Casey Newton The Verge

The secret lives of Facebook moderators in America  ↦

Eventually Artificial Intelligence will take over the human powered content moderation jobs for Facebook. Until then, this small population of humans employed by Cognizant (on behalf of Facebook) in Phoenix, Arizona accept the job of subjecting themselves to the worst of humankind to provide “a better Facebook experience.”

Casey Newton writes for The Verge:

The video depicts a man being murdered. Someone is stabbing him, dozens of times, while he screams and begs for his life. Chloe’s job is to tell the room whether this post should be removed. She knows that section 13 of the Facebook community standards prohibits videos that depict the murder of one or more people. When Chloe explains this to the class, she hears her voice shaking.

Returning to her seat, Chloe feels an overpowering urge to sob. Another trainee has gone up to review the next post, but Chloe cannot concentrate. She leaves the room, and begins to cry so hard that she has trouble breathing.

No one tries to comfort her. This is the job she was hired to do…


Discussion

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Adam Stacoviak

Adam Stacoviak

Austin, TX

Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Changelog

2019-02-25T17:44:24Z ago

This Twitter thread from Casey is also worth reading ~> https://twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/1100017966203240448

I mentioned Artificial Intelligence eventually taking over this job, but that also has some serious downsides to consider. Some of those concerns are talked about in the latest JS Party featuring Paige Bailey, TensorFlow mom and developer Advocate for Google AI.

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