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Comment by blackeyeblitzar | Hacker News Reader

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You think people who took these jobs had a list of job offers and were jumping for joy to be able to pick this one out? Or that they stuck with it after the first 5 minutes of moderating necrophilia because they believed other jobs would have similar downsides? You’re so out of touch with the real world and hardships people face trying to make a living for themselves and their family.

I’m curious of other perspectives and conclusions on this.

Why do you think Facebook is the responsible party and not the purveyors of the content that caused them PTSD? From my perspective, Facebook hired people to prevent this content from reaching a wider audience. Thanks for any insight you can provide.

I never said Facebook is the responsible party. I’m saying these workers deserve our sympathy and I’m saying it’s not a case of people who had a simple choice but willingly chose a job that caused them PTSD.

I don’t think Facebook is blameless though. They practically brag about their $40B of AI spend per year and absolutely brag about how advanced their AI is. You can’t focus some of your R&D to flag content that’s instantly recognizable as disgusting content, like pedophilia, necrophilia, and beastiality? There’s already a ton of pre-labeled data they can use from all these workers. No, they don’t get a pass on that. I think it’s shameful they focus all their AI compute and engineering on improving targeted ads and not put a major focus on solving this specific problem that’s directly hurting so many people.

Very good point. Thanks for taking the time to respond and for your thoughtfulness!

Maybe the solution is that Facebook shouldn't exist. It solves both the problem of distribution and the problem of moderation.

If others want to moderate why should these complainers get in the way? They are free to not take the job, which obviously involves looking at repulsive content so others don’t have to. Most people don't have a problem with social media existing or moderators having the job of a moderator.

It’s a little funny that we have heard concerns about AI eliminating jobs but now we’re hearing they’re concerned AI hasn’t taken this particular job.

Makes me wonder what the number of people is who also have this job who don’t want this lawsuit to happen for exactly that reason - that their job will be eliminated.

120 people out of how many? Tens of thousands globally?

While that would solve the problem within Facebook, I think you're kidding yourself if you think that's going to stop the demand or supply of horrible content.

At first glance you may have a point. Thing is they’re often recruited with very promising job titles and descriptions, training on mild cases. Once they fully realize what they got themselves into the damage has been done. If they’re unlucky, quitting also means losing their house. This may help empathize a bit with their side of this argument.

If you pay someone to deliver post, and they get their leg blown of because you order them to go through a minefield, you can’t just avoid responsibility by going “that’s what they signed up for” obviously the responsibility of ensuring that the job can be carried out not physically and r safe is with the employer and workers are well within reason to demand compensation if the employer hasn’t ensured the job can be safely carried out.

I think a better example is mining, where miners received no safety equipment, and the mines were not built with safety foremost.

The idea was, if you didn't like it, leave. If you wanted safety equipment, buy it yourself. Or leave. Can't work due to black lung disease partially from poor ventilation the company was responsible for? You're fired; should have left years ago.

There are still people who believe the contract is all that counts, nothing else matters, and if you don't like it, leave.

> It’s the job they signed up for. I don’t understand the complaint. If they don’t want to do the part of the job that is obviously core to it, they should move on. The mass diagnosis just seems like a tactic to generate “evidence”. And the mention of pay compared to other countries makes this look like a bad faith lawsuit to get more compensation.

its also their right to sue their employer for damage if they believe it affected them in a extremely harmful way. signing up for a job doesnt make the employer above the law.

But some here can't fathom that workers also have rights.

Exploited people of the world should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and work harder to get what they want, like you did?

They aren’t exploited. They’re paid money in return for viewing and filtering content for others. They could not apply or decline the offer and look at other jobs. The availability of this job doesn’t change the rest of their employment options. But it’s pretty clear what this job is. If it was just looking at friendly content, it wouldn’t need to exist.

Exploitation nearly always involves paying. Plenty of people caught up in sex trafficking still get paid, they just don't have a viable way out. Plenty of people working in sweat shops still get paid, but again not enough with enough viable alternatives to get out.

You’re still not acknowledging the key points - that it is obvious up front that the job fundamentally involves looking at content others don’t want to, and that it is a new job that can be accepted or avoided without taking away from other employment opportunities. Therefore it doesn’t match these other situations you’re drawing a comparison to.

Most of these people are forced to take these jobs, because nothing else is available, they don't have the power to avoid this job. You cannot make a principled decision if your basic needs, or those of your family are not met. In fact, many well-off, privileged people who are simply stressed cannot make principled decisions if their livelihood is at stake.

The world is not a tabula rasa where every decision is made in isolation, you can't just treat this like a high school debate team exercise.

Not acknowledging the social factors at play is bordering on bad faith in this case. The social conditions of the moderators is _the_ key factor in this discussion. The poorer you are, the more likely you are to be forced to take a moderator job, the more likely you are to get PTSD. Our social and economic systems are essentially punishing people for being poor.

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