[HN Gopher] Facebook Moderators Speak Out About Poor Working Con...
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Facebook Moderators Speak Out About Poor Working Conditions in
Ireland
Author : waynekerr
Score : 131 points
Date : 2021-01-30 13:38 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vice.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vice.com)
| throw2838 wrote:
| I deal with FB mods in Athens, Greece. This job is subcontracted
| to tech support company that usually handles phones. Low skilled,
| unqualified work, done mostly by students for a year after
| school. Working conditions and pay are ok for Greece. There is no
| trauma, worst stuff is soft core p#rn. Most of them work from
| home, as mandated by Greek gov.
| saltyshake wrote:
| If they WFH, then nothing will prevent them from 'copying' any
| material they want, even if by cellphone photo of the computer
| screen, no?
| throw2838 wrote:
| Well, in office there was very strict no smart phone policy.
| Privacy laws were big issue when WFH started in march. This
| company also does phone support for other clients, and
| handles credit cards. There are huge fines. I am not sure how
| they made it compliant for FB. Propably sensitive stuff is
| still handled from office.
|
| But if you have privacy expectation on fb...
| Twaway45609 wrote:
| They certainly hide also your personal information like
| name, peofike picture, etc... So at the end its just
| moderating texts or pictures without an author? Maybe they
| also automatically replace names in text?
|
| I dont think that would hurt anyone then
| saltyshake wrote:
| Child abuse pictures/videos can still be shared or sold
| online easily without PII. Other exceptions are
| celebrities or the difficulty in identifying PII in text.
| tomp wrote:
| Couldn't you just watermark all photos before showing
| them to workers? Probably wouldn't stand to sophisticated
| attacks but would guard against theft from "low-skilled"
| employees...
| throw2838 wrote:
| Facebook is the Silkroad 3.0 LOL
|
| Why would anyone use FB for that? It is already very hard
| to run legal sex related groups on FB. Registration is
| pain etc..
|
| Some other social networks are full of porn, but even
| those have zero tolerance for this.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Well if the content is being reported it is more likely
| public already or "almost public" (a big group or someone
| with lots of contacts)
|
| So I think the privacy expectation for that kind of thing
| is low.
| uniqueid wrote:
| How do these mods avoid the disturbing material?
|
| The information I've encountered on this topic is a pile of
| employees and journalists on one side painting a grim picture
| of life as a FB mod, and this one throwaway account on HN
| implying it's not so bad. Forgive me if I find that hard to
| believe.
| vorticalbox wrote:
| Blind luck or maybe there isn't as much disturbing material
| on Facebook as one is lead to believe.
| maccard wrote:
| The barrier for entry to facebook is quite high compared to
| many other places on the internet, which probably helps!
| in_cahoots wrote:
| It's a numbers game. For every piece of truly disturbing
| material there are probably thousands of dick pics.
| uniqueid wrote:
| That would surprise me greatly. In my online life I've seen
| stomach-turning troll content everywhere from Duolingo to
| bitcoin forums. But really, hasn't _everyone_?
| herewegoagain2 wrote:
| Not really, no.
| uniqueid wrote:
| I actually only added that line as a postscript to not
| sound like I was making some kind of feeble boast. Ie:
| 'I've seen things you people wouldn't believe: racist
| memes on Etsy, animal carcasses on glassdoor.com...'
| mprev wrote:
| Duolingo?
| uniqueid wrote:
| Duolingo had (or perhaps _still_ has?) language forums.
| worker767424 wrote:
| Your feed is pretty much posts from friends, groups, things
| you follow, and ads. If your friends aren't sharing old
| rotten.com posts and posting dick pics, it's probably
| pretty good.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| I was an early-ish Facebook employee, and started before they
| contracted out moderation. I once passed a content moderator
| in the lunch room, flipping through flagged images, about
| twenty per second. Presumably she was just reviewing user &
| automatic flags for accuracy.
|
| What they see is: Penis. Pages and pages of penis. Penis in
| all shapes and sizes and orientations and conditions. But it
| was all penis.
| bitL wrote:
| Porn detection with Deep Learning is 99% solved problem, I
| bet those moderators only get to view content where the
| model reports lower confidence, the rest is automatically
| removed. The same for gore etc.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| Think how many image posts and messages there are on
| Facebook and Messenger. Assume your Deep Learning model
| has 99.9% recall. It will still miss _millions_ per day.
| phreack wrote:
| That's conceivably manageable if you're Facebook's size
| with tons and tons of moderators, while improving the
| data set.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| Which is exactly what they do! For better or worse.
| curiousllama wrote:
| "Oh, look, a hot dog!"
| benbristow wrote:
| Maybe some are more thick-skinned than others. After years of
| being on the internet and having seen all sorts of stuff I
| barely bat an eyelid nowadays but if you're not used to it I
| guess it would be more traumatising.
| uniqueid wrote:
| I think it's more a function of age. People in highschool
| or college can stomach more than older adults.
|
| Younger adults don't shock easily because (a) they
| typically have less and feel less responsibility, (b) the
| thrill of breaking the rules tempers natural disgust at
| seeing edgy material, and (c) they have less life
| experience to have learned empathy for some kinds of
| people.
|
| Of course, I might be extrapolating foolishly from my own
| life. I used to have more stomach for cruelty.
| dariosalvi78 wrote:
| I remember well the times my friends used to send each
| other stuff from rotten. Not that I particularly enjoyed
| that, but I suppose it was part of becoming more mature?
| I liked the freedom of back then though, I feel like
| today's internet has become too politically correct
| sneak wrote:
| > _natural disgust at seeing edgy material_
|
| Disgust is a cultural learning, not a natural response.
| kodah wrote:
| It's actually both! Freakonomics did a great segment on
| the difference and the different types of disgust.
| https://freakonomics.com/podcast/disgust/
| zzzmarcus wrote:
| That's just... false. Disgust is a response we evolved to
| keep us from eating things that could kill us.
| uniqueid wrote:
| It's probably a mixture, but who knows. Chomsky and
| Skinner could probably debate it for several lifetimes.
| uniqueid wrote:
| Fair enough. The point about aging that I had in mind
| doesn't change if we redefine 'natural disgust' as
| 'culturally taught disgust' In general, the older you
| get, the further you get from mum and dad dictating your
| behavior, and so the less enjoyable it is to, for
| example, be rude/crude for its own sake.
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| I have spent a total of 30 minutes of my life on Facebook,
| looking at a friends feed (I never had an account). There is
| always a few people who use the platform to express themselves in
| the most horrible way. 30 minutes were enough for me, there are
| many crazies out there using the platform for unamicable
| purposes. No way the moderators worst case is soft pork, unless
| they are only looking at flagged posts. I am not sure why people
| think they need the platform to "keep in touch with friends" .
| What happened to a good old call or a WhatsApp message or god
| forbid, meet in person.
| scotcha1 wrote:
| WhatsApp is owned by Facebook.
|
| And 30 minutes is a pretty short period to get a representative
| sample of a service used by billions for many different
| activities (messaging, video calls, hobby groups, marketplace).
| The 'feed' that you scroll through is definitely a mixed bag,
| but Facebook has added focus to more specific and niche apps
| over time.
|
| For my family we use Facebook because it is cross platform (25
| people, several with Android, most with iPhone, and some that
| like to use it by web), everyone already has an account (ages
| from 25 to 65), and the quality of the service is high and
| consistent for both messages and video calls. We frequently do
| a video call with all members of the family across many devices
| and 'it just works'.}
|
| Also, meeting in person hasn't really been 'allowed' in almost
| a year. #covid19
| secondcoming wrote:
| If you are a contractor you don't work for FB. You work for
| either a separate company or your personal one.
|
| There's nothing to stop these people from starting their own
| moderation company that provides all the services they're
| demanding. Then they should lobby FB to use this company instead.
| bryan_w wrote:
| Here, on this venture capital forum, the idea of starting your
| own company is absurd.
| eecks wrote:
| Some jobs should be paid more. An example is shop workers who are
| front line during the pandemic and exposing themselves to
| covid-19 while higher paid people get to work from home. The
| problem is that it is seen as a low skill job. Same for content
| moderators. So should they be paid more? Arguably. Will they?
| Probably not.
| throw2838 wrote:
| Mods have very easy job, they have to decidee if picture has an
| underboob, or something is too controversial. Pay is comparable
| to nurse in hospital.
|
| IT IS low skill job, made by low qualified fresh graduates, and
| AI already handles big part of it.
| newsclues wrote:
| Crime scene cleaning pays more than normal janitor jobs, not
| because the work is harder but because there is emotional
| labour beyond the simple job.
|
| You need to consider the effects of work on employees bodies
| and minds.
|
| There is skill to be treated like a serf for a living and
| smiling to your masters who claim your labour is low skilled
| and not deserving of a fair (living) wage.
| throw2838 wrote:
| I go to pub with them (well, used to, thosr are now
| closed). Biggest problem they have are workload metrics
| (number of qualifications per hour).
|
| Real nurse has to deal with real blood and real gore. If
| you believe those mods should be paid more, you are out of
| your mind.
|
| Anyway, this type of jobs will be soon replaced by AI
| classifiers. Nobody will suffer anymore.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| Have you ever thought that maybe the particular
| subcontracting group you seem to know so well doesnt
| represent the entirety of FB mods as a job? You seem
| strangely adamant that this is no big deal, while
| ignoring the many reports we've heard over the years of
| the kind of very bad stuff mods have had to deal with,
| regardless of your anecdotal experience.
|
| Also, on AI classifiers, I think there are far too many
| nuanced situations to completely replace mods, and your
| comment about this is very hand-wavy, and even if you are
| right, we still need to deal with the problems we have
| now, not defer them by saying there will be a solution in
| the future.
| throw2838 wrote:
| I am just saying what I heard. Maybe it is AI, maybe it
| is handled in different office. This company is bussiness
| oriented, does tech support in multiple languages in
| large openspace fish bowl. It would be weird to restore
| passwords on one table, and watch violence on next table.
|
| But I am sure many of them would take this work for a bit
| of extra money. There are people from Middle East,
| Ukraine, Romania... We had millions refugees passing
| through Athens just a few years ago. Reality is simply
| very different here.
| dmatech wrote:
| More specifically, there are fewer people willing or able
| to do crime scene cleaning than normal janitorial work.
| That drives the price up. Simple supply and demand explain
| it quite well.
| arp242 wrote:
| People post things like beheadings, all sorts of sexual
| assault (including sexual assault on children), and so forth.
| It's not just underboobs and dickpics.
|
| There have been many stories about this, one example:
| https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-
| facebo...
| throw2838 wrote:
| People I know do not deal with this type of stuff. Maybe it
| is AI progress, maybe it is handled somewhere else.
|
| But for $35k/year you would find here many people with
| great english and university education. And life skills to
| handle this, for example former police officer.
| douglasisshiny wrote:
| Yes, like you said, there is brutal violence and child
| sexual assault material (CSAM) that moderators have to
| view. I worked at a non-profit to which Facebook, et. al
| are required to submit CSAM once detected on their
| platform. It's been a few years, but the quantity of
| content submitted from Facebook was truly disturbing.
| bzb6 wrote:
| Jobs are paid according to supply and demand. Jobs that anybody
| can do will always be paid poorly.
| bmm6o wrote:
| The job market is not a natural phenomenon like gravity. It
| is essentially a societal construct already subject to
| regulation. If it produces outcomes we - its builders and
| participants - don't like, we can change it. It's true that
| supply and demand will always be factors, but we can set
| boundaries.
|
| I'm not proposing any particular change here myself, i just
| want to push back against that fatalistic attitude.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| This is purely because of exploitation - people work those
| jobs to guarantee themselves shelter, food and warmth.
|
| If we (as a society) guaranteed everybody enough resources to
| live, those types of jobs would need to be paid a more
| appropriate rate, including hazard pay.
| finnthehuman wrote:
| Even if we presuppose that everyone working could choose
| not to work at all, I think your scenario is overly
| idealistic.
|
| What your scenario changes is that the labor supply gets to
| be much more selective about the job they take. Supply and
| demand still exist. Moderating facebook is still a low
| skill desk job. The pay and benefit floor may be raised
| across the board, but I don't see what the market force
| would separate moderating facebook from the other jobs with
| comparable pay today.
|
| Sure, you could quit a job moderating facebook and not have
| to worry about keeping yourself solvent. But the same goes
| for every other job. What would separate them from the jobs
| that they're on the same level with today?
| crumbshot wrote:
| > _What your scenario changes is that the labor supply
| gets to be much more selective about the job they take._
|
| Indeed, that's the point: to move away from the current
| system of the wealthy coercing and exploiting the not-
| wealthy.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| > What would separate them from the jobs that they're on
| the same level with today?
|
| I'm imagining jobs with (for example) a high emotional
| toll, disgust factor, risk factor.
|
| I believe those aspects are presently undervalued
| (described above as jobs which "anyone can do"), so I
| imagine there would be a reassessment of how those tasks
| are valued. They would likely require _relatively_ higher
| pay before people were willing to do them.
|
| Jobs with generally poor working conditions, or a high
| degree of managerial control and low autonomy, could be
| re-factored into jobs with better working conditions, as
| people are more able to be selective on that basis.
| matz1 wrote:
| The thing is not many people want to do this kind of
| charity.
|
| The only way to solve this is to develop a technology that
| is advanced enough and cheap enough that everybody can
| guarantee themselves shelter, food, warmth without any
| other human involved.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| > everybody can guarantee themselves shelter, food,
| warmth without any other human involved.
|
| I was also going to mention that this is actively
| prevented by modern society. In practice, you cannot
| forge these things by yourself, as you will soon be
| stopped by private landownership.
| matz1 wrote:
| I'm not sure, the trend is energy become cheaper and
| cheaper and technology become more advanced every time.
|
| I imagine technology that some day advance enough and
| autonomous enough and cheap enough that enable me to live
| off the grid with supply of unlimited solar energy and
| robot that can make me food.
|
| The only thing that can fix society is to have no
| society.
| [deleted]
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Well, that's true, but it doesn't make the GP false.
|
| UBI is a coarse hack that can improve this situation up to
| a limited amount, but it's mainly an open problem. New
| ideas on this area are very welcome.
| worker767424 wrote:
| > If we (as a society) guaranteed everybody enough
| resources to live
|
| That would do really weird economic things because either
| money would have to be something you _really_ want since
| your basic needs are already covered, or the job would have
| to be very rewarding because you can basically choose not
| to go into work arbitrarily.
| new_guy wrote:
| If everyone was guaranteed those resources, then no-one is
| going to do the jobs that need doing.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| In other words: [you believe] you benefit from this
| exploitation and you're quite satisfied with it.
| tomp wrote:
| No, you're presented a false dichotomy.
|
| There's no "we as society" that can just magically
| "provide the resources". The resources must _happen_ ,
| i.e. somebody actually needs to do _the work_. In other
| words, it 's someone's _job_. There is no feasible way to
| run a society without people doing the work. In fact, the
| pandemic has been a good example of this, on so many
| levels - farmers in UK complaining that the strawberries
| are going to rot on the fields without immigrant labour
| (because of border lockdowns), shops almost running out
| of food (because of supply chain breakdowns, which
| governments took a lot of effort to protect
| /reestablish), mask & PPE shortages (because there's not
| enough people doing _the work_ in factories -
| particularly in Europe), food deliveries (i.e. someone
| needs to actually do _the work_ of getting in a car and
| driving around), ...
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| Giving people sufficient basic resources for survival
| doesn't stop them from working.
|
| Everyone being paid more than a living wage is already
| choosing to do more work than they have to. Why do you
| assume that people would stop working, if they have a
| choice? It's already evident that people choose to work
| without coercion, if they are paid properly.
|
| My point is that coercion via threat of personal
| destitution is bad and should be eliminated, _not_ that
| work is bad.
| simplerman wrote:
| If no-one is doing jobs that need doing, then pay for
| those jobs will rise until it reaches equilibrium. Greed
| and motivation will always be there.
| bzb6 wrote:
| If everyone was guaranteed those resources, the price of
| everything would rise so people would still need to do
| those jobs.
| new_guy wrote:
| Even if prices rose with everyone guaranteed resources,
| why would anyone get off their asses to shovel shit when
| they can sit at home and get paid basically the same?
| bzb6 wrote:
| Because prices would be so high that you would be unable
| to pay rent or eat on your monthly "allowance". You could
| keep raising the allowance every month and things would
| soon spiral out of control
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| This assumes that large landowners and food conglomerates
| are 100% rentiers.
|
| That the money they make is based on the amount they can
| extract, and not on the value they provide. You're
| describing a system which is not democratic capitalism,
| it is serfdom.
|
| If that were the case, why would we continue to allow
| that?
| [deleted]
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| Guarantee Resources -> Higher prices for those resources
| -> People need to work to get those resources ->
| Resources are no longer guaranteed.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| That still doesn't mean it is exploitation. One person has
| no inherent right to shelter, food and warmth. If someone
| decides to give it to them, that is charity.
| saltyshake wrote:
| I am sure what you just mentioned are actually the
| universal human rights according to the UN..
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| I was curious about that; it is in Article 25 of the UN's
| Universal Declaration of Human Rights: " _Everyone has
| the right to a standard of living adequate for the health
| and well-being of himself and of his family, including
| food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary
| social services ..._ "
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| And this is why I have a problem with the UN declaration
| of human rights.If I choose to live on a Sandune in the
| middle of the Sahara, Who's obligation is it to ensure
| these services are provided to me.That said, I would say
| it's a reasonable aspiration for society to be structured
| in a way that this is achievable for people that want to
| work for it or can't work for it, but not a right
| 0xdde wrote:
| What do you consider an inherent right, then? Nothing
| aside from being allowed to exist?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| There are negative rights and positive rights. The former
| is freedom from other humans doing things _to_ and the
| second is requires other humans to do something _for_
| you.
|
| I believe that only negative rights are and can be
| inherent.
|
| You can build social contracts that help people get
| services and materials on top of this, because people
| care about each other.
| matz1 wrote:
| There is no such thing as inherent right, every right
| must be earned or fight for.
| ben_w wrote:
| Is/ought.
|
| Rights are oughts, not ises, IMO. (Oughts which I believe
| in, but still oughts).
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I agree, but this is a matter of semantics. There is
| nothing in the physical universe that supports morality.
|
| Rights are components of a moral framework, inherently
| philosophical - unless you believe in a god. When someone
| says something IS a right, they are really saying "This
| is a fundamental assumption in the moral framework I
| believe to describe a just world"
| eecks wrote:
| What is the point of society if we can't look after
| everyone in it?
| antonvs wrote:
| You can look back historically to answer that question in
| many ways. One common answer had to do with organizing,
| managing, and controlling people for the benefit of an
| elite ruling class. Which is still a reasonable
| description of e.g. US society today.
| arp242 wrote:
| This sounds incredibly heartless - even cruel - to me.
| I'm sorry, but I can't put it any other way.
|
| I'd like to think that we can transcend "survival of the
| fittest" just a little bit. Besides, you never know if
| _you_ might need some help from others for shelter, food,
| or warmth in the future.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I agree that it is cruel and am in favor of charity, but
| think it is important to be clear on the differences
| between rights and desires.
| zpeti wrote:
| If you want to transcend it, make the world that way, for
| people around you. But neither nature nor the human world
| is like that by default.
|
| And you can't expect other people to share your
| philosophy either. Giving people shelter costs other
| people time and work. How will you pay for that?
| zpeti wrote:
| It's pretty bad when an obvious comment like this is
| downvoting on HN. It's a fact, it's basic economics but also
| just how the world works.
|
| If you want mods to earn more create a social network and pay
| them more.
| crumbshot wrote:
| > _If you want mods to earn more create a social network
| and pay them more._
|
| This is an entirely unrealistic and unhelpful suggestion.
| bzb6 wrote:
| They don't downvote because they think the comment is
| wrong, they downvote because they'd rather reality not be
| like that.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| Jobs are also paid according to the danger they pose, often
| enforced by government or unions.
|
| Want to be an underwater welder? Sure, here's your danger
| surcharge.
|
| Want to be a cab driver on the night shift? Sure, here's your
| surcharge.
| seneca wrote:
| > Jobs are also paid according to the danger they pose
|
| Only because it's a function of limiting supply (of willing
| labor). High danger means fewer people willing to do it,
| which means it pays more to attract willing candidates.
|
| If there are still a ton of willing candidates, you don't
| get paid extra because you think it's dangerous work.
| jmeister wrote:
| So these contractors went all the way to Varadkar for minor
| inconveniences at their job, essentially internal disputes?
|
| Upset about not getting the same perks as other employees?
|
| Signing restrictive NDAs for a job with exposure to extremely
| sensitive company processes and customer data?
|
| The more I read about these stories, the more I'm inclined to
| believe Haidt's "Coddled Mind" and Turchin's "Elite
| Overproduction" theories as the root of much of the problems
| we're facing in the west today.
| scandox wrote:
| To a caveman your desire to eat regular meals, live past 45,
| sleep in warmth and not have to fight to stay alive each day
| would seem "coddled".
|
| As a society we get to decide what is a reasonable level of
| comfort and protection and it will always be a value judgement.
| Vaslo wrote:
| I had never heard of those Haidt's book or Turchin's theories.
| Very interesting reads - thank you for sharing!
| Macha wrote:
| Due to current covid-19 restrictions in Ireland, as a result of
| briefly having the world's highest per capita cases in early
| january, the government's policy is:
|
| > Only essential workers should travel to work. You should work
| from home unless you are providing an essential service and
| need to be physically present.
|
| https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/covid19/living_with_co...
|
| Facebook content moderation is unlikely to fall under
| "essential work" which is more concerned about healthcare,
| retail necessities (food/drink/medicine/cleaning supplies), and
| infrastructure. Given that they've pointed out moderators
| elsewhere can work from home, it's likely facebook cannot
| demonstrate that they need to be physically present to perform
| the work.
|
| So yes, it is a matter for the government to get involved in if
| Facebook or its subcontractors are not complying.
|
| As for Varadkar, getting involved is likely due to the fact
| this falls under his department's remit (as minister of
| enterprise), not his position as Tanaiste. But getting
| _personally_ involved is likely Leo looking for a good PR
| opportunity rather than the facebook employees insisting on the
| Tanaiste's personal attention. Or maybe he's just also their
| local TD, since his constituency is Dublin West where many
| people in Facebook offices in Dublin likely live.
| 0xdde wrote:
| Is this a willful misreading? The "perk" mentioned is WFH
| during a pandemic. The mental health concerns in question are
| due to viewing extremely graphic content, not at all along the
| lines of the ridiculous "safe spaces" Haidt's book concerns
| itself with.
| mynameishere wrote:
| _viewing extremely graphic content_
|
| Yeah, that's the job. Garbage men got to take out garbage. Do
| they want an extra bonus whenever the job matches the job
| description now?
| zacharycohn wrote:
| It's more like garbage men not being given gloves to do
| their work, or not provided health care when they slice
| their hand open on a broken bottle.
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