Facebook employs hundreds of young Filipinos to remove offensive material
dailymail.co.uk
dailymail.co.uk
I know outsourcing is good here. I know a lot of small startups here who does not take advantage of the cheap talent rates here. But this is Facebook. They preach "work life balance" on their blogs but seem to tolerate modern slavery here in my country. This is wrong. I hope this gets to the front page of your blogs and newspaper here.
This terror, fake news, live disturbing videos has been going on for Facebook for years now, I think they should have developed some kind of machine learning to at least detect and reduce a sort of percentage than get this fresh college kids to filter them. Instead they prioritize releasing new emotions stickers and transforming their messenger to a Snapchat clone.
They have hundreds, probably more than a thousand developers, pretty sure they can work on content filters and emotion stickers simultaneously.
Intentional hyperbole: being forced into wage slavery in order to afford basic food and clean drinking water is a little different than taking a driverless car to the Googleplex on a Saturday morning for free breakfast and a game of ping pong.
1. £1.36 = 86.68 Philippine Peso (according to Google)
2. average annual family income ... 267 thousand pesos [0]
3. 267000 / 2 = ~133500 yearly person income
4. There are about 2,087 work hours in a year [1]
5. yearly/hours 133500/2087 = ~64 Philippine Peso
* Average Guesstimated Salary: 64 Philippine Peso/hour
* Facebook Censurer Take Home: 87 Philippine Peso/hour
Let me crunch the numbers again for the top 10% earners [0] bracket.
1. (786000/2)/2087 = 188 Philippine Peso/hour
According to Investopedia the "average household income for the top 10% of earners is higher, at $295,845". which means that running the same numbers...
1. (295845/2)/2087 = 70
2. 70 / 2.16 = $32 USD/HR
I know I've definitely gotten some stuff wrong here. Please correct me if you know better.
[0] - https://psa.gov.ph/content/average-family-income-2015-estima...
[1] - https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/pay-admi...
[2] - http://www.investopedia.com/news/how-much-income-puts-you-to...
I'm really sick and tired of "but they're happy to have the abysmally low-paying job, because in their currency it's above-average!". Companies like Facebook aren't outsourcing to "give jobs to the needy"; they only do it because it's disgustingly cheap for them. The destitute, desperately grasping at the crumbs dropped on the floor by the rich, is not a positive thing. It's depressing.
What's next? Do we defend companies who hold immigrants' passports hostage, enslaving people indefinitely with no way out? After all, they pay X% above average! Those workers should be thankful just to have a job! Who cares that they'll never see their family again, and likely die while living in squalor?
1. Choose to fire the now reasonably well off employees forcing them to go back to a previous lines of employment that were less lucrative
2. Force companies to stop outsourcing labor which will in turn make it more likely for other countries to create similar sanctions like this against you.
3. Make companies pay foreign employees a "reasonable" rate based on local offering thereby making these jobs infinitely more lucrative then even well-educated professions and ultimately tilting their economy in an unwanted direction.
> The destitute, desperately grasping at the crumbs dropped on the floor by the rich, is not a positive thing
I wouldn't call the Philippines destitute. I know a few people who'd be offended by that characterization. I'd also ask: why are these people doing these jobs if it's not better then what they were doing before? Better either being higher pay, easier labor, or more enjoyable work environment.
The only question is "why are rich American companies outsourcing to the poor?". There's no reason why they have to. They can entirely afford paying full market wage in the US. If it's acceptable to outsource, then it should be legal to hire within the US for the same salary. Let Americans make $2/hour if that is the acceptable rate.
That's not how economies work.
> Let Americans make $2/hour if that is the acceptable rate.
I see no reason what that should be disallowed in my moral structure. If you don't think that's a reasonable wage don't take that job. You won't see any takers.
In the past, you wouldn't even have to ask this question, you would employ Americans as a matter of principle, as a matter of pride, to give back and reinforce this shared infrastructure and society for the benefit of future generations.
But then, none of this really matters in the new and improved globalist every man for himself world. (While the executives preach the virtues of socialist values.)
(a) They do receive reasonable wages. Better than the average in fact as the parent articulated. If you paid them US wages you would be completely distorting the local economy as suddenly you've created a community of millionaires. Do you really want medical/law students etc dropping out to become Facebook moderators because the money is so much better ?
(b) There is universal health care in Phillipines. Companies paying for health care is a US concept that doesn't apply in many other countries.
(c) They are employees of Accenture not Facebook. And not sure where you get the idea that all employees get stock options. That's something that again is a foreign concept in most places in the world.
Or are they taking advantage of the Americans that they don't employ?
I feel the same about this information. If anyone has plots they can through up I'd love to take a look.
> You probably also want 'censor'.
You are correct. I'll leave that unchanged because it doesn't effect the meaning of the post.
If you get 10% over the "average annual family income" of a USA family, but you live in San Francisco Area, you are screwed.
I understand your point, but "Doing this job is the local equivalent of ~$32 USD/HR in USA money for reading Facebook posts and deciding if it is terrorism or not." it's a big jump into conclusions without having more information. With 300,000 km2 and 100 million citizens probably requires more analysis. So maybe is a good job, it doesn't look like a bad one. Bud the "equivalence" is not as easy to get to.
My argument is that this outsourcing has a hidden cost, of radicalizing a anti-western, anti-captialistic youth wherever it happens. This is not just some shit-job exported- this is a problem creator at its finest.
This is hurting progress in this countrys. This is supporting religions who where constantly in decline. Sorry facebook, this might be a solution for you, but for the rest of humanity, this is a problem.
They are 'forced' to do the job?
They only get paid $'x' without any reference to local income?
Some workers work 6 days a week? Do they choose to do so to earn more?
This is very bad reporting and for me has near zero value.
1984 was wrong on this one. The censorship doesn't come from an all knowledgable goberment, but it comes from low-cost teenagers.
What impact is going to have into the global communications to introduce such a specific bias? What impact is going to have in the psychology of these young employees, that already live in a violent country?
Yes, they have. If it were possible to fully automate the task, Facebook will not hire humans. From the article: "The moderators have to check posts that have been flagged up and make a snap judgement on whether they should be taken down.". Some videos are probably easy to identify, but the world is a scale of grays.
I didn't say anything about terrorism. I was talking about "One ex-manager who helped recruit Facebook moderators said staff were often traumatised by material.". Sorry for not being more clear.
Stressful traumatizing jobs can have a worse impact in a poor country that in one where there is more help available.