India's female workers watching hours of abusive content to train AI
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Immediately at launch, we started having a huge amount of (image) pron being uploaded into the pages. We put in some rate limits etc, but did not want to put any major restrictions of user signups etc as that would hurt signup figures (important to the ceo!).
We already had some content review people thru a temp agency on site, so we checked with them and they were fine doing this manual filtering of these images for us. All young (early 20s) women. While my team built a quick "dashboard" for them to be able to do this image filtering quickly and conveniently, I had a detailed conversation with them as I was very concerned about having them review this kinda stuff for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Truly nasty stuff.
They were _perfectly_ clear that they had no issues with it, and they told me in so many words to not give it a second thought and to let them get back to work.
It was a surprise, but it was a point of realization: there are much worse things they could be doing. And looking a porn has shock value only the first time. I was under-estimating these women and assuming they were some "snowflakes" who could not deal with something this silly and non-threatening.
Just my own person anec-data.
What else is going to happen?
For many people, the alternatives can literally be death, wading unprotected through human excrement, sold into defacto slavery, etc. etc.
AI can do some of it (now), but largely isn’t going to be more accurate and still needs humans to double check its work.
I also don't think it's fair to exploit people who are in terrible situations by pushing jobs we don't want onto them, pay them a handful of crumbs, and then say they should be happy with what they get because their neighbor who does another job gets half a handful of crumbs.
Why the compulsion to paternalistically ‘protect’ everyone even to the point of making them unemployed? I assume they weighed their options and decided this was the best one. It sounds like you want to stop them from doing that?
Isn’t that the real minimization?
The article explicitly mentions that the jobs aren't clearly labeled so they couldn't weigh their options beforehand, that concerns raised by the workers are being dismissed by management, and that several workers have developed mental health problems.
I'm not arguing that these women should be "protected" by taking their jobs away or that they can't make their own choices; of course they're weighing their options and deciding accordingly (the article even mentions that some of them decided to leave). But it's not unreasonable to critique a system where the only choices they have are all horrible in (often more than) one way or another.
This argument is a false dichotomy.
Plenty of people would (literally) kill for those jobs, and have no other useful employment.
In those countries, Women are often widely forbidden from doing most jobs, which makes them particularly vulnerable.
Are you willing to stop carrying water for misogynists and abusive employers?
And how have you done re: ongoing jobs? The thing that was the actual topic here?
The reality is that if there were better jobs available for folks relative to number of available employees, the employer wouldn’t be able to find the people to do the crap jobs we’re talking about, and would have to make them better to get anyone to do them.
Or result to actual (or just de-facto) slavery anyway, which does happen in some places.
It’s a continuum.
Actual living conditions in India, in particular, are pretty brutal for most people. But certainly not just there!
My statement is not putting the failure in the individuals who are accepting the work as a means of survival.
My original statement stands, there is plenty of productive work to be done in the world, but industry is funneling labor into man-made horrors for bottom dollar wages
But we came to the realisation that these folks were probably happy that they could send money back to their villages. And we left a nice tip.
For ~ the first half of the 20th century, the leading scholarly theory on US slavery was that the slaves were happy living in a civilized land, etc. You'll see the same claim about many things.
I think the trap has two sufficient components: First, it lacks empirical observations - actual fact that tethers us to reality - and therefore is very prone to drift far from the ground truth. Second, it's a much more comfortable worldview for us, and we tend to adopt such worldviews until compelled to do otherwise.
Just because there is an upside for them - sending money home - doesn't make them happy or make it good or ok. As an extreme example, some underage people go into prostitution because they need the food and shelter to survive - the fact that they get those benefits doesn't make them happy or make it good or ok.
The reality is that I’m not seeing anyone proposing actually making the situation better, or addressing why people might consider these jobs better than their alternatives.
Rather people trying to shut down these jobs - and defacto pushing other people into what those people clearly seem to consider to be worse alternatives?
Having actually seen up close and personal the alternatives many of these people are facing, while I think everyone would of course prefer the nice comfy joys of an office programming job, no one here seems to be offering those people those jobs are they? In fact, people are scrambling to keep those jobs.
Instead, those folks would end up taking a similar job elsewhere, or even more fun - something likely far worse. Which is why they are applying for those jobs in the first place.
Can we make the jobs a bit better? Likely, and we should.
Does it change the nature of those jobs? Or make the alternatives better? Not a bit.
> I’m not seeing anyone proposing actually making the situation better, or addressing why people might consider these jobs better than their alternatives.
That is discussed in many comments on this page.
The research and reporting, which looks at actual people's experiences says otherwise. This issue has been coming up for years.
People live through war, murder, torture, rape, etc. We can always find something worse but that doesn't make the current situation better. Human experience of pain and trauma isn't scaled relative to the worst possible pain and trauma.
Just because it's beneficial for them doesn't mean they are getting exploited.
Looking at porn or something similar or actually really bad , changes people.
Even if it means they get a lot more insensitive
To not be modern slavery it would/should have above avg pay and benefits.
"All young (early 20s) women" doing explicit content manual filtering is not normal. No Indian Family would allow their daughters (and sons) to take up such a job if they knew about it.
As the article itself points out, the workers are drawn in by non-explicit/non-pron image annotation and then switched to psychologically harmful work when they cannot leave due to job-needs/contracts-enforcement.
This is pure bait-and-switch scam which has severe psychological effects on the women (and men) involved and should not be blithely hand-waved away.
For a detailed understanding of the psychological harm of explicit image annotation see this documentary (not specific to India) The "Modern Day Slaves" Of The AI Tech World. Undercover reporter does annotation of explicit images for AI but is so traumatized by what he sees that he quits in two weeks. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPSZFUiElls
This person is earning a really competitive wage. She’s getting the power and independence to lead a materially good life. This will trump every other metaphysical concern you can have by watching these abusive videos.
Some one has to moderate these videos and it’s great that it’s someone poor who’s getting the opportunity.
I'm more bothered by the fact that once again an article focuses on the plight of an identity deemed oppressed rather than broader concern for working classes. All it does is sell it as pandering rather than exposing a genuine issue. And as usual from the post-modern left, dividing rather than uniting. The article's entire justification for this is the absolute cop-out: >Women form half or more of this workforce.
As another example, I read an article the other day complaining about an advertising campaign from a colossal multinational company replacing the "o"s in London tube stop names with "0.0"s. Why? Not because of excessive corporate encroachment into public spaces, but because it might be confusing for disabled people. Maybe it would be, but once again the broader problem of capitalist overreach is ignored in favour of identity. Corporate exploitation is fine as long as it doesn't impact people who aren't able white men
That would be as helpful as these vacuous takes.
As long as a website allows user generated content, there will be this need to moderate it
There's also a lot of content that companies don't want to host or show to their users in general.
An improvement in material conditions does not straightforwardly make up for these problems. What if they cause the viewer to commit suicide, or be so distraught they can no longer continue to work? People who do this work tend not to be able to do it for very long.
You also seem to be evaluating this by taking the current order of things for granted, as if it were not possible for this kind of thing to not be necessary in the first place. Quite a stunted imagination.
Look up farmer suicides in India an you can understand how material poverty leads to even more suicides statistically.
These people don’t even have food to sustain. One of the biggest problems is that poor people in India have low IQ because they literally can’t afford food with vitamins.
Low IQ leads to irrational decisions, low productivity and they get equal vote so they vote in idiots that slow progress.
These jobs are the best deal for overall progress of India. Sure they have to struggle in the middle but at least they have good food on the plate. Some safety net to make long term decisions and vote for better leaders.
You wouldn’t get it. You would just show concern. But Indians have to deal with the problems.
People will do what they have to do to survive. But this is hurting these people who long suffer long after the social media company’s contractor discards them.
They make irrational decisions - don’t send their kids to school, make them work in farms. They are mentally stunted because of low quality food. They vote for idiots which stall progress even more.
You show concern but what is the alternative? Ask the capitalists for even more money?
Nvidia’s profit alone would’ve been more than enough to end world hunger by these estimates.
yes, all that profit they are making should be invested into the future of our society. globally.
poor people don't send their kids to school because school costs money, which they don't have. school is an investment into the future. but you can't make an investment if you don't have anything to invest. which is why that investment needs to come from those who have the money.
You suggest that the state set minimum wage above what the lady already earns? She earns way more than minimum wage.
what i am suggesting is that the only way to lead people out of poverty as a society is to heavily invest in education. paid for by taxing those that make all the profits. paid in such a way that sending children to school offsets the loss of income the family would have from letting the children work in the fields. (in some places in africa this works because the school is the only place where the kids get food.)
i am not suggesting that these jobs should go away. that's besides the point. i am not sharing any opinion about those jobs or the current situation.
what i am suggesting is that instead of arguing about the situation or complaining about those jobs, the best way to make life really better for these people is to improve their education.
the companies that provide these jobs could be contributing to that too by not only paying good salaries as they are but also directly investing into the building of schools, and making sending children to school a condition of employment.
Let women work the jobs, and laws mandating upfront transparency and mental health support. It shouldn't increase costs significantly and the benefits in human dignity will be more than worth it.
And don't stop working to make governments more honest, so other jobs can be established. Improve education so silly superstitions don't keep women locked out of large swathes of society and work.
I can see why many think that our global social activism would be better redirected at simply making poorer people less poor as opposed to their exploitation. It’s definitely a jaded view though.
As long as it doesn't involve just giving them money. This experiment has been done in Africa for as long as I can remember and there's only more poverty and a higher birth rate.
"without telling poorer people that they should be happy we're offering them the jobs we don't want to do ourselves"
A corrupt government is usually the reason a country doesn't prosper. There's no jobs because businesses end up just getting ripped off and move elsewhere (along with anyone smart). What's left is a broken infrastructure and abject poverty.
Until this is fixed, things will never change.
That's simply not true.
> A corrupt government is usually the reason a country doesn't prosper
You're probably ignoring the centuries of corporate rule in India that systematically removed wealth to Britain, and which left behind a traumatised and humiliated population that was allowed to play in a game of capitalism they didn't start with the cards already stacked against them.
This stuff does bring them money which is nice, but a person having access to and learning to use a welder or lathe or loom or repair or fabricate such thhings has value far beyond merely their wage.
Tools and the skills to use them is the most important thing in building a modern society. Countries don't really ever transition from agrarian straight to a modern service economy.
The question though is why that material poverty exists in so many parts of the world that were once pretty advanced civilizations.... Colonialism def had a part to play there. So the irony isn't lost that western powers exploited and extracted from civilizations and cultures that were different from theirs..all in the name of progress of course..and now those parts of the world are dependent on the breadcrumbs thrown their way by different western powers.
Do they? Maybe you can never get to zero, but I'd be surprised if there weren't any ways to materially reduce the frequency of such videos being uploaded.
Of course, many of these ways will probably affect growth metrics, and since these directly translate into revenue, I can imagine how the economic tradeoff that was made here looks like...
I think with this info we can assess whether the wage is indeed competitive. Otherwise claiming "well they're getting paid" can be used to justify exploitative labor practices or negate the need for ethical inquiry.
Also calling psychological harm metaphysical is questionable. Is PTSD experienced by American troops coming back from deployment metaphysical? Not necessarily comparing these cases in degree.
I'm not sure what invoking neocolonialism adds to the discussion. Best to engage on a factual rather than ideological basis.
But I think the reason people have a problem is that giant multi-national corps have created a system where shoveling bodies into the furnace is the most profitable option for these desperate people.
The wealth available in the world right now is completely unfathomable, and its mostly going to ads, privacy invasion, burning massive amounts of energy to make fake videos and articles and more adware, etc. Its not wrong to think "is something wrong with having droves of poor people wading through our shit so they don't starve?"
Similar to how the coal mining companies were happy to watch miners die in the mines from blacklung, and their services were indeed useful, and they were quite proud of it. Its a complex issue because it was critical work at the time. However, only a little while later, we realize the system we had was broken and poisoning the planet, ourselves, and the workers. I'm sure many coal miners are remiss that they no longer can work the mines, and many companies would be happy to employ them if it was profitable enough, but ultimately its not a good system for anyone. And if I hear that "coal miners in high demand in China" I'm not going to say "oh I'm so glad they have employment" I'm going to ask "why aren't they using a clearly better alternative for those people?"
they didnt do by intention - "market forces" drove them there to do this, i.e. competition / costs etc.
Why is the sole blame on countries other than India. We should be focusing on the government of India and why the system there creates a society with a much larger percentage of poverty than many other parts of the world.
"Similar to how the coal mining companies were happy to watch miners die in the mines from blacklung, and their services were indeed useful, and they were quite proud of it."
How is this similar? Nobody is dying from looking at terrible content.
"why aren't they using a clearly better alternative for those people?"
This article is about the better alternative. They aren't physically risking their lives every day to make a living.
You can blame India all you want; Modi is very much due for criticism, his political leadership is pitiful and merits no quarter from Western governments or otherwise.
But the Russian Federation doesn't care, they've got crude to process. The Knesset won't convene to denounce their enemy's enemy. The US loves buying cheap oil and siphoning Indian labor. They'll blame India right alongside you all day long, but they won't ever stop supporting their broken system. India's suffered from this for the better part of a century and it's becoming apparent that foreign influence is the issue.
I think THIS shows that you've never dealt with people in abject poverty. Just because you live in poverty doesn't mean you lack humanity.
People lie, cheat, steal, sell their bodies and kill to subsist in poverty. Whatever it takes to survive. That is totally separate from the toll that that type of surviving takes.
Watch the documentary i link to here, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46921505 for a better understanding.
Dissociation. A classic sign of trauma and PTSD.
In fact, Facebook was taken to court over this, admitted to the harm caused and paid out a hefty amount;
Facebook will pay $52 million in settlement with moderators who developed PTSD on the job - https://archive.is/M4tdk#selection-1487.0-1487.89
Also watch the documentary i link to here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46921505
Maybe they should get edgy teenagers to do the content classification rather than third-world rural women with minimal media exposure.
You can find areas of propaganda where site rule breaking will be allowed if it serves the interest of the owner, but you really have to seek it out. It's even weirder that the latest generation is self censoring common words so they can show up on sites like TikTok. Billionaires buying newspapers to censor seems less strange but sadly something I also didn't expect.
after being the regular visitor of WPD I stand at the junction waiting for my turn shielded by the traffic lights pole and always look in the eye of the driver when crossing the road, especially if it's tall truck
some ppl don't realize how many lives actually WPD saved, but hey now we have victory nobody is exposed to this disturbing content and making silly jokes about death, right?
Those streams were customers. Our people’s job was to monitor the streams for video and audio quality issues. When I would tell my friends that I worked with guys who’s literal job was watching porn on a sofa all day, they thought it must be the best job in the world.
But when I talked to the guys that actually had the job, they said it was a terribly boring chore. Even worse, they said you quickly become so desensitized that it bled over into their non-work life in a negative way. Almost everyone that had that job eventually grew to hate it.
These kinds of jobs have always existed. To some extent someone needs to do it. While we may be outsourcing it now, there is a long history of paying people in the US to do it.
This is not new. The British boast of banning slavery but they will never tell you about their invention of bonded labour. They imported bonded labour to South Africa, Guyana and other parts of their empire.
Now companies can use the Internet to keep the labour remote. Doesn't even require a degree.
A take for the ages.
but there's simply not that much money to redistribute, unless more companies provide employment and drive labour demand up - exactly what is happening in this article.
so you can gesture all you want about women being poor and deserving more money, but it doesn't mean anything. you can't pay them above market rate, where will the money come from? certainly not taxes - there's simply not enough to go by.
You’re so convinced that money is more important than human dignity you use the word “generosity” as invective. It can be hard to remember that this point of view exists, so thank you for the reminder.
This is a consequence of communism and big government of India.
Seems like kind of job that needs physical filtering. Onboard bunch of candidates, measure their vitals, find low responders to abusive stimulus, hire them. I'm sure there's some poorly replicated psych study done on 1st years to draw from.
Oh, wait, India?
The "Modern Day Slaves" Of The AI Tech World. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPSZFUiElls
In 2027, virtual assistants like Sarah seamlessly handle our daily tasks, making life appear effortless. But behind this technological marvel lies a hidden reality. This documentary unveils the untold story of the ghost workers who power our digital world, performing the tedious and often traumatic tasks that machines can't handle.
Meet the invisible workforce behind tech giants like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Uber. These underpaid and disposable workers label images, moderate content, and train AI systems, often earning less than minimum wage. Their work is essential yet remains in the shadows, unacknowledged by the companies that depend on them.
00:00 - Introduction: The Illusion of Effortless AI
02:15 - The Hidden Workforce: Who Are the Ghost Workers?
05:30 - Undercover: Life as a Content Moderator
09:45 - AI Training: The Tedious Tasks Behind Smart Machines
13:20 - The Psychological Toll: PTSD and Stress Among Moderators
17:00 - The Future of Work: What Lies Ahead for These Workers?Let's say these jobs are bad. What do we do then? Just not have people do this job? Not allow uploads?
It will cut this work down by 90%, but I doubt many people here will go for it.
The internet is not only "the west." What you're thinking is what's already happening in the Chinese internet, and even they cannot really limit the amount of disgusting content released by Chinese websites.
As long as non-verified users have access to the same internet as you, that content will continue to exist.
I've never said is an 100% solution, nothing is an 100% solution. This is a 90% solution, which is already a huge improvement. Why would non-verified users have same access as you? Sure they can read, but no creation.
I'm from China and use the Chinese Internet regularity. The amount of disgusting content is way less then the global internet and they have less people doing filtering for abusive content.
It could also be a Clockwork Orange therapy for them.
What is missing in an AI model for it to intuitively understand what content is extreme from very few labeled sample in training?
> With just four months left on her contract, which pays about £260 a month
Earning US$350/mo working remotely in a village in one of the poorest states in India is an extremely competitive given that the alternative would be spending 12 hours sewing fast fashion for Zara earning US$130-150/mo [0], doing bit piece ag labor for around US$100/mo and participating in MGNREGA for US$50/mo, become a housewife, or become a Naxalite/Maoist insurgent to earn a couple thousand dollars when surrendering [1].
Content moderation means interacting with extremely depressing and horrid content, but someone needs to do it, and once models get good enough we would start seeing articles about how "all the good 100% remote first jobs with no barrier to entry" are being automated to oblivion.
Yes it sucks, but the alternative is becoming a migrant worker or working in light manufacturing where QoL is worse. Heck, we used to see similar articles about Chinese workers for Apple barely 14 years ago in then equally poor Sichuan [2], but you don't see those kinds of articles anymore.
Development takes time and the fact that US$350/mo remote data annotation and content moderation jobs are now penetrating into villages in what used to be the Naxalite/Maoist/Red Corridor where bombings and gun battles were a part of normal life just 10 years ago [3] is a massive step up developmentally - it means that there is robust enough internet, literacy, banking, and public services penetration for the seeds for a services economy to form.
Edit: Thanks for the downvotes westerners - my family is from these kinds of villages in India and Vietnam. The alternatives are extremely bleak - especially for a tribal woman like Ms Murmu at the bottom of the social and patriarchal hierarchy.
[0] - https://theprint.in/ground-reports/industries-finally-return...
[1] - https://www.thehansindia.com/news/national/18-yr-old-maoist-...
[2] - https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-...
[3] - https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2016/Nov/23/six-maoi...
but maybe you have an idea of how manual labor feels (people always do some of it) but no idea how this type of horror feels and what it does.
1.) bit-piece agriculture work for the local landlord who will never pay salaries on time because he has the power
2.) migrate to the nearest big city (in this case Ranchi, Dhanbad, or Patna) and work at a factory for 12 hours a week with the exact same risks
3.) get married off
4.) join a Maoist outfit in order to surrender and get government rehabilitation benefits.
And all of this is assuming the men (and it's always men) who they are reporting to are not lecherous abusers which is a very real risk in these kinds of jobs for women in Ms Murmu's status.
Like out of all the bad options, this is the least bad one - especially in an area that was a warzone barely a decade ago.
not that I wish this on anyone but you would change your mind very quickly if you had to do this job for just one hour. it can fuck you up for life
A tribal woman like Murmu who is clearly living in the Red Corridor districts (based on surname and geographic location) doesn't have any better choice.
Yes content moderation introduces you to horrid content, but the alternatives give the very real risk of physical and sexual violence.
we know what work feels like. Maybe it's better maybe it's worse. But we don't know personally and have no intuition about THIS kind of stuff.
That's more likely to be within the experience of a HackerNews user than serious manual labor.
> people on this forum have no intuition about what watching gore videos online is like
as a job day in day out no they don't
(also abuse is not gore which can be consensual)
(also HN is mostly men aka people who statistically are performers of abuse not receivers of abuse so adjust accordingly)
Men are more likely to be victims of violent crime than women. Adjust according to what?
> according to what?
to the fact that men are more likely to be perpetrators:)
If a kid enjoys it it's a very big red flag. If a kid is horrified by it (as I was) even if pretending to be cool in front of peers, then there you have your answer as to what it must feel to do it every day 9 to 7.
and here again you are alluding to that access you have to what goes on in other people's heads. although of course "lots of" is relative. i'd say 0.01% of population is lots enough in this case.
> they are well-adjusted members of society
a psycho can function just great in society. maybe this work is great for a psycho. however, majority of people aren't that.
> I dunno what to tell you.
right back at ya buddy
Also, your first link mentions Bihar not Jharkhand.
Ststistically, a young Santali woman from rural Jharkhand would most likely end up working in West Bengal, Maharashtra, or Karnataka [0] according to Jharkhand's Migration Survey.
> Also, your first link mentions Bihar not Jharkhand
Because HDI and developmental indicators remain roughly comparable in both states. Salaries in Bihar are comparable to salaries for similar roles in Jharkhand, Eastern UP, or Northern portions of West Bengal.
[0] - https://iimad.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/salx20170525s-i...
That is the best case scenario. Mostly women roll beedis(a kind of needle sized cigar) on which you get like 1 paise per 10 rolls or something like that. Or worse do assorted labor chores which can really sap one's soul real fast.
Even with all that women actually have it a lot better than men. Men literally die and are reborn every day in most parts of India.
Just drive 30 kms North of Bangalore, and you will see abject poverty scenes. People scavenging bovine dung for fuel, children with flies, no clothing. The ever present scene is always that of an elderly person with pencil thin legs wearing shorts he likely is wearing since a decade with nothing but boiled rice and salt water+turmeric to eat daily. 8 - 10 hr power cuts are the norm, that is if you can afford electricity at all. Most health care is either entirely absent, or you have to travel to the nearest metro and hope you don't die out of hunger getting treatment there. I could go on but that is life here.
£260 a month is actually great for some place like this.
>Men literally die and are reborn every day in most parts of India.
As they say, "being poor make you invisible" and therefore nobody cares on how they end up over a longer time period but only look at immediate benefits. Given that the Govt. has lots of schemes for the underprivileged, it is better to utilize those and do some other job however difficult that does not destroy one's mental health like this one does.
Quite simply, the companies are taking advantage of poverty in poorer regions of the World to pay pennies for a job which literally destroys one's mental health.
See also my other comments in this thread where i link to informative documentaries/articles on this topic.
Now we know that it is actually being a data labeller, AI tutor and content moderator, but in very low wage countries such as in India.
This is the post-AGI reality. 'Abundance', but not for you.
The reason you are facing job losses right now is because Joe in Cary who learnt to code at a bootcamp can't justify being paid $180k a year when I can hire Jan for $90k in Karlin [2] or Jamila for $60k in Koramangla [3] while maintaining equivalent performance and output. Having a president pass an executive order to distract from the Gold Card announcement [4] also played a role [5] just like we warned would happen.
[0] - https://www.ft.com/content/267037e8-a71f-4025-acca-f441fe712...
[1] - https://www.ft.com/content/d6fdc04f-85cf-4358-a686-298c3de0e...
[2] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/prague-...
[3] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater...
[4] - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-signs-proclamati...
[5] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-03/alphabet-...