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Comment by farleykr | Hacker News Reader

I wasn't sure if I wanted to throw my two cents into this comment section, but here goes...

I'm absolutely astounded that anyone is framing the concept of taking advantage of the vulnerable and exposing them to this kind of material for such meager pay as an opportunity for them.

This is slave labor and exploitation, regardless of whether or not the person in question is or is not a child by legal classification and whether or not the pay is above average for someone in their situation.

It makes me sick to my stomach that we are once again achieving "progress" at the expense of vulnerable people.

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Putting aside your devaluation of the phrase "slave labor" by applying it to things that aren't slave labor, I'll just ask: what would you have these people do?

Should they take a 60% pay cut to do back-breaking labor at a construction site? Take a bigger pay cut to wash dishes at a restaurant? Or perhaps they could work long hours subsistence farming; that's a pretty common option in Pakistan, if the numbers I'm seeing are at all accurate. I know people who used to do this, and from what I hear it kind of sucks.

Taking distasteful options away from poor people because they might choose those options is one of my least-favorite forms of moral grandstanding, because it hurts people who already have it rough.

Google search for “slave labor definition”: labor that is coerced and inadequately rewarded, or the people who perform such labor.

We can split hairs and debate semantics but that definition fits my use of the phrase.

I am not judging anyone doing the work. I’m judging the companies providing the “distasteful” options.

> I’m judging the companies providing the “distasteful” options.

To restate my actual argument, since you haven't really responded to it: what work would you have very poor people do instead? There are other options, but are those options actually better? And how would you or I know?

It seems a little insulting to presume that you know their lives and their employment options better than they do, and should choose in their stead. But that's exactly what people are doing when they put public pressure on these companies to withdraw unseemly-looking options.

I think a lot of people, many in the West with comfortable jobs, find it uncomfortable to admit that a lot of their lifestyle and maybe even their salary, depends somewhere down the supply chain on coercion (or at the very least, huge worker-employer power imbalances that look a lot like coercion) to make it all happen. We don't need to be able to rattle off a viable alternative, in order to express that there's something wrong.

I don't know if a job or product exists that, somewhere down the value chain totem pole, doesn't at some point rely on employers exploiting the threat of poverty to collect value from people.

Two things can be true at the same time.

In terms of employment, I would have anyone do the best they can to provide for their families. And it’s also a damn shame that the best option the people in question have is to label explicit content for AI for a dollar or two an hour at best.

I agree with you that providing an alternative should be part of the conversation and ultimate solution but providing an alternative is not a prerequisite to assert that something is unethical.

You talk about options like they have them. The main figure in the article said that they felt like it was digital servitude but a necessity. He’s not sitting down with a financial advisor to weigh his options and then deciding filtering smut for our AI overlords is a fiscally responsible decision.

To me, the issue is it's not enough to merely say "this job is unethical", unless your point is actually "the economic relationship between the first and third world is unethical". The first is true if the second is, but it's a small and weak part without the second explicitly stated to back it up.

Paying someone tiny amounts of money to do a boring job when they have other options available is not slavery. Slavery still exists today, mostly in the form of phony debt bondage or entrapment of workers who are in a country illegally but sometimes as direct enslavement with no pretenses, and it does not look like sitting in front of a computer or on a phone training AI.

The main figure in the article literally said their work felt like digital servitude [slavery] and implied they didn’t have other options.

The main figure in the article is using hyperbole to show how exploitative he thinks the working conditions are. However, despite being exploited, he is not locked up in a dormitory and forced to work because his "employer" stole his passport, or anything like it.

It's entirely possible that actual slaves are forced to do this work, but the conditions in the article aren't slavery.

Not taking the quote at face value and assuming it’s hyperbole is consistent with not thinking it’s actual slave labor. I’ll give ya that.

There's no description of slavery or even ambiguous conditions. He was a poor Pakistani kid earning a pittance online to help his family, working from the family home, and able to leave for another employer. That sucks, and the companies should pay more, but they're exploiting terrible wages in poor areas rather than coercing their workers.

The difference is important: we should avoid diluting the meaning of slavery, because slavery does exist and needs to be called out as effectively as possible.

This is slavery, regardless of whether or not this is slavery? Ok.

What word would you use to capture the idea of paying poor people or people in refugee camps a dollar an hour to label explicit content for AI?

“The nature of the work often feels like digital servitude—but it's a necessity for earning a livelihood.”

If I were trying to come up with a word for paying people, the first thing I would do is exclude all the words that explicitly mean not paying people.

Google search for “slave labor definition”: labor that is coerced and inadequately rewarded, or the people who perform such labor. We can split hairs and debate semantics but that definition fits my use of the phrase.

these people are not coerced, or inadequately rewarded. they are choosing to do this job and are being paid above-market wages (for _their_ market).

You are appealing to a sense of morality that has eroded away from the general populace.

I interpreted your use of the phrase “slave labor” as a euphemism for something like exploitative work as opposed to forced/coercive labor. This distinction matters, as well as the cultural differences between what sort of content is jarring to encounter in the US versus the regions listed in the article.

On the other hand however, these youngsters need to pursue other options. In the case of the gentleman who saved $70 for a date, even, adjust their priorities.

I see what you’re saying but even taking cultural differences into account I can’t imagine people from the regions listed in the article aren’t at least on some level unsettled by earning a dollar an hour to read accounts of rape and label porn for AI.

“The nature of the work often feels like digital servitude—but it's a necessity for earning a livelihood.”

To clarify, I find your sentiment touched on an aspect of the article that 1) I felt wasn't properly conveyed in the piece itself and 2) Is not being address adequately in the comments here.

> I see what you’re saying but even taking cultural differences into account I can’t imagine people from the regions listed in the article aren’t at least on some level unsettled by earning a dollar an hour to read accounts of rape and label porn for AI.

I agree. I'd go as far as to say with confidence that many of them are unsettled by these things, if my impression of Pakistani or Southeast Asian culture is at all accurate. On the contrary, I could surely imagine a considerable amount of people in other cultures being less unsettled by what's described in the article.

This story happens to touch on the intersections of certain cultural, socioeconomic and moral elements. I wish a different publication reported on it.

Given how most of the users here are silicon valley types… I'm not surprised they are fine with it.

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