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Comment by simianwords | Hacker News Reader

I’ve noticed that the type of people to have problems with these kind of jobs - people who think this is some type of neocolonialism - can not appreciate the difference between real material poverty and metaphysical problems with watching some abusive content.

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.

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This argument is somewhat true in the small case (e.g. if you are starving and the only job for you is shoveling bodies into a furnace, may as well).

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?"

>> giant multi-national corps have created a system where

they didnt do by intention - "market forces" drove them there to do this, i.e. competition / costs etc.

Governments allowed corporations to gain enough control that they are defacto states unto themselves. Some control more resources than mid-sized countries.

"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?""

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.

> Why is the sole blame on countries other than India

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.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46922311

> I’ve noticed that the type of people to have problems with these kind of jobs - people who think this is some type of neocolonialism - can not appreciate the difference between real material poverty and metaphysical problems with watching some abusive content.

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.

It is true that employment and pay are good. The question is a) are proper protections in place for workers and b) does pay adequately compensate for traumatic stress. Studying the issue is valuable, particularly given the potential for labor exploitation given the power imbalance between the largest, most powerful organizations in the world and a labor base which as you point out could otherwise be disenfranchised.

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.

I generally agree with the broader point you're making, but I also think there's nothing wrong with pointing out how messed up it is that that's the reality of the choice. The whole point of improving society is to eliminate this kind of dilemma

It’s messed up that this has to be done. But overall positive change.

Why does it have to be done?

That poor people get the worst of the jobs? What’s the alternative?

Who says this particular job is a necessary one?

What’s your alternative?

Jury duty for all online fora maybe?

Maybe social media for this content isn’t sustainable or wise?

Maybe social media of the kind which creates this problem isn't sustainable or wise.

You're talking about making the internet as a whole a view-only experience where all content is curated and made by trusted gatekeepers.

As long as a website allows user generated content, there will be this need to moderate it

No, he's talking about the Internet of old, where if you wanted to post anything you first had to stand up a server.

You’re saying there were no forum boards nor comment sections anywhere? And everyone self hosted every single piece of content they wished to send it into the world?

Laws, primarily.

There's also a lot of content that companies don't want to host or show to their users in general.

Because one could sell DDoS services that overload the target network with porn.

I think that it is grotesque to take some moral high ground while global companies are exploiting the most desperate workers that they can find. They don’t give a shit about poor people in India, they need people with marginal English language ability whom have little or no worker protections.

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.

What’s your alternative? The people in villages are struggling without jobs and they are poor. They don’t even have food to put on their plate.

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?

Ending world hunger isn’t that expensive: https://wfpusa.org/news/how-much-would-it-cost-to-end-world-...

Nvidia’s profit alone would’ve been more than enough to end world hunger by these estimates.

this article is false

Baseless accusation. The article is true of course.

Ask the capitalists for even more money?

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.

so unless they give enough money, they should not be able to employ the people who need the employment?

You suggest that the state set minimum wage above what the lady already earns? She earns way more than minimum wage.

i am not necessarily agreeing with any of the opinions shared above. when someone jumps into a thread like i did this can easily be missed. so please forget all of that discussion, as it is not relevant to my argument. i am a different commenter.

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.

You sound like Johnathan Swift satirically suggesting that the Irish sell their children to be eaten by their landlords.

> What’s your alternative?

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.

They might also be doing it for the sake of a better future for their children, not just for themselves.

That's verging on a white man's burden kind of argument. We can help tackle global income disparity without telling poorer people that they should be happy we're offering them the jobs we don't want to do ourselves.

We could but we don’t. Like, let’s buy artificial diamonds so kids in the Congo aren’t mining blood diamonds, but you never hear about the follow-up of helping those kids out of poverty. I’m all for ethical sourcing, but we are horrible at the other things we should be doing to alleviate poverty around the world.

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.

"We can help tackle global income disparity "

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.

> there's only more poverty

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.

Growth in manufacturing products for export, first in wrecked post-war Japan, then in Taiwan, and then in China, is what lifted all of them out of deep poverty into global powerhouses and technology leaders. You better believe that they were happy to have those jobs others didn't want and to capitalize on them to grow themselves.

Manufacturing jobs produce locallly useful materials, pay for locally useful machines and equipment, and atleast in the first 2/3rs of industrializarion locally useful skills.

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.

People who raise these concerns don't understand true poverty. They might have seen it during trips but don't really "grok" it. That's one place where the expression "First world problems" is relevant. Being able to pay for housing, food and some degree of safety is an immense improvement in life quality versus the previous state with poverty and no videos.

Maybe it's that we don't think people should be threatened with starvation to force them to perform degrading labor.

I agree with you but disagree with how you phrased your comment. They aren't being threatened, they were either born into poverty/starvation or went into poverty. In their perspective (or at least some of them), they view it as a sacrifice to lead their families into a better life.

Everyone is born naked. Some people are then assigned stuff... by other people.

They aren’t being threatened. They are already starving and this is giving them an opportunity out.

I am thinking that giving them an opportunity is just a happy side effect. To big tech, they are the opportunity.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to have distaste for farming out unpleasant work to poorer countries. But also I think it's perfectly reasonable to accept that it's a fact of life and realise that it's literally redirecting wealth from the richest companies in the world to some of the poorer people in the world.

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

It is perfectly reasonable to not like it. But it's important to point out that generally you don't go from mass starvation to Starbucks on every corner in one step. There are coal mines and abusive videos in between.

There are some countries in East Asia that would be able to disagree with this

Maybe we can hold hands in a circle and sing Kumbaya.

That would be as helpful as these vacuous takes.

Watching this stuff all day can literally cause you to have lifelong PTSD. I want poor people to have enough money to provide for themselves, but this is exploitative - they should get paid a LOT more to do this kind of work, the same way someone who does something physically dangerous gets paid more for the risk.

Are you suggesting that the same people in India (the same woman) be employed but be paid, say, 2x her salary and the company would do it out of generosity (2x the market rate).

I am a lower caste Indian one generation removed from being farmhands. I have seen my parents go without for decades until I became successful. I still think this is utter cruelty and another way the poor are taken advantage of. Mr Paternal westerner, I reject your false dichotomy.

> Some one has to moderate these videos

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...

There are other trade offs, requiring a real world id to connect to the Internet and fragmenting it to connect only aligned countries will mostly take away problem of illegal porn, fraud and spam. But at some cost.

Im with you... to some extent. I come from parts of the world where there is real material poverty and so this is tangible food on the table and a better life in some sense...at least for her family if not for her.

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.

This is an absolutely clueless opinion.

Watch the documentary i link to here, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46921505 for a better understanding.

Yeah, let's save these poor women by taking their jobs away...

I'm not sure what you mean by 'metaphysical' here, but I get the impression that you're dismissively trivializing real psychological problems by using that word.

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.

_you_ don’t know what it means to be under material poverty.

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.

_you_ don't seem to understand what I wrote, or are not attempting to genuinely respond to it. But you've demonstrated a certain thickheadedness, potentially willful, so I can't say I was expecting better.

I know what it means to be under material poverty in this hell of a country. Even so I think this is another poisoned chalice. We are where you export your garbage to, whether material or digital. I spit on your false charity.

You could use this argument to justify street prostitution.

how privileged of you! thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve you while you centralize my brain power and start charging me a tax on thinking. GTH

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