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The Worst Job In the Digital World

Posted by Soulskill on from the nobody-should-be-the-internet's-filter-mechanism dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports on one of the worst jobs in the digital world — moderating photos and posts on Facebook and other social networking sites flagged as unsuitable by other users. Last year Amine Derkaoui, a 21-year-old Moroccan man, spent a few weeks training to screen illicit Facebook content through an outsourcing firm, for which he was paid $1 an hour. 'It must be the worst salary paid by Facebook,' says Derkaoui. 'And the job itself was very upsetting – no one likes to see a human cut into pieces every day.' Other moderators, mainly young, well-educated people working in Asia, Africa and Central America, have similar stories. 'Paedophilia, necrophilia, beheadings, suicides, etc,' says one. 'I left [because] I value my sanity.' Facebook's one-page cheat sheet lays out exactly what must be confirmed and deleted by the team. Pictures of naked private parts, drugs (apart from marijuana) and sexual activity (apart from foreplay) are all banned. Once something is reported by a user, the moderator sitting at his computer in Morocco or Mexico has three options: delete it; ignore it; or escalate it, which refers it back to a Facebook employee in California who will, if necessary, report it to the authorities. Emma Barnett adds that although this invisible army of moderators receive basic training, they work from home, do not appear to undergo criminal checks, and have worrying access to users' personal details. 'Maybe disgruntled commuters, old schoolfriends and new mothers will think twice before sharing intimate information with their "friends" – only to find that two minutes later it's being viewed by an under-vetted, unfulfilled person on a dollar an hour in an internet café in Marrakech.'"

22 of 258 comments (clear)

  1. So the moral of the story is... by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So the moral of the story is that you have no idea who could be reading what you posted to Facebook, and that privacy controls are completely meaningless when it comes to Facebook employees reading through your information? How is that news?

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    Palm trees and 8
    1. Re:So the moral of the story is... by kragniz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Indeed, everything posted to facebook can, and probably will, be public at some point. Why think otherwise?

    2. Re:So the moral of the story is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Because if Facebook says something is only visible to "Me and My Friends", you'd expect them to be actually telling the truth.

      Of course you and I know better now.

    3. Re:So the moral of the story is... by LordSnooty · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Facebook employees and their contracted third party agents.

    4. Re:So the moral of the story is... by na1led · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's news to the Ignorants. Especially the young generation! Being in the IT field for many years, I already knew this was going to happen, and that's why I rarely use Facebook, and never use Twitter. Keep a low profile, and watch what you say or post. Never trust someone else to hold your personal data, no mater what they tell you. Keep your memories in a Fireproof safe box.

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      -- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
    5. Re:So the moral of the story is... by camperdave · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They are telling the truth. Your Facebook friends include all Facebook employees, law enforcement agencies, ad firms, and others. Remember, any friend of Facebook's is a friend of yours!

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
    6. Re:So the moral of the story is... by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's quite naive though because that would mean their sys-admins could not see it if they needed to, also law enforcement(in which jurisdiction?); I'm not sure how you could legally or functionally achieve either of these.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encryption

      We have known for years that the sysadmins who run communication systems could potentially eavesdrop on us, which was one of the big motivations for public research on cryptography and public key encryption systems. I know, I know, "It's hard," "Ordinary people won't do it," "There are a million failure modes," but we are not trying to secure against nation-state intelligence agencies here. If Facebook were serious about protecting user privacy (not that anyone would expect them to be), they would have deployed cryptographic solutions to these problems long ago. If they want to be able to grant law enforcement access to these things, they can use a threshold system so that there is no single person who can read users' messages.

      The reality, though, is that Facebook will only devote resources to giving users to appearance of privacy, because Facebook's entire business model is based on privacy violations.

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      Palm trees and 8
    7. Re:So the moral of the story is... by TheLink · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The reality is even if Facebook deployed crypto the people who care about crypto won't and CANNOT trust FB to do it in a way secure for the users. Haven't you seen those companies that claim to provide crypto but still hand over decrypted stuff to others?

      The reason why crypto sorta works for web banking is you already have made the decision to trust your bank.

      If you can't trust Facebook, Facebook deploying cryptography to stop FB from eavesdropping on users is a waste of time and resources for everyone including FB.

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    8. Re:So the moral of the story is... by rufty_tufty · · Score: 3, Insightful

      sysadmins are not able to see passwords because it is possible to encrypt them before they are sent to the central server. passwords are never actually decrypted in order to authenticate them.
      photos that have to be shared would have to be decrypted at some stage. If the 3rd party you are sharing with could see them then so could the sysadmin.
      Now unless you wanted to encrypt every photo independently with every person you share it with's public key, but that would be very inefficient.
      Also in that case who would you police things like bullying? now you may argue that it is not the place of a website to do that, but (for example) I would expect a pub landlord to monitor his premises for illegal activity, so why not a website/forum?

      --
      "The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
  2. Psychological support? by Nick+Fel · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've read articles about this job before, but those reported on centres in the US where employees are given counselling to cope with the job. Is Facebook avoiding this moral duty by farming it out abroad?

    1. Re:Psychological support? by Trepidity · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Farming it out to third-party contractors in uncontrolled working conditions (including internet cafes, apparently?) also seems to fail to uphold at least the spirit of their privacy policy. It's one thing to delete a nude photo that violates FB's privacy policy, and another thing to send it outside of Facebook's offices to third parties with nothing stopping them from saving it locally.

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      10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
    2. Re:Psychological support? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Who would be stupid enough to upload nude photos of themselves to facebook?

      Maybe someone would upload photos of someone else...

  3. A buck an hour ... by Barbara,+not+Barbie · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Welcome to the face of globalization, where the rush to the bottom has given us jobs that pay only 1/10 of a McJob.

    We've already seen this with programers. If it's in an O'Reilly book, it will be outsourced, crowd-sourced, off-shored, whatever it takes to drive the cost to as near to zero as possible.

    Welcome to the future, brought to you by the internet and the law of unintended consequences.

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    Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
    1. Re:A buck an hour ... by JoeMerchant · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sorry to weigh in with an insensitive elitist perspective, but this 1/10th of a McJob salary is injecting money into an economy that wouldn't have it otherwise. If you're a champion of economic equality, it's better for them to get some pay than none at all, especially when that money is coming from outside the country.

      Pity about the type of work they're offering. I'd be in favor of requiring companies that export this kind of crap work to also export decent (more desirable to the local population) work to the same labor pool.

    2. Re:A buck an hour ... by dkleinsc · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Welcome to the future, brought to you by free trade agreements and completely intended consequences.

      FTFY.

      Arguments in favor of completely removing all tariffs on Chinese imports occurred in the 1980's and were passed in the 1990's. Then Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers was giving talks about how globalization ought to be applauded because it made things more efficient (i.e. cheaper) and how it would ultimately benefit Americans because they could pay 15 cents for stuff at Walmart that used to cost 85 cents at the local general store. Both parties were all in favor of increasing the number of available H1B visas, and for making the process convoluted enough that large American firms would have the "efficiency" of hiring people who couldn't make a fuss about low pay or working conditions without risking getting deported, while the smaller firms couldn't jump through the necessary hoops.

      This wasn't an accident or an unintended consequence - it was the direct and stated goal of the economic policies of George HW Bush, Bill Clinton, George W Bush, and Barack Obama.

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      I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
    3. Re:A buck an hour ... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I suspect that part of the impetus behind anti-globalization sentiment is the (arguably quite realistic, based on present experience) belief that while "We have the potential of doing the necessary political and social reforms to ensure much higher worldwide prosperity", it'll be a cold day in hell before we actually exercise that potential, because it's easier and more profitable to just drive down the cost of 'human resources' and go jurisdiction shopping for favorable tax status and environmental non-regulation...

      The 'gains from trade' argument certainly offers a strong foundation for the position that globalization can deliver greater overall wealth; but the domestic experience, at least, has been that the income distribution skews even faster than the pie grows. It's not a huge surprise that this leaves those holding a smaller slice looking back fondly on the days when they had a bigger slice of a smaller pie...

    4. Re:A buck an hour ... by Mr.+Slippery · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If you're a champion of economic equality, it's better for them to get some pay than none at all, especially when that money is coming from outside the country.

      No, it is not always better to accept some pay rather than none. If you get laid off from a decent job, you don't take a minimum wage grind-down right away, you spend that time looking for another decent job, because the long-term results are better.

      Developing nations would do better if they could develop their own industries, rather than being used as sources of cheap exploitable labor for foreign corporations.

      --
      Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
      You cannot wash away blood with blood
  4. If you're posting porn online.. by js3 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    then you don't deserve any privacy to begin with.

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    did you forget to take your meds?
  5. Re:facebook cheat sheet by camperdave · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "foreplay allowed.... even for same sex (man-man/woman-woman)" - I'm glad they clarified that...

    Same sex does not necessarily mean same species.

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    When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
  6. $1 an hour by DrSkwid · · Score: 4, Insightful

    there's plenty o'people would do it for free

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    There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
  7. Re:4Chan *shiver by beowulfcluster · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You've never browsed Slashdot at -1, I see. The mods on here who keep the depravity out of honest, law abiding peoples sight don't even get paid minimum wage, it's an outrage.

  8. Worst job except this one... by mwvdlee · · Score: 4, Insightful

    From TFA:

    which refers it back to a Facebook employee in California who will, if necessary, report it to the authorities

    Surely the californian employee who only gets to see the very worst of these pictures every day must have a worse job than the people who also get to filter all the nice pictures.

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