Inside the traumatic life of a Facebook moderator
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Thank fudge this is coming out, finally. I had always wondered if Facebook even treated it's content moderators properly for all the stuff that gets by, and I am disappointed that they do not.
That previous piece they did was bad enough but this is even worse. It's essentially just a job to systematically break people down and then bring in some fresh faces to continue the cycle, which I imagine is the same with Youtube, Twitter and any other platforms that allow user created content.
They post a trigger warning before the video starts, but yeah, they go into graphic detail about babies and animals being tortured or killed. Don't watch it you're sensitive to that kind of thing.
I'm so glad I got off that fucking website, too. I mean sure, you can have a good experience in your little bubble of friends, but in the meantime there's shit like what's mentioned in the video, and an insane amount of misinformation making the general populace dumber and more radicalized.
I'm so glad I got off that fucking website, too. I mean sure, you can have a good experience in your little bubble of friends, but in the meantime there's shit like what's mentioned in the video, and an insane amount of misinformation making the general populace dumber and more radicalized.
Ugh I'd love to get off Facebook but I use their marketplace. Other than that I have no use for it
Sucks to hear continued negativity about facebook. It is a great when you just stick to the community groups for hobbies. People don't bring their at home drama or politics in there just the love for said hobby.
Being a moderator for Facebook though must be mentally depressive. Seeing the worst of humanity day in and day out + shit work conditions? No thanks.
Being a moderator for Facebook though must be mentally depressive. Seeing the worst of humanity day in and day out + shit work conditions? No thanks.
This was a heartbreaking read. I'm increasingly convinced that the cost of Facebook is just too high.
Oh this is grim
Like admittedly it's not Facebook but a Facebook contractor
But it stands that Facebook "didn't want to see" the worst shit on its own site so outsourced it and paid clearly bottom dollar for this shit
Like admittedly it's not Facebook but a Facebook contractor
But it stands that Facebook "didn't want to see" the worst shit on its own site so outsourced it and paid clearly bottom dollar for this shit
Facebook also sets the guidelines these contractors are moderating by, and built a platform that ended up needing a rule that determines whether a video of fetal abuse can remain online by whether the skin is translucent or not.
I was confused for a moment because the video thumbnail uses artwork from a story the same author did on this subject earlier in the year, but this is a follow-up and contains new interviews and insights. Just as an FYI for anyone else who thinks they've already read / watched this.
At the end of the article the author states they believe that changes will be implemented "as best as they can". I do not share this belief.
It's funny(terribly sad) that the one woman points out that you could hire people that aren't emotionally bothered by this sort of content. However that would just mean hiring psychopaths to police the content. They need to hire sensitive people and then emotionally/mentally destroy them to remove this filth from Facebook. So sad and disturbing.
So you're insinuating that that belief makes him not a great reporter? That's a judgment based on hours upon hours of research, interviews and reporting...
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We gone full Black Mirror over here
OP may want to give some kind of warning on this as there's some awful shit described in both the video and written story.
Here's the written story for those who don't have time for the video: https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/19/...-interviews-video-trauma-ptsd-cognizant-tampa
And here's some excerpts:
Here's the written story for those who don't have time for the video: https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/19/...-interviews-video-trauma-ptsd-cognizant-tampa
And here's some excerpts:
Casey is specifically speaking to Chandra and FB doing their part, but then goes on to state it's hard to say what that is because of how FB has handled them.
Also here's a story from back in 2014 from Wired about Facebook's content moderation team overseas (I think Manila): https://www.wired.com/2014/10/content-moderation/
Content moderation is just an awful job and people should be compensated way more for this than they're getting. The focus of this is on Facebook, but I have no doubt the same kind of low wage thankless shit is going on at other major platforms whom have to moderate content.
The story just serves as another sticking point in the exploitation of the workforce by deceiving them and creating a fear of lost wages because of how shit the wage gap is in the United States. Facebook fresh grads can make $300K in total comp to move some buttons around for marketing tests, but these people get awful work environments to have to filter out the worst of humanity.
The story just serves as another sticking point in the exploitation of the workforce by deceiving them and creating a fear of lost wages because of how shit the wage gap is in the United States. Facebook fresh grads can make $300K in total comp to move some buttons around for marketing tests, but these people get awful work environments to have to filter out the worst of humanity.
This is my feeling about most social media. It's a technology that has broken aspects of society and we have yet to adapt to it.
In the starkest terms, this is low-paid temp workers with zero training being forced to watch things (often repeatedly) that would faze even seasoned medical and law enforcement professionals. It's giving the job of policing the worst of human behaviour to people who would otherwise be doing database admin or working in retail, with the added cruelty that they are all but certain their actions will never make a difference.
OP
OP
the thing about the content moderation thing here is probably the same across youtube (maybe) - thing is: here, its an external contractor that does the monitoring and it sounds like they do not give a shit about the welfare of their employees with the 9 minutes of mental me time and the "quota" for the moderation.
I also think what's alarming is the inability to flag and boot users given the sort of content on display. That's a huge part of the problem. They need to be given power to ban and block content and users for good.
The bit about the woman who was choking and abusing the child was the most hard to take for me. And the bit about the iguana/animal abuse is also difficult.
that is correct. They made it quite clear that they ended doing things that was not discussed in their interview.
I also think what's alarming is the inability to flag and boot users given the sort of content on display. That's a huge part of the problem. They need to be given power to ban and block content and users for good.
The bit about the woman who was choking and abusing the child was the most hard to take for me. And the bit about the iguana/animal abuse is also difficult.
that is correct. They made it quite clear that they ended doing things that was not discussed in their interview.
So they get paid 28,800 per year. Obviously underpaid for what they do.
An employee had a heart attack and died, which the parents blame on the job and conditions.
Bathrooms were covered with feces and menstrual blood.
What the heck is going on there?
An employee had a heart attack and died, which the parents blame on the job and conditions.
Bathrooms were covered with feces and menstrual blood.
What the heck is going on there?
OP
OP
actually the article is way more sickening to read.
"
fuck.
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!
"
fuck.
In June 2018, a month into his job, Facebook began seeing a rash of videos that depicted organs being harvested from children. So many graphic videos were reported that they could not be contained in Speagle's queue.
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!
A rash of videos featuring organs being harvested from children who were alive and screaming??
What the unholy fuck??
What the unholy fuck??
There's plenty of insane shit online that gets posted on places like Facebook. They really need a firebrand approach to moderation. Ban IP's, ban MAC addresses, just do something to prevent people from posting shit like that because you don't belong on the service if you do something like that.
But nah, profits.
But nah, profits.
The world is still a horrible place in parts. And we're paying people peanuts to make sure we only ever see a sanitised view of it.
Whichever way you slice it, this is a travesty. Either we accept that social media should be properly policed and cleansed - in which case the social media companies need to hire experienced, seasoned professionals and invest heavily in improving computer vision models to do this vital task - or we realise that having platforms where anyone can share anything might not be quite the utopian vision it's been sold as.
Normally how these things play out is I imagine something and that is always worse than what the article talks about or the video displays.
Not this time. This is worse than what I thought possible. Like pure insanity. I couldn't make that up.
This is so infuriating. The whole system is designed to prolong the suffering of these poor people, e.g. fearmongering supervisors who can fire them for any reason, the risk of staying unemployed, the pay that's barely "good enough" for a single person to pay their bills. These individuals should be proud of exposing Facebook like this. Nobody should get PTSD from doing their 9 to 5.
That thumbnail needs to change, though. Gritty and that dumb V for Vendetta mask are piss poor representations of the actual NSFL content presented in the video.
That thumbnail needs to change, though. Gritty and that dumb V for Vendetta mask are piss poor representations of the actual NSFL content presented in the video.
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Sorry for the double post, but here's a worrying thought.
A lot of the flood of awful content presumably comes from the ease with which anyone can open a Facebook account, and the lack of repercussions for having that account closed. One 'solution' to this would be to apply a more rigorous KYC process to opening a Facebook account, and tying online identities more closely to real-world ones. In one fell swoop, your need for moderation dries to a trickle.
Of course, that then plays into Facebook's hands by enriching the data set they already hold, and allowing them to be even more intrusive and embedded in everything from commerce to healthcare.
It's morbidly interesting to think about, though, because the relative anonymity and disposability of online identities is what allows horrific content to be so widely shared. Remove that, and you can remove the root cause of the problem - but at the obvious expense of an apocalyptic loss of privacy.
Part of me feels like there's no other way to put the genie back in the bottle when it comes to social media, though. We're not going back to a world where publishing something for others to consume has to go through a formal approval process - the volume is just too high. So we need to shift accountability back to content producers / uploaders, and that's impossible unless we know who they are. I feel like everything else talked about in this article, and anything else the companies involved are doing, is just stalling until online and real world identities converge.
A lot of the flood of awful content presumably comes from the ease with which anyone can open a Facebook account, and the lack of repercussions for having that account closed. One 'solution' to this would be to apply a more rigorous KYC process to opening a Facebook account, and tying online identities more closely to real-world ones. In one fell swoop, your need for moderation dries to a trickle.
Of course, that then plays into Facebook's hands by enriching the data set they already hold, and allowing them to be even more intrusive and embedded in everything from commerce to healthcare.
It's morbidly interesting to think about, though, because the relative anonymity and disposability of online identities is what allows horrific content to be so widely shared. Remove that, and you can remove the root cause of the problem - but at the obvious expense of an apocalyptic loss of privacy.
Part of me feels like there's no other way to put the genie back in the bottle when it comes to social media, though. We're not going back to a world where publishing something for others to consume has to go through a formal approval process - the volume is just too high. So we need to shift accountability back to content producers / uploaders, and that's impossible unless we know who they are. I feel like everything else talked about in this article, and anything else the companies involved are doing, is just stalling until online and real world identities converge.
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Do the moderated videos rely on user reports or are they automatically sent for moderation approval before posting?
Fucking insane. Everything in the article gets exponentially worse with every paragraph, and when you think it can't get more fucked up, it absolutely does. Truly heartbreaking. The people they grind through just end up being fucked up for life to earn a few dollars an hour.
This is sadly a lot of service industry jobs around the world. Anything dealing with customers by default is bad enough already, but many companies don't care. There's always going to be more people to fill the gaps when people burn out.
This isn't a FB so much as it's a finger printing problem. The videos all get hashed for easier identification but slight modifications will create a new hash. It's a hard thing to solve because it's an ever evolving platform of media.
In addition to the horrifying content described already, they have to watch at least 15-30 seconds of each video, with full audio? And the same videos keep popping up repeatedly all day? Jesus Christ.
I get that, but you might as well be permanently banning the people who post this stuff.