Facebook Content Moderation Unwrapped - Sex, drugs, suicide jokes, and mental breakdowns

[Hiya!]

I thought the AI does most of the JOB since they have no live chat or email support but yes yes i know facebook does manually reviewed some of their reported post but still...

 

14/hr is not bad but if you end up losing your mind then that is not worth it.

[Guest]

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who reportedly make just $28,800 a year and use sex and drugs to deal with the stress.

 

Is sex Illegal? Am I missing something?

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

1) Is it just me that think these people sound really weak and fragile? I am not sure what type of content they have to shift through all day, but when someone says they develop PTSD and need therapy from reading "dehumanizing speech" all I can think is "wow, a special snowflake had to read someone say someone else was a nigger faggot and now they need therapy".

 

2) The entire thing sounds like they had some crazy party at work and got caught. "Yeah, we totally had sex and smoked weed at the office because we are overworked. We are the victims!". "Oh, you wanna know why I bought a gun to work? It's because I am overworked... Please feel sorry for me instead of call me an unstable psycho which should be locked up in prison".

And joking about suicide is even worth mentioning? That's like reddit-tier memes. I do that all the time too, but I don't bring it up to the press to gain sympathy points.

 

3) Hey @mr moose, remember when you applauded tech companies for censoring misinformation on their websites? These are the people in charge of deciding what is and isn't "misinformation". Weed smoking, gun wielding people with mental health issues who has orgies at work. I am sure that system will work wonderfully...

Yes I remember, I still stand by it.  Not sure why you think this changes anything,  These people are in the wrong job for their limitations. 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

1) Is it just me that think these people sound really weak and fragile? I am not sure what type of content they have to shift through all day, but when someone says they develop PTSD and need therapy from reading "dehumanizing speech" all I can think is "wow, a special snowflake had to read someone say someone else was a nigger faggot and now they need therapy".

Pretty much, like you do this kind of job and you don't expect some kind of "content" as Im working as a gravedigger and get sad, depressed and all kind of mental illness

watching dead people

 

 

[straight_stewie]

The Verge article is, a little silly.

One thing they say stuck out particularly well for me:

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Another former employee, who told me he has mapped every escape route out of his house and sleeps with a gun at his side, said: “I no longer believe 9/11 was a terrorist attack.”

Knowing what to do in an emergency is like, normal. But beyond that: These two ideas are totally unrelated, yet Verge uses them to support each other.
There are plenty of anti-gun individuals, and people who have never worked as an internet content moderator, that don't believe that the Twin Towers attack was a terrorist attack. There were even people that believed that it was an inside job as soon as they heard that it happened.

What Verge is calling crazy here [having firearms in easy access around the home] is, in fact, considered to be an intelligent decision by tens of millions of Americans.

 

The rest of that stuff, about employee metrics and not having paper and pencil at desks is common to most call center type jobs. In fact, by law, if your customer help center accepts credit card information then your employees may not have any recording tools on their person while on the call floor.

[S w a t s o n]

Weak, I would do this job if it paid like 3x as much

[williamcll]

Wired wrote about this Four years ago
https://www.wired.com/2014/10/content-moderation/

[CarlBar]

I'd like to say this is surprising. But it really isn't. Expose someone to the nastier side of the human psyche for dozens of ours a week and it is going to have an effect on their mental health unfortunately. An properly supporting employees in this kind of thing is hard, and that means expensive.

[LAwLz]

7 hours ago, mr moose said:

Yes I remember, I still stand by it.  Not sure why you think this changes anything,  These people are in the wrong job for their limitations. 

Because when I said raised concerns about how such a system would be implemented you brushed it off as not being a big deal. I said that I did not like the idea of banning certain things from being discussed on Facebook because it opened up the possibility of large errors, misuse and abuse, on top of it being a very real slippery slope.

You replied that "well just make gray areas allowed and the strictly bad stuff not". You never addressed how it would be implemented and never acknowledged the problems with implementing such a system. Now we have a glimpse of how their current moderation system works, and it's awful.

 

Would you trust these people with deciding what is and isn't legitimate medical information? Because there is a very real possibility that these are the same people who will be in charge of deciding what is and isn't good medical advice on the platform.

[rcmaehl]

12 hours ago, Lukyp said:

Is sex Illegal? Am I missing something?

 

Full quote: 

Quote

where employees, desperate for a dopamine rush amid the misery, have been found having sex inside stairwells

 

[Fasauceome]

15 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Please feel sorry for me instead of call me an unstable psycho which should be locked up in prison

Why is prison the place for somebody who's considered an "unstable psycho?" Does someone with a crippling mental disorder not deserve proper psychiatric care? 

[EarthWormJM2]

13 hours ago, Lukyp said:

Is sex Illegal? Am I missing something?

...Welcome to America , where an air of prudishness still lingers and saying something like "sex and drugs" still will set some people off here. 'Sex' was only put to try and make the employees sound more out of control and trigger some, it's not illegal, and you aren't missing anything. Also, weed is medicinally legal in Arizona, so technically not even illegal if the employee has a medical card. Way to go media VERGE...

[EarthWormJM2]

30 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

Why is prison the place for somebody who's considered an "unstable psycho?" Does someone with a crippling mental disorder not deserve proper psychiatric care? 

..If only proper psychiatric care was a concern to anyone in government in the US. They have been steadily closing mental institutions since the 70s to free up the federal budget, and now there are a ton of studies and articles pointing to needing mental institutions now. It's sad, but prison is basically some of these mentally ill peoples only option right now, and that is the mindset of a lot of the public since mental institutions are disappearing.

 

https://www.npr.org/2017/11/30/567477160/how-the-loss-of-u-s-psychiatric-hospitals-led-to-a-mental-health-crisis

 

[Fasauceome]

4 minutes ago, EarthWormJM2 said:

It's sad, but prison is basically some of these mentally ill peoples only option right now, and that is the mindset of a lot of the public since mental institutions are disappearing.

I can only hope that mentally ill people shouldn't have to settle for a lesser of two evils situation, prison is a bad environment for anybody in the US, let alone people who need psychiatric care

[Juniiii]

18 hours ago, fasauceome said:

Bad taste in my mouth, even though this is super serious.

 

I definitely didn't expect Facebook to bother with human moderation, or even within the United States for that matter, since cheap overseas PC labor is easy today come by. 

They recently started this after the controversy with political biased posts on Facebook. So now they hired mods to make sure nothing against their rules I posted. Honestly probably the most stressful job.

[Mooshi]

18 hours ago, BuckGup said:

I feel like AI could replace that job now days

You clearly haven't seen Tumblr's filter in action finding sand dunes to be nudes. AI being ready for that is like saying burger flippers actually deserve $15 an hour.

[BuckGup]

1 minute ago, Mooshi said:

You clearly haven't seen Tumblr's filter in action finding sand dunes to be nudes. AI being ready for that is like saying burger flippers actually deserve $15 an hour.

Lol it's not perfect but to save someone PTSD it's worth every penny

[Mooshi]

3 minutes ago, BuckGup said:

Lol it's not perfect but to save someone PTSD it's worth every penny

Some of that stuff still needs a human eye which is unfortunate.

[BuckGup]

6 minutes ago, Mooshi said:

Some of that stuff still needs a human eye which is unfortunate.

For now but I doubt it will in 6 years

[Commodus]

51 minutes ago, EarthWormJM2 said:

...Welcome to America , where an air of prudishness still lingers and saying something like "sex and drugs" still will set some people off here. 'Sex' was only put to try and make the employees sound more out of control and trigger some, it's not illegal, and you aren't missing anything. Also, weed is medicinally legal in Arizona, so technically not even illegal if the employee has a medical card. Way to go media VERGE...

I don't think that was really the goal at all.

 

It's not that The Verge was shocked and appalled at sex and drugs, it's that the content these people see drives them to these things as coping mechanisms.  Sex and weed are fine by themselves, but you shouldn't lean on them as antidotes to your job.

[peanuts104]

15 hours ago, Lukyp said:

Is sex Illegal? Am I missing something?

No, but it's generally frowned upon in the work place, which is where the article says they were doing it.  You know, unless you're a hooker.

[Juanitology]

21 hours ago, Arika S said:

That is fucked up.... I have no other words for this. 

 

Support your fucking employees 

If they are outsourcing to Cognizant, then it's cognizant who is responsible for providing a good working environment and the support that the employees need. But facebook should act after find out how badly their indirect employees are doing. 

[RedRound2]

On 2/26/2019 at 4:58 AM, LAwLz said:

1) Is it just me that think these people sound really weak and fragile? I am not sure what type of content they have to shift through all day, but when someone says they develop PTSD and need therapy from reading "dehumanizing speech" all I can think is "wow, a special snowflake had to read someone say someone else was a nigger faggot and now they need therapy".

I don't think hate speech is the reason these people are feeling distraught. Watching brutal murders, child pornography, rape videos and getting subject to constant conspiracy theories can make you go pretty haywire, especially when they're underpaid and the whole workplace is a despressing place to be in.

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2) The entire thing sounds like they had some crazy party at work and got caught. "Yeah, we totally had sex and smoked weed at the office because we are overworked. We are the victims!". "Oh, you wanna know why I bought a gun to work? It's because I am overworked... Please feel sorry for me instead of call me an unstable psycho which should be locked up in prison".

You don't know for certain. In a environment like that you can be desperate to feel good and both weed and sex are the easiest way to feel good.

Quote

And joking about suicide is even worth mentioning? That's like reddit-tier memes. I do that all the time too, but I don't bring it up to the press to gain sympathy points.

Joking about suicide can maybe be an internet joke, but joking about suicide to your friends  and saying things like "it would be cool if I die like this tomorrow" in real life is usually always a secret cry for help. I have gone through depression and it's no joke. 

 

[mr moose]

12 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Because when I said raised concerns about how such a system would be implemented you brushed it off as not being a big deal.

No, I said implementing a solution was a secondary issue that did not nullify the primary problem.

12 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I said that I did not like the idea of banning certain things from being discussed on Facebook because it opened up the possibility of large errors, misuse and abuse, on top of it being a very real slippery slope.

That's nice, i don't subscribe to slippery slope arguments.

12 hours ago, LAwLz said:

You replied that "well just make gray areas allowed and the strictly bad stuff not". You never addressed how it would be implemented and never acknowledged the problems with implementing such a system. Now we have a glimpse of how their current moderation system works, and it's awful.

Now you are not paying too much attention if that's your conclusion.

12 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Would you trust these people with deciding what is and isn't legitimate medical information? Because there is a very real possibility that these are the same people who will be in charge of deciding what is and isn't good medical advice on the platform.

A 3rd party company running a poor program and underpaying it's staff doesn't change any of the issues raised or the need for them to be addressed.

[mxk]

On 2/25/2019 at 1:38 PM, BuckGup said:

I feel like AI could replace that job now days

AI is certainly doing an amazing job in CSGO. Valve has used it very well, and the CSGO AI has to evaluate videos, not pictures.