I don't see how an average person could be expected to witness some of the things mentioned in the article. I didn't have time to read the entire article, but do they have counselors on staff or something?
That one paragraph about organs was enough to ruin my day, and it was just text. I'm surprised such a "rash of videos" wasn't in the news somewhere.
So the counselors were probably an afterthought. I'd even bet the decision was made not as a way to keep the moderators from going insane, but to protect the company's image.
I mean, a counselor can only do so much in this type of situation, since the patient is not in a position to remove the negative stimuli from their lives.
Update June 19th, 10:37AM ET: This article has been updated to reflect the fact that a video that purportedly depicted organ harvesting was determined to be false and misleading.
I know a very well qualified woman who has previously worked with pschological trauma in the army amongst other organisations, who has recently been hired to work at Facebook in Ireland as part of what sounds like a sizeable team. So it seems like Facebook aren't entirely ignorant of their responsibility here, although they do seem massively behind the curve.
> That one paragraph about organs was enough to ruin my day, and it was just text. I'm surprised such a "rash of videos" wasn't in the news somewhere.
I'm left wondering if it was a clip from a horror movie or something. Shitty to see, but not necessarily newsworthy like "live children chopped up for organs" would be.
No need to be left wondering. While I'm not sure these are the videos mentioned, it's not hard to find some just by googling for it. Or maybe don't, I wish I didn't.
Isn't the point of moderation/censorship to avoid having these videos widely-shared? These videos exist, they are fairly easy to find on specialized websites. Some are fake, but a lot are genuine. Videos showing executions during wars in Chechnya or in the middle east and such.
Well it still is their responsibility. It's like Dr Frankenstein letting the monster lose on the village and then going "hey guys well I sure don't know how to figure this stuff out".
If the government, the military, academia, the police or anyone else would let their inventions lose on the world in the manner the private sector does and leaves it to us to figure out how to clean up the mess we'd call them insane and demand them to be shut down within a week.
It makes me aware of a curious dichotomy about content moderation on Facebook. On one hand, they have publicly committed to stem the flow of "Fake News", whatever that means, on their platform. Now on the other hand, we have this article about the suffering of contractors who's task is to block content that is too real. I guess this places Facebook's platform into a category with theme parks like Disney Land, where they aim at maintaining a precarious balance somewhere between the fake and the real.
Of course no one wants to see horrifying things. But current events force us to admit that Facebook is a platform for vast quantities of political speech. And if we're going to entertain political speech, we should be grown-ups and face reality; if we don't allow the horror to inform our discussions, if we turn away, then the horror will only grow.
I found it very disturbing .. I closed the video within a few seconds of the descriptions starting. Got a knot in my stomach and I feel very angry .. I could not do that job for a day
There's a lot of variance between individuals. Given the choice this sounds like an overall better job than working a busy McDonald's drive through (people are assholes when they're hungry) but I'm not the kind of person that's particularly bothered by graphic violence. My opinion of humanity is dark enough to accommodate it. I'm sure many people would prefer McDonald's though.
Some of the people interviewed were complaining primarily about the bad working conditions (and their complaints are valid as far as I care). I would wager these people are not as bothered by the content (though I'm sure they don't like it) as the ones who's primary complaints are about the content. They could probably do the job with less burnout if the rest of the job was made to suck less (i.e. it wasn't a shitty call center style job with all the accompanying baggage).
Edit: Why am I getting down-voted? Can people legitimately not fathom that some people would not be seriously bothered by seeing this content? People post violent content to Facebook. Shock and gore sites exist because some people actively seek out(!!) the kind of content that these moderators are being exposed to. It stands to reason that the subset of the population that at least finds that content not mentally damaging is substantially larger than the group that seeks it out.
I think perhaps people feel that you are minimizing the horror and repulsiveness of the content by saying that these moderators have a better job than working at a fast food restaurant.
My wife, who has worked in a busy McDonald's for 5 years, says this sort of moderation is far, far worse than anything she had to deal with. And she's had to deal with human waste, violence, and direct verbal abuse from customers.
Your point about making the working environment better is a valid one, but think it is overshadowed by your assertion that the horrific content is acceptable to "many people".
Your views do resonate with some people on Reddit though. I remember saying that I didn't like the pained yelps, limping, and whining of Dogmeat in Fallout 4, and I was attacked and ridiculed for that. I know I wouldn't last more than a minute at this Facebook moderation job, it would scar me for life. I don't think that means I'm "wrong", any more than your views are "right".
>I think perhaps people feel that you are minimizing the horror and repulsiveness of the content by saying that these moderators have a better job than working at a fast food restaurant.
I think that perhaps those people need to realize that not everyone is as easily rattled as them. Some people go to the Holocaust museum and are mortified by the details of it and are sad for a week. Some people go and are like "yeah, people do terrible things sometimes, this is just the worst systemic instance to date" and then go out for beers afterward. Whenever there's an armed conflict there's some people who are F'd up by what they see and there's some people who say "yeah that sucked and I'm glad it's over" and there's people in between. I think it's pretty evident that the ability to cope with violence varies a lot between individuals.
>My wife, who has worked in a busy McDonald's for 5 years, says this sort of moderation is far, far worse than anything she had to deal with. And she's had to deal with human waste, violence, and direct verbal abuse from customers.
I've done that too. I'll take hospital janitor over anything in food service. The general public sucks. The floor doesn't complain when you didn't mop it up just the way it wanted. I'd probably try my hand at a moderating job before I went back to food service. Blood, violence, obscene pornography, etc, etc don't bother me. It's nasty but whatever, some people are terrible so what do you expect. There's other things that bother me but those aren't it.
> your assertion that the horrific content is acceptable to "many people".
There's levels of acceptable and there's a reason these employees are being paid more than those of the call center across the office park. I'm not suggesting that some employees find it acceptable in the abstract. I'm saying they are not so easily mentally harmed by it to consider it not worth the pay.
I see it no different than a physically fit 20yo who finds a ditch digging job to be worth his while because he can handle it whereas the 50yo almost certainly cannot handle it without much greater negative health consequences. If you can hack it for the pay then why not.
>I don't think that means I'm "wrong", any more than your views are "right".
You're not asserting that nobody can do this job and I'm asserting that there exist people who can do this job (or at least people who whom the "shitty call center job" conditions are the primary irritant preventing them from doing this job). That said, the down-vote to reply ration makes me suspect that many people simply do not believe that some other people do not think like them.
The fact that these kind of shock videos are even a thing, kind of disproves your point.¹
There are also people who are habituated with cutting into living bodies (surgeons) but the difference is they are highly paid.
It's a bit unfair to equivocate and call this kind of work a good option for some people, when the vast majority of people who are in these jobs probably will be psychologically harmed by it² and are doing it because they have few other options.
It is relegated to an underclass, like all dangerous and undesirable work.
Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN, especially ones that cross into being unkind? You've been doing this a lot lately, and we eventually ban that sort of account.
I don't think I could do that job for very long - let alone in a badly run, high pressure environment with low wages.