacto states unto themselves. Some control more resources than mid-sized countries.
- billy99k 9mo ago"The wealth available in the world right now is completely unfathomable, and its mostly going to ads, privacy invasion, burning massive amounts of energy to make fake videos and articles and more adware, etc. Its not wrong to think "is something wrong with having droves of poor people wading through our shit so they don't starve?"" Why is the sole blame on countries other than India. We should be focusing on the government of India and why the system there creates a society with a much larger percentage of poverty than many other parts of the world. "Similar to how the coal mining companies were happy to watch miners die in the mines from blacklung, and their services were indeed useful, and they were quite proud of it." How is this similar? Nobody is dying from looking at terrible content. "why aren't they using a clearly better alternative for those people?" This article is about the better alternative. They aren't physically risking their lives every day to make a living.
- a456463 9mo agohow privileged of you! thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve you while you centralize my brain power and start charging me a tax on thinking. GTH
- evsimonisretar 9mo ago[dead]
- John23832 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. I think THIS shows that you've never dealt with people in abject poverty. Just because you live in poverty doesn't mean you lack humanity. People lie, cheat, steal, sell their bodies and kill to subsist in poverty. Whatever it takes to survive. That is totally separate from the toll that that type of surviving takes.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- ted_bunny 9mo agoYou could use this argument to justify street prostitution.
- rramadass 9mo agoThis is an absolutely clueless opinion. Watch the documentary i link to here, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46921505 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46921505 for a better understanding.