Facebook to pay moderators for psychological damages

[TempestCatto]

Quote

In a 2018 lawsuit, third-party contractors for the company said that Facebook failed to properly protect them against severe psychological and other injuries that can result from repeated exposure to graphic material such as child sexual abuse, beheadings, terrorism, animal cruelty and other disturbing images.

To be fair here, they have a case. Like, no one should have to watch this shit. But then again, how does one protect against this in the first place?

 

Quote

The settlement grants U.S. moderators who were part of the class action lawsuit $1,000 each. Those who have been diagnosed with conditions related to their work will be able to get medical treatment and damages of up to $50,000, according to the preliminary settlement filed in the Superior Court of California for the County of San Mateo.

Not a whole lot when you think about it. I mean, they're probably gonna have to go through therapy for life. Or at least have meds for life. 50k won't cover it for that long.

 

 

Say what you want about this, but personally the reason I could never be a 911 operator is because of the traumatic shit you have to hear over the phone. Sometimes you're listing to someone get shot dead. Sometimes you listen in as someone gets abused. It's awful. But, to play devils advocate here, they did sign up for this job. And unless Facebook never stated anywhere about the "dangers" of this job, they probably shouldn't have sued. Oh well.

 

Spicy Sauce: https://www.wfmz.com/business/facebook-to-pay-moderators-52m-for-psychological-damages/article_9c8198a6-8f87-58ff-bfe8-d2cad6e11bc2.html?fbclid=IwAR3UpH6SB2sWAT9EgtIXMMiRE0Uv3HrdNX6HVr_cOwj7GZFBRrn7WNiG0rw

[Trinopoty]

I imagine all of these problems can be mitigated by having an extremely thick skin.

[foldingNoob]

I would classify this as a call center style job. Call centers are white collar sweat shops. Anyone that has worked in any call center wants to sue their employer for psychological damage. I know a lot of people, myself included, that has developed claustrophobia. I cannot be inside a building without a fan blowing on me, and I cannot be inside a building without open windows, even in the middle of winter.

[givingtnt]

That's good. it's unfortunate that people have to see these things and typically, people do get compensation for having to deal with that (Say, cops or other emergency response unit)

 @huilun02 I wish I could. I hear the web dev teams are great to work in.

[givingtnt]

3 minutes ago, foldingNoob said:

I would classify this as a call center style job. Call centers are white collar sweat shops. Anyone that has worked in any call center wants to sue their employer for psychological damage. I know a lot of people, myself included, that has developed claustrophobia. I cannot be inside a building without a fan blowing on me, and I cannot be inside a building without open windows, even in the middle of winter.

A call center is nothing compared to having to watch specifically for the moment where content is inapropriate to view to the general public. 
Do you want to (and I'll spoiler here because some don't like to read this) See : 

Spoiler

If you're sure..

Spoiler

Mutilated bodies, self mutilation, suicides, child pornography, animal abuse (whether it be beating or flat out just torture) decapitations, burned corpses...

What if it's a child ?
What if it's a newborn ?

 

On a regular basis ? I mean, sure. Cops will tell you that you get used to it after a lot of exposure. but it does affect a lot of people, even if they don't quite realise it yet.

[Kisai]

59 minutes ago, TempestCatto said:

To be fair here, they have a case. Like, no one should have to watch this shit. But then again, how does one protect against this in the first place?

 

Not a whole lot when you think about it. I mean, they're probably gonna have to go through therapy for life. Or at least have meds for life. 50k won't cover it for that long.

 

 

When I worked for a certain auction company, "that shit" , was handled by one specific department, because typically law enforcement got involved when these kinds of things were posted. I don't know how many people actually suffered from psychological stress from that department, but the one I worked in, would occasionally see this stuff since other people flagging things didn't know when something was "illegal because it's actually a crime" and "possibly illegal because an IP holder is laying claim to it", people just see the word "illegal" in an email and don't want to deal with it.

 

With social media, not just facebook, but youtube and twitter has rules about what can and can not be posted, and this is to protect the general public from exposure to content that is disturbing, and not in a fictional sense. People have been prosecuted for sharing videos and photos of children being exploited (in any sense), sexual violence, animal abuse and crime scene photos/surveillance footage/terrorist propaganda where people have been killed. Some sites like the *chan sites believe their freedom/first-amendment rights are being infringed if they're not allowed to expose the public to disturbing content, and thus sites like facebook and twitter have to keep moving the line where they will act.

 

If emergency (eg 911/112 operators, police/fire/ambulance dispatchers) have to go through psychological counselling when something disturbing happens, so should social media moderators.

 

But this isn't one-off stuff. There are people who LIKE the gore, the abuse photos, etc, and they are the exact people you do not want working at social media sites, because it will only encourage them to claim trophies before the content gets wiped, and they will share them among themselves.

 

[Mooshi]

What Facebook should do is hire people who are chantards. All the above content is just another typical day in the cesspool known as 4chan's /b/ boards.

[justpoet]

FB should pay for that.  It is an expected hazard of the job and they should pay for that to take proper care of their employees, in order to retain them and be a competitive and good workplace.

 

Except, this was a services contractor hired by FB…so the contractor should pay for that to take proper care of their employees, in order to retain them and be a competitive and good workplace.

 

Except...there really shouldn't be any case here either, since the workers signed up for the job and signed a contract to do it, knowing those services were not to be provided, and that California and FB are "at will" employment, so they can leave without penalty at any time for any (or no) reason.

[Spotty]

My understanding is a lot of the problem stems from how the staff are overworked. I've read that Google (Youtube), Facebook, etc [or the contractors working on their behalf] have measures in place to limit exposure of this content to their employees. The content for review is filtered in to various categories, things for like harassment, hate speech, spam, porn, etc and then there's also categories for the worst things - child abuse, murder, rape, terrorism, torture, etc. From my understanding and what I've read in other similar articles about this only experienced staff who sign up for it are the ones to review the extreme content, and even then they're only supposed to do it for a brief period each week (maybe a few hours?) and then the rest of the week is to be reviewing the more "normal" stuff. The problem is that there's so much extreme content they cannot keep up. The workers are spending most of their time reviewing the most extreme content, and because of the nature of the work there's a high staff turnover leading to further staff shortages and increased backlog of content to be reviewed.

 

If you spent 40 hours a week looking at photos and videos of people being tortured, burned, killed, raped then I'm sure you would suffer psychological issues as well. Doesn't matter how tough or thick skinned you think you are. Everyone has their limits. It will affect you in some way.

 

These companies need to do better to protect their workers and ensure their mental well-being.

[mr moose]

3 hours ago, givingtnt said:

  Reveal hidden contents

If you're sure..

  Hide contents

Mutilated bodies, self mutilation, suicides, child pornography, animal abuse (whether it be beating or flat out just torture) decapitations, burned corpses...

What if it's a child ?
What if it's a newborn ?

 

On a regular basis ? I mean, sure. Cops will tell you that you get used to it after a lot of exposure. but it does affect a lot of people, even if they don't quite realise it yet.

Cops will tell you that,  mostly because they don't want to talk about it.  Suicide rates are high in law enforcement and having spoken to the families of many cops (including friends who are cops) that shit effects them for long time after they stop working, the best most of them do is block it out and turn the emotions off (something that does not result in good outcomes).

 

I kinda agree with the OP,  Facebook should have given workers a big warning before they start their employment that that was what the job was.  the only way I can see facebook being responsible for this is if they moved employees into that department and didn't give them any options.

 

 

Also on a side note, facebook generally lose most of their court cases.  Especially when it comes to privacy and personal grief due to content on their service.  We just don't hear about it because they settle out of court.

[spartaman64]

10 hours ago, Trinopoty said:

I imagine all of these problems can be mitigated by having an extremely thick skin.

i mean that doesnt work too well for soldiers who are probably some of the people with the thickest skin

[givingtnt]

9 hours ago, mr moose said:

Cops will tell you that,  mostly because they don't want to talk about it.  Suicide rates are high in law enforcement and having spoken to the families of many cops (including friends who are cops) that shit effects them for long time after they stop working, the best most of them do is block it out and turn the emotions off (something that does not result in good outcomes).

I know, that's why I used that as an example lol.

9 hours ago, mr moose said:

 

I kinda agree with the OP,  Facebook should have given workers a big warning before they start their employment that that was what the job was.  the only way I can see facebook being responsible for this is if they moved employees into that department and didn't give them any options.

 

 

Also on a side note, facebook generally lose most of their court cases.  Especially when it comes to privacy and personal grief due to content on their service.  We just don't hear about it because they settle out of court.

I mean, not every case is big enough to warrant a post like this either so *shrug*

 

I'm glad the workers are getting something tho

[Trinopoty]

3 hours ago, spartaman64 said:

i mean that doesnt work too well for soldiers who are probably some of the people with the thickest skin

I'm known to be the most thick skinned person in my family and I'm not easily fazed my things most other people find horrifying. That said, my extent of experience extremely limited. It's just what I think might work.

[spartaman64]

1 minute ago, Trinopoty said:

I'm known to be the most thick skinned person in my family and I'm not easily fazed my things most other people find horrifying. That said, my extent of experience extremely limited. It's just what I think might work.

i assure you that you are not more thick skinned than marines short of being a psychopath and even they get ptsd so i dont think its a thick skin thin skin issue

[TaRaTaTa]

The only one who needs psychodoctor is Zuckerberg

[Yeroh]

I remember the Verge's video on facebook moderators, it painted a horrific picture of the job. Unsurprisingly, it also didn't exactly sound like the contractors did a great job of outlining what exactly would be within the scope of a moderator's daily tasks. Ultimately there needs to be complete transparency as to what type of content these people are going to be subjected to, and I suppose a general risk bonus plus a daily limit wouldn't exactly be a bad idea either. Unlikely, I suppose.

[Void Master]

Poor employees .....

I can barely handle 1 video before looking away ... or breaking down....

Even AI would get broken if it becomes aware of these things, Human like AI....

Even skynet ....

Man i understand Ultron now .... 

They deserve all the support they could get.

[Brooksie359]

7 hours ago, spartaman64 said:

i mean that doesnt work too well for soldiers who are probably some of the people with the thickest skin

To be fair there is a distinct difference between seeing something first hand and seeing it on Facebook. I mean you don't see people get traumatized by watching saving private Ryan even though the scenes would be traumatic if experienced first hand. 

[dalekphalm]

21 hours ago, Trinopoty said:

I'm known to be the most thick skinned person in my family and I'm not easily fazed my things most other people find horrifying. That said, my extent of experience extremely limited. It's just what I think might work.

Rest assured, unless you have some kind of mental illness like sociopathy or psychopathy, sooner or later, seeing people *literally* decapitated and children sexually abused regularly *will* eventually Fuck you up, causing psychological trauma, PTSD, etc. 
 

No matter of “thick skin” will protect against that. 

[Guest willies leg]

It really has to be all replaced by an AI. Or making opt-in and opt-out areas. We've all see this, and it ultimately ends in the company going away and everybody burned out. Happened at digg, it's happening at Reddit, and of course Facebook and Twitter.

[ARikozuM]

Medicare for All would fix this issue by covering all damages by a payroll tax rather than relying on courts and settlements to occur. 

[Rolling2405]

On 5/12/2020 at 9:25 PM, TempestCatto said:

Like, no one should have to watch this shit

They were getting paid to watch porn  Why???

That's not something that should be done at work

[Brooksie359]

On 5/13/2020 at 3:12 AM, mr moose said:

Cops will tell you that,  mostly because they don't want to talk about it.  Suicide rates are high in law enforcement and having spoken to the families of many cops (including friends who are cops) that shit effects them for long time after they stop working, the best most of them do is block it out and turn the emotions off (something that does not result in good outcomes).

 

I kinda agree with the OP,  Facebook should have given workers a big warning before they start their employment that that was what the job was.  the only way I can see facebook being responsible for this is if they moved employees into that department and didn't give them any options.

 

 

Also on a side note, facebook generally lose most of their court cases.  Especially when it comes to privacy and personal grief due to content on their service.  We just don't hear about it because they settle out of court.

It's also true that people who don't seem to be affected by witnessing messed up stuff usually do eventually. I mean often times they don't even realize it as it's effects can be very diffrent than people would think. Granted this is a weird case because it isn't first hand but over a screen and that begs the question if violent movies wouldn't have a similar effect. I guess knowing that the stuff is real rather than fake would be the reason. 

[NumLock21]

Do they actually sit there and watch every clip from beginning to end or just skip to certain parts and then determine whether to remove it or not.

[BuckGup]

On 5/12/2020 at 11:28 PM, Trinopoty said:

I imagine all of these problems can be mitigated by having an extremely thick skin.

Yeah PTSD is fake and all those soldiers are making it up they just need to pull themselves up by their boot straps and have thick skin like me. Dude you sound like an asshole. If you can shrug off watching thousands of videos of babies being brutally murdered and raped you should see a therapist ASAP.