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The Worst Job At Google: a Year of Watching Terrible Things On the Internet
Cutting_Crew writes "Gizmodo has called attention to a story that describes the worst job you can get at Google: wading through and blocking objectionable content, which includes watching decapitations and beastiality. A ex-Google-employee who did just that tells his own story of a year-long stint of looking at the most horrible things on the internet. In the end, he needed therapy, and since he was a contractor, he was let go instead of being hired as a full time employee."
corporate windows user experiences the same or worse each day,
praying for a quick end to it all...
This is /. after all.
This guy gets paid to do what 4chaners happily do for free and he complains about needing therapy. .. On the other hand, I smell a crowd source opportunity.
Unfair! Therapy costs, and the job requirements were such that therapy would be expected...
beyond that, change jobs before therapy is needed. Anything.
Bestiality not beastiality.
Why not hire someone who actually likes beastiality and decapitations? There must me loads of this kind of people judging from what is posted daily on 4chan.
An unnamed police department in the United States had a policy for child pornography investigators:
* You could only do it for a few months then it was someone else's turn
* You had mandatory psychological help
Oh, and you had to be trained ahead of time.
Here is a 2010 New York Times article on the same subject. Seems like not much has changed. Apparently a bunch of it is outsourced, which in addition to the nature of the work, leads to questions about content privacy, especially when some of the images being reviewed are non-public (e.g. stuff you've sent through Facebook messages).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Are they hiring?
First, Did google not describe to the employees what exactly they would be doing? I know they said, "sensitive content" but that could mean a whole variety of things. Second, there is one thing that we all kid about and talk about and porn is one of them and I am sure that there are solid studies indicating that this does effect people in harsh ways. Its another thing to go venturing off into beheadings, beastiality and the like and not even get any kind of support from a company that has billions of cash. The least they could have done would have been to offer a support program, some take away money when leaving or *gasp* how about a full time position doing something more humane?
Wow, I figure if anybody had to do that for a year, they should be given a pension, a quiet place to get away from things, and a LOT of therapy.
I can't imagine being the poor bastard that has to look at the worst stuff on the internet. I've glimpsed enough to know that I wouldn't want to see any more of it. I'm frequently appalled at some of the things people choose to see.
I think even the law enforcement guys can get fucked up from this, and they understand the need for support systems. Your first job our of school? That would ruin you forever.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
It's unfortunate google doesn't take better care of the people they hire for this work, given the job as described it's not really surprising it fucks a lot of people up. You'd kinda think there should be a fairly extensive training programme first, and then a coping programme after, if nothing else because you really need to weed out the ones who are there because they enjoy it.
Sounds pretty crappy. My first thought was, "It's basically being paid to look at the very worst threads on /b/. And basically being unable to stop unless you want to be jobless."
They better have paid well, because while I consider myself pretty desensitized to a lot of things there's some stuff that still gets me (mainly involving permanent bodily harm like the Lamborghini Tool Pull from Jackass 3D).
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
This pretty much sums up why I stopped using the internet. Oh wait...
Is there a way to circumvent the blocks? I mean, if they're censoring this, what else are they censoring?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Because these things don't bother me. I mean, sure; I'm bothered as much a the next guy by a decapitation, but I can't imagine it being traumatizing. It's just a job. It's no secret that the world is a terrible, terrible place that's full of injustice.
They all need a good head check to make sure they don't end up turning rotten.
One year you could be policing the internet for child porn websites, next you could be hoarding it yourself.
Same thing happens with drug enforcement as well in many areas around the world.
Jobs like these can turn even the sanest, reasonable people in to corrupt / destroyed / outright evil people.
They are tough jobs and they have some balls to do them.
So I ask of you, Slashdot, raise a drink to the moderators of content around the world. Without them, the world really would be a worse place.
In the end, he needed therapy, and since he was a contractor, he was let go instead of being hired as a full time employee.
Since Google doesn't do bad things, it was obviously his fault.
#DeleteChrome
Maybe, just maybe not.
Agreed with a little help afterwards, you could pull ahead of it such that "nothing can shock you ever again". They do it in the Military all the time, though in a more physical style.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Although I could understand if he had to read the new Digg.
A weak mind? I'm sorry, but I'm willing to bet after watching this stuff for long enough it's going to have an effect on anybody but a sociopath. Then too, but they'd probably enjoy it.
Soldiers and police offices get PTSD. The cops who work on child porn and the like get worn down. Heck, I bet people who work in ERs get a little twigged on this stuff.
You immerse anybody in this stuff day in and day out, and I think it's safe to assume there's going to be some lasting trauma.
And I have to assume that anybody who would volunteer for this and thrive on it ... well, you need to keep an eye on them because they're probably dangerous.
Anybody who thinks simply being tough-minded (as opposed to being highly twisted) is all that it would take to "man up" and get past this is likely full of crap.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I worked for a very large company and analysed data from network packet capture devices that would sift through data and find interesting items. It was quite a head job after awhile. So many people doing dumb things at work and getting caught. Reasonable seeming people looking at fucked up porn (men and women coworkers), people hooking up with random strangers in public restrooms (facilitating this online on their work computers, it happens alot), people having groupsex and viewing the photos at work (via web email), total perverts preying on teenagers (stockholm syndrome in full effect), really anything wrenched or nasty you hear about in the news is like the tip of the iceberg when given a large enough sample size of the general able populous. It may have tweaked my view of people in retrospect, basically it was a really long course in human psychology. I wouldn't ever do that shit again, or anything close to it, but I have respect for people who do.
I have to imagine that I am far from the only one that is disappointed in Google. Perhaps I expect too much, but they are one company I would think better of than to do pull something like that. I normally have a lot of respect for them in most things.
A few years back I worked at an early TV-over-the-internet company (this was pre-Netflix and the company didn't really catch on as it required set-top boxes).
While my job was fairly mundane (mostly setting up new storage filers), I often had to go into the recording room: studios would send us a bunch of movies, TV shows, etc. on non-copy-protected DVDs and a bunch of staffers would spend all day ripping these DVDs to our storage system. Each staffer had to ensure that the ripping was going well by reviewing all the content on a bank of 24 (6 rows of 4 monitors) small monitors.
About 10% of the content the company hosted (which was responsible for about 90% of its income) was porn. All pretty standard fare, really, particularly for the internet: the worst they had was some mild kink/S&M stuff -- all stuff you could buy at your neighborhood adult shop.
On its own and viewed in moderation, not really a big deal...but the staffers got a little warped after a year in the recording room, particularly when they'd have several monitors of porn, a few monitors of kids movies (e.g. Disney stuff), a few of various movies, etc. It wasn't so much that porn was bad, it was just that the juxtaposition of porn and all the other stuff is a bit off-putting, or so they said. I believe it.
I can't imagine the horrors seen by the content-review people on sites where media is uploaded by the public. Poor bastards.
Yeah. You'd think they would have an ongoing schedule of therapy for the screeners, available continuously while they hold the job.
If you manage to take out semantics and feelings from images/videos/etc you could take this job, Mr. Spock
This is one of those sick-o jobs that messes with your brain so much that it's in your boss's and employer's best legal interest to NOT know what you did.
Can you imagine the lawsuits if Google DID have these guys on the payroll and, 5 years later, ONE of them went nuts-o and harmed another employee, and that employee was NOT aware of the attacker's previous job description? Google might win in the long run but they'd have to fight an uphill battle.
By making sure the person is never on the payroll and relying on the standard practice of only verifying employment dates, job titles/job descriptions, and eligibility for rehire to future employers, they've pretty much immunized themselves if one of there censors goes nuts and kills someone 5 years down the road.
Well, they have, EXCEPT legal theories of liability change over time and those changes have a way of biting you ex-post-facto.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/technology/19screen.html
The 2-year old article I linked also explains that all Google content reviewers are on one-year contract because of the nature of the work and have access to counseling. From TFA it seems many of these reviewers got the false impression that they would be hired fulltime after completing the one year. Considering that Google seem to have pretty tough hiring process, I'm not surprised that very few of these reviewers get hired fulltime. Their managers must be filthy liars though.
I would argue that if you take the most bad-assed military, police, or what have you ... unless someone has some serious issues of their own already which would make them enjoy it (which pretty much disqualifies them from doing the job), this kind of stuff 8 hours/day for a year is going to seriously fuck you up.
Unless you really want your military made up of vicious sadists, I completely fail to see how this kind of thing wouldn't cause lasting damage -- or at least the need for some heavy duty counseling and support.
That much exposure to every single horrible thing that ever gets filmed is bound to wear down anybody. And anybody it doesn't, likely scores in the very scary end of humanity.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Wow ... you can actually read Gizmodo (and related sites, I guess) without JavaScript now. Took them long enough.
Does it change you? Yeah, I guess. Some of the fetishes are pretty crazy. Rape followed (or preceded) by torture, impalement, or beheadings. People being turning into dirty diapers. Art for those who like to fantasize about eating others - or being eaten. Tentacles galore. Over time you start to blank it out; most just gets a glance as I check it off for humans or other policy violations. All in a day's work. Of course, I can stop any time I like, since I'm not being paid.
(This isn't the experience of every Inkbunny user. We have great tag-based blocking features, but of course as a moderator I can't use them while doing my job.)
Anybody who thinks simply being tough-minded (as opposed to being highly twisted) is all that it would take to "man up" and get past this is likely full of crap.
So, 4chan is full of sociopaths. Then, by your logic my assessment of the human race's progress should be much different...
Note to self: update The Guide to read: "Mostly Sociopathic", or "Mostly Full of Crap"
The contract with Google forced the guy to stay there for a whole year. My contracts generally have a two week notice period for a "no reason needed, we just don't want you anymore" termination.
Most Police departments that I'm aware of have some sort of policy regarding this. I mean you do have to investigate it, but yeah therapy is pretty much mandatory.
Not sure about swapping in and out, would have to check on that.
Once you get to a point where you realize it is bad stuff and it needs to be removed, can't you just stop watching? I mean, usually the first second or two is all you need for recognition. Naked person getting under horse -- well I don't need to see anymore to block that. Sure, there's going to be some videos that cut to the chase in the first second, but I think you could save yourself a lot of trauma by lowering your threshold. I'd risk a lot of false-positives for something like my mental stability.
"and since he was a contractor, he was let go instead of being hired as a full time employee"
I know that feel, bro.
I currently work as a "contractor" within a state agency. When a position opened up that entailed doing exactly what I do but working directly for the agency I applied. I was not even interviewed. I was screened out by the HR department for, get this, not meeting the minimum qualifications.
This was not an oversight or clerical error, I was told. I don't have the right level of education to apply for the job. That's right. I'm educated enough to perform the job (for over a year now) as a contractor but not educated enough to perform the job as a direct-hire.
It's like the guy said in the full article, if you're a contractor then the people who control your employment have no clue who you are or what you do. You're just a number in a department.
Spare a thought for all those poor people at Comedy Central who have to watch Fox News all day in search of comedy material for Jon Stewart.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
.....that your average /b/yard would be eminently qualified for. Heck most would probably do it for free.
A weak mind? I'm sorry, but I'm willing to bet after watching this stuff for long enough it's going to have an effect on anybody but a sociopath.
Ah, yes, assuming that anyone who isn't as sensitive as you is a sociopath/psychopath/what have you: the hallmark of an Internet psychologist.
Soldiers and police offices get PTSD.
Seeing the real thing in real life is far different than seeing a picture on the Internet. I can almost guarantee you that a majority of 4chan's users do not have PTSD.
Anybody who thinks simply being tough-minded (as opposed to being highly twisted) is all that it would take to "man up" and get past this is likely full of crap.
I'm just not as sensitive as you. It's only your opinion (and perhaps the opinion of others) that that's a bad thing.
A couple of years ago I was surfing the net on a friend's computer. While on google, I'd searched "naked women", a couple of clicks later a video comes up that was so disgusting and horrible, to this day it still bothers me to think about it. I couldn't think what it must be like to have a job that exposes someone to that level of horror on a regular basis.
Just because the wavy hand thing in Star Wars didn't have an effect on you doesn't mean you have a not-weak-mind.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sure the fine denizens of /b/ would love to view all the bad things on the internet, and probably do it for free if not pay for the chance to get new OP.
Correction: /b/ is full of sociopaths. 4chan is not /b/, please don't confuse the two.
It is appearing to me more and more, as I learn about the "tagging" practices and stories like this, as though Google is illegally employing people as "contractors" when they are really just low-level employees.
This has been a long-time problem with large corporations. IBM was famously caught at doing that, and so was Microsoft.
The IRS has pretty clear guidelines about who is a "contractor" versus who is an "employee".
It appears pretty clear to me that Google is illegally calling employees "contractors" so they can be denied perks and benefits. Just like IBM was, and just like Microsoft was.
Can you imagine the lawsuits if Google DID have these guys on the payroll and, 5 years later, ONE of them went nuts-o and harmed another employee, and that employee was NOT aware of the attacker's previous job description?
The risk is not employee on employee violence, it is risk of suicide.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
All the time? So PTSD is imaginary in your world. Even the military which ties to use a total institution cannot deal with these problems, so that gives google about a 0% chance.
I have a friend who works in CyberCrime. He doesn't talk that much about his job but the basic take is that it deals with a lot of things normal people who rather not think about or look at.
He's a cop, which seems a much better job that an Google. At least if you're a cop you get some person satisfaction when some of these sick f***s get sent to jail.
4chan is also comparably mild.
One year you could be policing the internet for child porn websites, next you could be hoarding it yourself.
Even without a job like this, most adults are only 10-15 years away from total depravity if they start down a path that desensitizes them to evil and keep going in that direction.
Fortunately, even most people who are this far gone still have at least a little moral center left. With desire, work, time, and support from professionals and friends, they can return to a moral standard that most people would call civilized.
I know. I took a turn 10-15 years ago and walked that slow path to moral depravity. A few years ago I looked in the mirror and didn't like what I saw. With a strong desire, divine intervention, love, support, and lots of time I'm well on my way back to where I want to be. I expect to be there in a few more years.
The story makes it sound like Google only uses contractors for this job because they know nobody could hold it down for more than a year. But it sounds more like Google is misusing contractors the way I've seen happen at many high-tech companies. Bad managers don't have it together well enough to come up with a proper plan for expanding their departments, so whenever they have a new project that needs heads they don't have, they hire some contractors. These are always hired under a time limit, to avoid a repeat of the Vizcaino v Microsoft lawsuit.
This ties in with one of my pet peeve with Google: they only seem to hire really brilliant people with great academic credentials who are never expected to bother themselves with scutwork. On the rare occasions when they realize that the scutwork can't be avoided (like manual crap filtering) they hire temps. Thus scutwork either doesn't get done or is done by people who aren't really a part of the employee community, and don't coordinate well with the real employees. That's why so many of their commercial products die on the vine, why so many of their products stay in beta mode for years, and why they have such abysmal documentation and tech support.
They did two things right: they came up with the best search engine ever, and they figured out how to make it generate huge tons of money. This allows the rest of the company to be run wastefully and ineffectively. The shareholders don't care for this, but the voting stock is controlled by a small cadre of insiders.
This is why companies love independent contractors for this sort of job.
There are plenty of studies that show us just how very little self-awareness and self-control the typical person actually has. Virtually everybody thinks they're made of stronger mettle than the other guy; virtually everybody thinks they can handle pretty much anything life could throw at them. Nobody wants to believe that they're the person who'd crack under pressure; nobody wants to believe that they're the person who would keep walking past a mugging. People tend to think that the flaws and limitations of the human race are things that apply primarily to other people.
Successful companies know this; manipulating people is a key part of how a company becomes successful in the first place. Google knows that this kind of work will eventually destroy the mental health of the person performing the work. Why would they shoulder the responsibility for dealing with this fallout when they have a nigh limitless supply of perfectly unremarkable human beings who think they're strong enough to hack it?
Note that I don't condone this behavior in the least; I find it reprehensible. But we live in a world where personal responsibility, level playing fields, and common sense are sacrosanct, and that's not likely to change anytime soon. Everybody thinks they're David; nobody ever considers the odds that they're one of the countless schmucks Goliath laid out before his ultimate fight.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Do no evil....to the customers....
But lets be fair, this isn't about Google being evil. It is about some asshole middle manager that is running one department and only caring about the bottom line. Google the corporate entity doesn't really have any say in daily operations on this scale, it can only react to stuff like this happening. They can send out all the memos and make rules until they are blue in the face, but at some point an employee chooses how to act, and the company can then react.
The real test is how Google reacts at this point. If they were really a 'good' corporation (whatever that really means), they would probably step in and help this guy out, while canning the person who fired him.
It kind of bugs me that people can't seem to differentiate between actions that employees of a corporation take, and actions that the corporation takes. (e.g. Microsoft buys companies. Microsoft employees disregard open XML standards.) This story seems like a perfect example of that.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
... of a Usenet provider. Most people lasted 6 months.
On the one hand, you could find tons of people who would have no problem looking at "objectionable content." On the other hand, probably very few of them would find the content objectionable in the first place.
The shrinks call it "the Just World" hypothesis.
When told a story about how something bad happened to a little child -- loss of a cookie, for example -- children in studies begin to imagine something similar happening to them. This causes mental discomfort, and they begin to look for ways this would NOT have happened to them. In the vast majority of cases, the children decide the cookie was lost because the victim either did something wrong or was something wrong (a bad child), so since the tested child is not bad and does not intend to do something wrong, then nothing bad will ever happen to them. The world is good, and only good things will happen to good children.
If you know a kid, try it yourself. Keep the story small -- lost a cookie, lost a toy -- so you don't traumatize the kid. :-) You'll be amazed at the lengths the kid goes to to insulate himself from the possibility.
You see this manifest in a million different ways in the adult world. Only bad girls get raped. Welfare cases are taking all our money. All car crashes were caused by stupid people. Unfortunate people are just "unlucky," and my luck is good.
Nurb432 doesn't like the thought that his job could use him up, break him, and then just throw him away. He tells himself stories about why this won't happen to him. He's not weak-minded. He's not weak. He's in demand. He manages his career wisely. He's the ant surrounded by grasshoppers. He's the Little Red Hen, and he'll laugh come winter.
Hint that Winter is Coming for all of us, and he won't thank you.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
fixed the title for you
Damn, you just (re)discovered another right that corps have over individuals. When Corps do strange nasty things, they can siphon it off to "lower level managers" and disclaim it. Everything and anything an Individual does becomes part of their record.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I've never watched vids for a living, but there are at least a dozen or so which have tainted my psyche to some extent. Some, I have to forget for my own health. But where does removing the meaninglessly wretched turn from "editing", to censorship of the meaningfully wretched? There are some truly horrible videos which have been available for years and left alone. Yet others which hardly compare are often removed. One particular video that is repeatedly removed is one of alleged US soldiers beating a sheep to death with a baseball bat. But as horrible as it is, it scarcely compares to hundreds of others which are not censored. Two pretty disturbing examples I can immediately think of are these:
Man eaten alive by lions in front of family - yeah, WTF?
Guy has arm ripped off by crocodile - ugly, but understandably uncensored
Not that you'd want to for the sake of viewing something repugnant, but keywords "Syria Violence" could lead very quickly to an appointment with a therapist. For example: Bodies of postal workers thrown from rooftops -- and that is very mild compared to others, especially from Libya. ~ Those are the ones I must forget. As horrible as they are, I strongly believe they should not be censored, and many haven't been. Real events, however horrible, unless to protect privacy, should be left transparent. I admire the function implemented by Google which allows vids to be flagged as +18 Only, but I have also seen this option abused, misused, and sometimes 100% erroneously enforced. But at least it makes viewing certain content voluntary and comes with a disclaimer. That's fine. Censorship is not.
I can imagine viewing such things with any consistency could easily affect one's mental health, or even ruin someone's life. I am sure there are also many who could view such things over breakfast, lunch and dinner and carry on as normal. Certainly censoring bird song isn't difficult though, but I guess that's what AI is for.
What I'd really like see is a more thorough account of the real criterion for censorship at the Chocolate Factory. I've seen many examples of Google censorship which anything but fit the declared purpose. And then sometimes I am left completely surprised.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
Hmm, I spent some time in front of a computer or two in my earlier years that the local police brought into the shop to have us look for material for investigations... I was required to sign some paperwork about sharing the content, but that's about it.
As far as doing that job for a year? Maybe I'm an exception, but I don't think I'd have a problem doing it. Granted, I only had to do it for a few days every once in a blue moon.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
I have to totally agree, seeing it in pictures is far different than sitting there watching it happen in real life. In that case i may not use the 'weak mind' argument.
I know personally i have been in the position of 'reviewing' internally reported sites in a large corporate environment, and it didn't effect me in the least, i knew it was just a bunch of pixels on the screen and didn't change me in the least. Also i didn't take it home with me. I also didn't hate or enjoy, it was just my job at the time. Of course by the other guy's definition, that makes me a sociopath i guess.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Pansy.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Actual *investigating* would be a far cry than just looking at images fly past your face.
In those cases the police get up and personal with what is going on, sometimes for months on end, the children and the offenders. They get involved. This is why they are effected.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I got a secret for you. Google isn't that great of a job. They have a lot of money to pay (*) their employees but money certainly won't make you as a tech worker happy. In fact, when you think you're getting paid fairly well, you're more apt to burn out and have no social life. When you're getting paid poorly, you'll find yourself working just as hard as necessary, not caring about getting laid off, and having much more time for a social life.
(*) Benefits ("free" meals, etc.) are just pay expressed in another form. Would you rather earn $30 more every day or have the purely psychological benefit of "free" meals?
I remember reading a similar story years ago from Yahoo emps. They hired older women. The best quote was from a lady who said the worst part of the job wasn't the pictures; it was the atrocious spelling.
Agreed with a little help afterwards, you could pull ahead of it such that "nothing can shock you ever again". They do it in the Military all the time, though in a more physical style.
The U.S. Army Reports Record High Suicide Rates for July
Experts: Vets' PTSD, violence a growing problem
Maybe not.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
"Hare writes that the difference between sociopathy and psychopathy may "reflect the user's views on the origins and determinates of the disorder." The term sociopathy may be preferred by sociologists that see the causes as due to social factors. The term psychopathy may be preferred by psychologists who see the causes as due to a combination of psychological, genetic, and environmental factors."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy
Research suggests that, “psychopaths are a stable proportion of any population, can be from any segment of society, may constitute a distinct taxonomical class forged by frequency-dependent natural selection, and that the muting of the social emotions is the proximate mechanism that enables psychopaths to pursue their self-centered goals without felling the pangs of guilt. Sociopaths are more the products of adverse environmental experiences that affect autonomic nervous system and neurological development that may lead to physiological responses similar to those of psychopaths. Antisocial personality disorder is a legal/clinical label that may be applied to both psychopaths and sociopaths” (Walsh & Wu, 2008).
http://blogs.psychcentral.com/forensic-focus/2010/07/sociopathy-vs-psychopathy/
And if you want a bit more about the history of socio/psychopaths, reading this article about sherlock holmes not being a sociopath might also be helpful.
I'm a dreamer, the world is my playpen. But hey, I'm a serious person, I can't dream all the time.
but the only ones that really scarred me are ones of sick fucks torturing animals. Sometimes it's in the same of science; sometimes it's just sadism. But nothing leaves me more ashamed of my species, and those are the ones that are scorched into my retinas and will never come out.
I used to work at a company that ran some fairly big-name web-forums. It happens anywhere you get lots of people and the ability to post content, not just on "art" or whatever related forums.
It wasn't a problem with 99% of the userbase, say on a forum of 100k users I might have a dozen or less that were problematic, but you'd still regularly get people posting nasty/inappropriate stuff.
It used to make for interesting moments when the boss popped by our desk.
Boss: "What's that!!!?" [shocked look while pointing at something on my screen]
Me: [Pull up email] "User X reported a bunch of posts. I'm going through them, validating, then removing the posts and banning the users"
Boss: "OK, finish up quickly and get that off your screen"
Think people with the personality of slashdot trolls but the ability to post pictures/links/etc. Some people seems to get their thrills in proportion to how many others they can mess with and how disturbing they can be. They didn't even have the ability to post such stuff right away, but actually cultivated accounts as "normals" until they got the ability to post rude sh**... then BAM.
Everything is rooted in meaning. A person with a powerful capacity to invent personal context might be able to sustain a healthy personality for quite a while. They would need to know that human depravity has no bottom, and that what they are doing is a service to take said depravity out of the mainstream. Next, they would need to have a strong spiritual life, seeing the flesh as only meat, a vessel for the human soul, would reduce the impact of people doing terrible things to meat. Finally, they would have to have a rich and diverse personal life that fulfilled and empowered them outside of managing digital toxic waste. Without a profoundly rich personal life, they nastiness would be quickly take its toll. Think of this as a psychic decathlon. Certainly not for a timid soul.
Exposing an employee to this kind of working condition without prior consent and lengthy explanation as to the possible impact I think would qualify as an OSHA violation. Google might need to consider legal ramifications. Contrary to the corporate norm, people are not disposable,
isn't that employee on employee violence?
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Just from my experience, i'm computer forensic investigator but not for police. However, i work with many ex cops and state police.
Few days once in a blue moon fine. But hypothetically the state police have had a bunch of these cases that I'm aware of. When I'm doing my thing if I run across CP i have to stop my investigation and turn it over to state police immediately. Am i'm not just talking about the CP you can Hash value out(known CP DL'd or w/e). Talking in my 5 years here, we've had 4 dealing with actual like abuse, personal pictures. And i don't deal with anything closely related to CP.
I'm sorry just even thinking about that/picturing it is horrifying to me anyways. If i had to see images all the time on that subject. Forget that.
I think you're telling a few too many stories, yourself. As well as making assumptions.
Cool. Don't take my word for it. Research it yourself. Here's a start.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
And if a human were composed of multiple distinct entities, they could do that too! In fact, courts routinely allow this defense, called "Insanity". And the human can escape punishment also by going into therapy for rehabilitation - and for bonus points receives sympathy rather than condemnation from the general public for the original heinous action!
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
If you need someone to go through objectionable content, choose a sociopath / psychopath.
They have no empathy for other human beings, so they won't be bothered by what they see.
Just hire a libtard. Problem solved.
Not if they're contractors!
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Milatary would be the worst! They would go all crazy and are used to getting justice by force. Watching and just filtering without having any power is not something police or military deal with well
http://saveie6.com/
isn't that employee on employee violence?
no
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Sounds like a pretty awesome job, actually. After 20 years on the internet, nothing shocks me anymore.
It's a bit ghoulish on my part, but I'd be curious to hear if/how their experiences as Content Screeners - seeing the worst humanity has to offer - has changed their political leanings. Do they now favor 100% gun control, have they gone out and purchased their own armory or no belief change from before the job? Censorship in public libraries? PETA's boycott of Air France? etc.
Then too, but they'd probably enjoy it.
Not necessarily. It may look fun, but I assure you, the smell can put anyone off.
And I have to assume that anybody who would volunteer for this and thrive on it ... well, you need to keep an eye on them because they're probably dangerous.
You are right. They may be the next CEO, or even the next president.
In those cases the police get up and personal with what is going on, sometimes for months on end, the children and the offenders. They get involved. This is why they are effected.
That makes it sound like you don't think the ones who only have to trawl through the graphic evidence of abuse for hours every day are affected.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Niven's fiction described a period of future human history where everyone is medicated to normalcy. Any violent imagery was censored. I don't know anymore how "future" that is...
Mostly random stuff.
I'm sure that pediatric surgeons see both very sad thing ad very gory things. However, I'm not sure they have any above-average tolerance for watching animals being tortured to death, and other "fun" stuff that you run into when you are on that part of the internet.
Perhaps more importantly: They're paid pretty well already for a job they probably enjoy, are good at and that has some social status. They would need to be paid really well for doing a job like this and paying so much for a job that doesn't require that highly trained labor seems unlikely.
Here is a 2010 New York Times article on the same subject. Seems like not much has changed. Apparently a bunch of it is outsourced, which in addition to the nature of the work, leads to questions about content privacy, especially when some of the images being reviewed are non-public (e.g. stuff you've sent through Facebook messages).
I'm sure the guy who works at the morgue or the guy who shovels shit for a living cares about these complaining Facebook employees. Or what about the millions if not billions of unemployed? If the job is so tough then psychologically profile the people you hire so you don't hire psychologically unstable softies prone to having nightmares about some pictures or content they saw on the internet.
I've been on the internet now for almost 20 years, I've seen a lot of obscene shit, eventually you grow a thick skin. Be a moderator for a chatroom, or web forum, or website, you will see obscene shit all the time. It might affect you at first, but it's not real life. And if seeing obscene content keeps you from having to see that shit in real life due to living in some slum then you've got nothing to lose. Do what you gotta do as long as it's a legit living, put your game face on and do your job.
Can you imagine the lawsuits if Google DID have these guys on the payroll and, 5 years later, ONE of them went nuts-o and harmed another employee, and that employee was NOT aware of the attacker's previous job description?
The risk is not employee on employee violence, it is risk of suicide.
If suicide is the risk you don't have to hire suicidal people to do that job. Can't they psychologically profile PRIOR to hiring them? Not everyone is thin skinned or suicidal.
My sister worked for the eBay thought police for several years. Mostly it was offensive images that people replaced on their web site in place of an existing image that someone else linked into an auction page so that they victim had to pay the bandwidth costs for the picture of the picnic table (or whatever), rather than the seller. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inline_linking
Apple employees who work with customer data in Final Cut Pro, iMovie, QuickTime, Logic Studio, and Aperture, as well as some other packages get to sign agreements about exposure to offensive material.
Adobe has similar agreements for employees who might be doing work on Photoshop for customer data.
If you're actually in the industry that generates the images in the first place, there are similar agreements.
I was at a startup that did web site reverse proxy caches for a while, and had a similar agreement; you can guess at the sites where you'd want the ability to carry heavy load on a landing page.
This is why Tech needs unions so we don't have this contractor abuse as least obamacare gives them health care.
Good. Traumatize away. We need to evolve to the point where our brains can process information rationally and without malfunctioning or the species is doomed.
Why is google doing this anyway, have we now accepted them as morally superior and capable of censoring at will?
I suspect you don't know how deep it goes. Go ahead and spend a few hours looking at gore videos and animal torture. The fist time you see someone executed in a less than efficient fashion is just as damaging as the hundredth time. that stuff still isn't nearly as bad as others I have seen.
Saying it isn't a big deal or it just takes a certain mindset to ignore it makes me wonder how easy and vanilla your life is.
One word: OSHA. Much as Google may not like it, they're not exempt from workplace health and safety regulations. If those truly are the working conditions, the contractors need to have a good sit-down with one of the local OSHA inspectors complete with show-and-tell. Note: being a contractor doesn't change things, the regulations apply to the workplace and not just the employees.
A weak mind? I'm sorry, but I'm willing to bet after watching this stuff for long enough it's going to have an effect on anybody but a sociopath. Then too, but they'd probably enjoy it.
Soldiers and police offices get PTSD. The cops who work on child porn and the like get worn down. Heck, I bet people who work in ERs get a little twigged on this stuff.
You immerse anybody in this stuff day in and day out, and I think it's safe to assume there's going to be some lasting trauma.
And I have to assume that anybody who would volunteer for this and thrive on it ... well, you need to keep an eye on them because they're probably dangerous.
Anybody who thinks simply being tough-minded (as opposed to being highly twisted) is all that it would take to "man up" and get past this is likely full of crap.
And I'm willing to bet it's not. People who work at funeral homes would all be sociopaths if you were correct, as would surgeons, doctors and others who work in certain professions. Child porn? Replace that with forensic scientist, the person who has to go to crime scenes and see dead bodies and smell death and collect evidence. I would think that job is a lot harder than seeing some photos or movies of child porn on the internet don't you? Actually working in a prison with prisoners as a prison guard is also harder as you would actually see the abuse, the death, the blood, the killings.
If you're not tough minded don't take the job. You don't have to be a sociopath to develop a thick skin, you just have to learn to be professional enough not to let your empathy ruin your productivity which requires you to be logical. If your job is to deal with dead bodies, or if you're hosting a site like Rotten.com you're doing a job and nothing more than that. It doesn't have to be pleasant to look at.
I' m saying man up. If you can't do the job plenty of people would rather filter Facebook all day than be prostitutes or drug dealers or unemployed. The economy is tough so there is no sympathy for people who complain.
It's generally a conscious effect.
Specifically, we don't actually get more violence because of video games:
Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games, Lawrence Kutner PhD and Cheryl K. Olson ScD ...any more than we end up with mass comedy in the streets every time they show a Seinfeld or I Love Lucy re-run.
"Video Games and Real Life Aggression", Lillian Bensely and Juliet Van Eenwyk, Journal of Adolescent Health, vol. 29, 2001
"Video Games and Health", Mark Griffiths, British Medical Journal vol. 331, 2005
Anybody who thinks simply being tough-minded (as opposed to being highly twisted) is all that it would take to "man up" and get past this is likely full of crap.
So, 4chan is full of sociopaths. Then, by your logic my assessment of the human race's progress should be much different...
Note to self: update The Guide to read: "Mostly Sociopathic", or "Mostly Full of Crap"
Some people aren't fit for certain jobs. If you can't see sick shit without getting sick to your stomach or breaking into tears then there are certain jobs you can't do. That doesn't mean I can't do those jobs or other people can't do them and no it doesn't mean the people who do them have to be a sociopath. People who have that logic think it's black and white where you have to be either empathic to the point it makes you so sick you kill yourself or so sociopathic that you're a predator yourself.
It doesn't work that way at all. There are skills people can learn to develop a thick skin. If you work in a field where people die around you on a regular basis, or if you work with dead bodies, I'll admit it's a difficult job, I'd say far more difficult than dealing with pictures, but you never hear of anyone saying the funeral director or hospice nurse needs psychological attention for what they have seen.
It doesn't mean he's wrong
Only if you define empathy and compassion as weakness. Being unaffected by material like this doesn't mean you're strong. It just means you're heartless.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
I have to totally agree, seeing it in pictures is far different than sitting there watching it happen in real life. In that case i may not use the 'weak mind' argument.
I know personally i have been in the position of 'reviewing' internally reported sites in a large corporate environment, and it didn't effect me in the least, i knew it was just a bunch of pixels on the screen and didn't change me in the least. Also i didn't take it home with me. I also didn't hate or enjoy, it was just my job at the time. Of course by the other guy's definition, that makes me a sociopath i guess.
Exactly the point I'm trying to make here. Some people know how to compartmentalize things in their mind, it's a skill and other people never can separate themselves from their work. Sometimes a job is going to be difficult, nasty, gross, painful, but there is a greater purpose for that sacrifice.
In this case it's moderating Facebook. If you have that job you have to see that content to protect other more sensitive minds from having to see it. In essence you're a soldier on the front line managing obscene content to protect the people who can't handle to see it. Just like someone has to open up bodies for autopsy but no one says those people are sociopaths.
Everything is rooted in meaning. A person with a powerful capacity to invent personal context might be able to sustain a healthy personality for quite a while. They would need to know that human depravity has no bottom, and that what they are doing is a service to take said depravity out of the mainstream. Next, they would need to have a strong spiritual life, seeing the flesh as only meat, a vessel for the human soul, would reduce the impact of people doing terrible things to meat. Finally, they would have to have a rich and diverse personal life that fulfilled and empowered them outside of managing digital toxic waste. Without a profoundly rich personal life, they nastiness would be quickly take its toll. Think of this as a psychic decathlon. Certainly not for a timid soul.
Exposing an employee to this kind of working condition without prior consent and lengthy explanation as to the possible impact I think would qualify as an OSHA violation. Google might need to consider legal ramifications. Contrary to the corporate norm, people are not disposable,
You hit the nail on the head. It's all about context. People are willing to sacrifice for a greater good in context. People aren't willing to just sit looking at that shit for no good reason usually when they can sit and look at something innocuous for no good reason and get the same pay or greater pay. That being said if Google called me up tomorrow and gave me the job I'd probably take it just so I could put Google on my resume. I guess that makes me a psychopath?
Wow, I figure if anybody had to do that for a year, they should be given a pension, a quiet place to get away from things, and a LOT of therapy.
I can't imagine being the poor bastard that has to look at the worst stuff on the internet. I've glimpsed enough to know that I wouldn't want to see any more of it. I'm frequently appalled at some of the things people choose to see.
I think even the law enforcement guys can get fucked up from this, and they understand the need for support systems. Your first job our of school? That would ruin you forever.
Considering how timid you are with pictures, how would you like to see, smell and touch dead bodies for a living?
Why don't you use your empathy for feel for the people who have to do the jobs much tougher than looking at pictures? Like the people who actually have to talk to rape victims (one of the toughest jobs), or people who actually have to investigate gruesome crime scenes, or people who actually have to watch people die for a living, or cut people open for a living, honestly the people who just have to view pictures and films of events have jobs far easier than a lot of people in society who actually see the same stuff only in real life where they have to interact with all 5 senses.
Yeah. You'd think they would have an ongoing schedule of therapy for the screeners, available continuously while they hold the job.
Why do you want to force people into therapy? Let it be an option for people who can't take the pressure of any job not just this job but don't force it on anyone.
They still need a ton of therapy after coming back from overseas. The military definitely does not harden you enough psychologically to the point where the work is not a concern.
I wrote a web filter in 1996. Between then and when I sold the company in 1999 part of my job was reviewing reported URLs for addition to the database.
Most of the time you're right. It's just porn. Some of it's nasty in an I-just-stepped-in-a-pile-of-dog-poo kind of way, but it's just porn.Yellow Showers because apparently peeing all over someone is a turn on. Click the button to classify it and look at the next reported image.
But then there was the little girl, two maybe three years old. Side-on shot, lying on the beach towel and holding her legs back to her shoulders. All you can see of the guy is his buttocks and genitals. Most of his torso and legs are off camera. Part of his genitals. He's inserted pretty far.
The girl's head is turned to the camera and apparently she's been told to smile. She's giving it her best little-girl grin.
That photo haunts me. If I never see something like that again it'll be too soon. If you can look at that sort of image and compartmentalize it as "just work," a "bunch of pixels on the screen," something is very wrong with you.
I would argue that if you take the most bad-assed military, police, or what have you ... unless someone has some serious issues of their own already which would make them enjoy it (which pretty much disqualifies them from doing the job), this kind of stuff 8 hours/day for a year is going to seriously fuck you up.
Unless you really want your military made up of vicious sadists, I completely fail to see how this kind of thing wouldn't cause lasting damage -- or at least the need for some heavy duty counseling and support.
That much exposure to every single horrible thing that ever gets filmed is bound to wear down anybody. And anybody it doesn't, likely scores in the very scary end of humanity.
You;'re logic is typical and its broken. Either they gotta be extremely white innocent or extremely black predator enjoying it. It's not usually either extreme. A lot of people simply can be paid to do a job and do it and condition themselves not to let it affect them. People do it all the time in many other jobs. Do people who work doing autopsies enjoy cutting people up like Dexter? Do you really believe this?
It's more people learn how to do their job and part of the job is compartmentalizing and learning how how to feel. It requires a lot of focus but you can shut empathy off. Doctors wouldn't be able to cut you open if they couldn't.
If you can look at that sort of image and compartmentalize it as "just work," a "bunch of pixels on the screen," something is very wrong with you.
Anyone not like you must be defective! You didn't cry enough when you saw that image, you sociopath!
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Only if they are weak and had no business there in the first place.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Apparently you failed the test to be able to 'disconnect' from the job properly and really shouldn't have been there, and something was wrong with you ( or at least your choice in professions as it wasn't a match ),
I have seen far worse than that, and i cant even remember it because it was just a image that never was allowed to make an impact or form a memory.
I can also help a person work on a 'classified document' and never actually comprehend the content, it was just disconnected letters. It was not retained in the least.
Now im not saying if i was on a team that was to get personally involved for months on end to save that particular little girl in your brain, and do hours of research on her and her alone, it it wouldn't effect me as of course it would, unless i had no heart at all.... But we aren't talking about that, we are talking about reviewing images as they blink on and off a screen in a matter of seconds, at the most, using what is in effect a reflex.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
And I have to assume that anybody who would volunteer for this and thrive on it ... well, you need to keep an eye on them because they're probably dangerous.
People like you, who believe in monitoring the population for thought crimes, are dangerous, Unfortunately there seem to be more than a few with this particular mental condition in government.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/technology/19screen.html
The 2-year old article I linked also explains that all Google content reviewers are on one-year contract because of the nature of the work and have access to counseling. From TFA it seems many of these reviewers got the false impression that they would be hired fulltime after completing the one year. Considering that Google seem to have pretty tough hiring process, I'm not surprised that very few of these reviewers get hired fulltime. Their managers must be filthy liars though.
Not getting hired full time would probably piss me off more than anything else. If I had to sacrifice doing a job like that and got duped then I would be pissed.
I guess that means I have empathy for the employees.
I agree. Doctors deal with death, to people have gotten to know and have talked to, on a daily basis.
After a while you are expected to learn to deal with the unpleasantness, and just do your job.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
And yet doctors somehow deal with the daily death of people not only right in front of them but people they have talked to and gotten to know over a short period of time.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
This job sounds like the "Prohibited Items" job at eBay. Basically you have to read, and unfortunately be exposed to some really terrible sh*t that people (or trolls) put online.
You probably don't want the nightmares associated with this. People who post this crap on 4chan are soulless husks that that get a thrill off of disturbing people, and they put baby-rape and snuff films out there for people to see on purpose. Then later they blame the victim for being offended instead of taking responsibility for for being a dick.
This type of crap has no limits, and if you really think you could do better at google, go right ahead. I can guarantee you won't last a week before you stop sleeping.
If it truly never affects you, none of it, ever, then I feel sorry for the people in your life. Anyone who can compartmentalize stuff that well is dangerous. Scary dangerous.
He needed therapy? Must have been a neophyte to the Internet, I'm sure he could claim PTSD and get disability though =)
Side note: Maybe I'm the one that needs therapy, I can watch someone get decapitated while eating my lunch... *shrug*
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
of /d/eviancy if you ask me.
It amazes you because you made it up.
This might be the Robert Heinlein coming out in me, but I agree this guy is a loser. Adults in control of their emotions can gird themselves to watching objectionable material.
If it wasn't merely objectionable, the guy should have quit, and/or begun feeding information to law enforcement or national security offices.
Cause, you know, you don't hand over YOUR FRIGGING RESPONSIBILITY TO HUMANITY just because you got a "cool" job from fucking google.
I worked for a web hosting service that regularly provided the police with evidence of suspected kiddy porn sites.
I never had to look at an image on the job, as we knew their typical tricks of obfuscation and traffic patterns. Then one day a couple of detectives came in for evidence on an active case. They got the data, and before I know it one of them brought up an image to verify it was what they were looking for.
It was horrible. It's 12 years later and it still makes me sick to my stomach. That single image.
I've seen violence that was gross, but it had nothing on the exploitation of an innocent child. It will haunt me forever.
Can't imagine doing that every day for months or a year without suffering some kind of psychological damage.
If they are enjoying it, the aren't sociopaths. There sick in different ways.
A sociopath just wound't care or understand what the fuss was about.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
because people will think they don't need it until it's a lot harder to deal with.
The schedule should include therapy once a week as part of the regular paid schedule.
Just like police officer need to go to therapy after certain events they encounter.
No one is capable of objectively evaluating their own mental health.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Maybe I'm jaded beyond insanity, but it seriously does sound like a job I could probably do.
I hunt, fish and have been on scene for a few automobile accidents. I've seen what happens when a guy falls from 15 stories onto cement in a construction accident. I've gutted and eaten my share of game. I've familiar with the story of Timothy Treadwell. I know what bears can do to a skeleton, and I can imagine pretty well what that camp looked like. I've seen fire photos.
It's grisly, but it doesn't stay with me because -- and I know I'm venturing into the domain of poets here -- it wasn't Evil. I didn't hate the deer. No one pushed the construction worker. His coworkers mourned for him, and it seemed sad, but proper. Carnivorous predation -- including my own -- and accidents don't "haunt" me. They seem "natural," as poor as that word choice is. I've experienced accidents -- some that put me in a hospital bed with stitches -- but they didn't --- I don't know -- "stain my soul." How's that for florid prose?
I wish I had never seen the Daniel Pearl video. Not that I wish I could have remained ignorant, but I wish I lived in a world where it just didn't happen. That video stuck with me. That video bothered me. I've met grizzled old firemen who were disfigured in a fire while they saved lives. I've shaken the hands of the men, and the burn scars shine like God's own merit badges.
I've seen photos of women disfigured by jealous men. Context seems to be everything. Just looking at the photos of those poor girls twists my guts into a knot. Maybe it's because I'm a parent, but those kiddie porn photos the cops published where all the people were removed and only the background shown make me wish God had personally appointed me to Go Smite Someone. I know the rage is just a cover for the anguish those photos of Best Western hotel rooms cause me.
If I had to spend a year, eight hours a day, looking at the worst the world had to show me, I'd need a padded cell at the end of it, and I'm a man with some scars and some grey in his hair. Shame on Google for doing this to some kid fresh out of school and then flushing him like toilet paper at the end of it. When you're the Boss, you're responsible for your people, and anyone who could do this is a reprehensible human being.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Finally! All those hours wasted on cracked.com pay off now:
http://www.cracked.com/article_18385_7-bullshit-police-myths-everyone-believes-thanks-to-movies.html
the Insanity Defense is attempted in less than one percent of all legal cases, which essentially means that more people have tried to pin their crimes on aliens or their evil twin rather than their own basket case, shoelace-eating lunacy.
Of that tiny fraction where the lawyer was even willing to try it, the defense is successful less than 25 percent of the time. Three states in the US don't even allow insanity as a defense.
Then, in that tiny, tiny fraction of cases where the guy "got off" because he convinced the court he was insane, he doesn't get to just go home. You get sent to a mental institution where you don't have a set sentence at all--they keep you as long as they see fit, which may be forever. You're there until "deemed safe to return to society", which according to the American Psychiatric Association is usually twice as long as the jail sentence would have been.
It's fun to dream of comparable actions against "insane" corporations though. I'm sure a lot of slashdoters can draw parallels between their workplace and a lunatic asylum anyway.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
If the corporation creates an environment where that manager is judge solely (or mostly) on the bottom line of his P&L, then they are engendering evil. Even a large corporation can put into place metrics and evaluation criteria which reward managers for making decisions that are profit neutral or profit negative in the short term, but that have other benefits, tangible and intangible, to the company outside of that manager's division.
But what you are suggesting is that the corporation's motivations (rules, threats, bonuses, metrics) exerts total control over an employee's behavior, which is not correct. The CEO and board can put all sorts of sticks and carrots in place, and people will still do stupid things. My observation is that you cannot really accurately judge a corporation's ethics based off of events that occur outside the boardroom, but only their reaction to those events. (Even then perhaps not, if they have a slimy enough PR department to spin things hard enough)
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Wahwahwah ... its so terrible I cant look...
Really, because I can and more. I have no issues with whipping someone male or female until their screams are just the wind rushing through their hoarse throats, stabbing peoples eyes out and electrocuting their cunts or dicks... the only issue I do have is that usually its the wrong people getting that kind of treatment and yeah fucking and killing kids well you know heres the kind of person who really should get that kind of treatment.
if you have problems with watching what wolves do, well youre a sheep. Me, I salivate but then again Im not a sheep.
Do people who work doing autopsies enjoy cutting people up like Dexter? Do you really believe this?
Yes, why the hell would you study 6+ years of medicine and end with a job you can't choose.
No kidding.
Thanks to my first ex-Wife (Yeah, apparently I can't tell the diff between a bunny and a rattler...not doing that mistake again. Fool me once, shame on you...fool me twice...) I got graced with about 4 years of experiencing my own personal HELL similar to this poor f*cker. Ex wife took to f*cking anything with 2, 3, 4 (YES!), and 5 (YES!! If you think I'm horsing around, you'd be barking up the wrong tree...) legs- and taking pics and keeping them on the household server. The only thing worse than bestiality would be snuff porn or child porn, I think...and what she did left...scars...as it was.
I'm still wondering what happened to "Do No Evil". Seems the manager of this unfortunate SOB didn't get the memo...
I thought in Clockwork Orange, it made the person so sick they couldn't stand any violence.
I just found this website accidentally. It discusses the possibility and ramifications of erasing "bad" memories ... http://bigthink.com/dangerous-ideas/3-erase-traumatic-memories-and-achieve-your-own-eternal-sunshine
I personally know a UN soldier who was present in a hidden sniper post during the Srebrenica massacre. He was under orders not to reveal his presence, to watch, and to take notes. He watched the Dutch peacekeepers surrender. Then he had to watch, FOR DAYS, while thousands of men, women, and children were brutally killed, raped, and tortured to death. He was watching through a sniper scope, not a video screen, so it was live, happening right there in front of him.
It was very damaging to him, psychologically. The guy STILL gets horrible nightmares around the anniversary of the event. That single event probably contributed to half the PTSD he experienced upon mustering out. He also told me that obeying his orders, and NOT shooting Ratko Mladic dead and thereby exposing his presence, was the hardest thing he ever did.
The job description doesn't "mess" with your "head" because of the content the censor is required to view, nor due to the length of time spent in viewing it, nor in the therapy or lack thereof afterwards.
The reason a person might become unstable while performing the duties of this particular job is because the most horrible things one sees must then be determined not to be viewed by anyone else, and not only are you forced -- by pay and coercion of duty to your signature -- to renounce what you've seen as "wrong", you are then also to be sure to be alone in what you've seen if your job has been done thoroughly for all. Talk about "forever alone". Talk about "twisted".
It has nothing to do with liability or humanism. It's about alienation and idiocy. Anybody who would spend time justifying the existence of a position like this, and to go on furthermore, likening it to some onslaught of meager slings and arrows, and to show how it can all be channeled by some corporate scheme into better good for profitability, is a completely inhuman wretch who has a malformed consciousness that befits only a malformed head, and may something fall from the heavens that will cleave that head thusly right.
It's censorship, you fucking idiot. Quit talking l33t-a$$, corporate hegemony about it, unless you're just aching for the prospect of getting paid to fap to mangled dead babies as our corporate robolords inform us you've been so occupied these long months in our employ.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
And this is why it makes me laugh when people say: "I'd never filter my kids internet access.", or "schools and libraries should be unfiltered"
Some people are more sick than you can imagine. You don't want to expose your kids to to the worst of humanity.
If looking at kiddie-porn, or beheading, or whatever gory pics can made someone so f*cked up that he has to get a therapy I'll say that this guy is already f*cked up _before_ he got the job
I do not like those gory pictures but I ain't gonna be affected by them, those are only pics and vids - In real life I had a lot worse experience
Anyone who has been through war, and experiencing up close all the savagery stuffs that war brings, know what I am talking about
I do not forget - how can anyone forget such experience?
But I do have a whole life in front of me and I am determined to not letting my life being led by those gory memories
Just leave them behind, stuffed the memory in some backrooms inside the brain, and get on with life
The Jewish Holocaust survivors had done that
The Vietnamese war victims had done that
How come the Americans can't?
How come they have to "seek therapy" and letting their lives be ruined by bad experiences?
For crying out loud, this guy who previously worked in Google only get to watch the gory thing - he was spared the other senses, like smell the blood, like feel the scorching heat from an explosion, like having the guy next to you losing almost half his torso in an explosion and still living and screaming - many of us had lived through that, and our lives ain't as f*cked as that guy
All I can say is that the ex-Google guy is nothing but another new-age whiner - wasting time whining about how his life was altered because of watching gory vids and pics
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The generally upmodded consensus here seems to be that any healthy human being will eventually be psychologically damaged after enough exposure to the kinds of images described. I'm puzzled by the perspective, because it seems like similar claims made about exposure to other kinds of images would be discounted or even ridiculed.
But what about long-term exposure to perfectly legal images of violence? What about legal adult porn that is, by design, intentionally degrading to one or more of the actors in it? What about very detailed, explicit, gore and violence in video games?
I don't understand how or where one draws the line, if you think that there's some sort of boundary between the kinds of images that will affect your mental health and those that are perfectly benign. The generally supported reactions here seem to be "I know it when I see it, and boy is that stuff dangerous, at least over the long term." What's the difference between that position, and that of Jack Johnson or some puritanical-antiporn crusader?
Wow
I was definitely not aiming for insightful with that, by the way. Funny, maybe. Unless someone got insightful from a comparison between a schizophrenic and a corporation... hmm. Not so far fetched now I think about it.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Why do people think it's still 2006? Most of the gore is posted to keep people out whenever 4chan gets news coverage and lots of attention.
These guys have to watch it carefully, over and over again, to look for evidence/clues etc.
A Googler can just glance at it, determine what it is, then flag it for law enforcement/special treatment and hop on to the next.
would have solved all problems, chief. No need for ellipsis.
Well, kind of. See, you can't diagnose a sociopath in their childhood or teens, because they're not fully developed so the tests are inconclusive. Normal for a teenager isn't necessarily clinically altogether within 'normal'.
From what I understand, 4chan is full of people who are essentially no more developed than teenagers engaging in mass gross-out contests and fart jokes writ large and obscene, thus making them indistinguishable from sociopaths. Of course, I generalize.
Dude, seriously, if someone had to watch every possible bit of human depravity, gore, violence, and obscenities day in and day out for a year ... if at the end of it you're not a little fucked up and are really enjoying your job because you get to watch all that shit all day long ... then, yes, you too are probably already a Fucked Up Person.
"Tough Minded" in this case means "I'm so desensitized to violence and atrocity that this doesn't bother me", which is scary because you've dehumanized them (and therefore score one more point on the sociopath test) ... the ones that didn't want therapy would be the ones I'd worry about.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
While I'm not one to go searching for disgusting and perverted content it isn't like I'm new to the Internet. It does contain content which the majority couldn't imagine and despite this I certainly don't think it's an issue. I'd probably be bad at the job although not find it "traumatic" even after 10 years of looking at nasty stuff. I'd probably just find it boring as hell. That said I can't see how you can be traumatised by it. No matter how much I'd rather not get raped (a real world example I could sort of see how one might be "traumatised" by something) I fail to see how such a thing can indefinitely effect a person. At the same time I think I understand how physical pain can cause a person to be hypersensitive (probably what someone would describe as traumatic) to certain situations which had previously caused real pain. It did take me several months to get over a neurological disorder which I finally recovered from. How the pain occurred, how long it lasted, and so on differed during certain points. At one point cold sort of impacted the pain. Even though it didn't cause the pain necessarily. In any case. The result of that after having not had symptoms for a while took a good 6-12 months to recover from psychologically. You might think this isn't traumatising although you probably don't understand the disorder or the pain. It was a neurological disorder which is one of the most painful disorders known to man. Getting hit with a bullet is not painful. This was painful and it was non-stop 24/7 for a good week at one point. Every 20 seconds I'd have the most severe pain you couldn't begin to imagine. It was worth committing suicide over. I could not have taken it more than two weeks. Fortunately I only had to go through 3 straight days of this before (although it was an ongoing thing for a good year) they put me out and doped me up enough until I was able to see a specialist in Philadelphia (one of only a handful in the United States). At which point they got me on a different cocktail of drugs that I was eventually (surprisingly) able to get off after about a year. So it took a year after having not been in pain before I could start getting off the drugs and another year to fully recover psychologically (not wince at eating something cold would be the psychological "suffering"). Personally I think we should just ignore the people who claim psychological trauma. It's not to say some people don't suffer although you can't blame someone because your so damm sensitive to a picture/words/etc.
You honestly can't tell me that all the increasingly common gore in the movies, video games, etc. is having a lasting effect on most people's psyche and makes them less human. I would imagine the same thing could be said regardless of how disturbing it was or if it were sexual. Think of doctors who perform autopsies every day - murder, suicide victims, children, etc. Are they more dehumanized? What about trauma doctors? They, like these contractors, are doing something for a better good. I think this boils down to a jealous ex-contractor who is pissed he/she didn't get the new lavish employee benefits program and severance packages that was reported here not long ago.
Let's let the free market decide...
testing out my trending skills
What? You can always quit if the job sucks THAT bad. Believe me, I wouldn't have lasted a day at my current Level before happily walking out the door, flipping birds.
But as an idealistic fresh-outta-college twenty-something? Well...
A better question might be: What the hell was the official Google 'handler' saying to these contractors to compel them to keep on as long as they did? What kind of "You are protecting children and people all over the world", etc. BS were they spewing? You better believe there was at least some of it. But as an another astute poster mentioned, their job is also to hear NONE of it, natch - Hear No Evil.
Dear, Sweet, 'Do No Evil' Google: Please stop plugging your eyes, ears and mouth and get a psych support staff on board for these operatives and Start Speaking Out about this horrific garbage. The only way human society will ever cure this problem is with honest discussion so we can ALL get 'onboard' and start snitching on the creeps doing this horrific BS and posting the crap online.
I assert this News is Provenance!
She blinded me with science, she tricked me with technology. ~ Thomas Dolby
This is a great post. Thanks, jeko.
Quote from TFA: "After college, I went to work in politics;". Then he decided to change something in his life and went after dark corners of the Internet. Hmmmm. This guy is into weird stuff.
because people will think they don't need it until it's a lot harder to deal with.
The schedule should include therapy once a week as part of the regular paid schedule.
Just like police officer need to go to therapy after certain events they encounter.
No one is capable of objectively evaluating their own mental health.
Then make it an option but don't force it on people you fascist.
Can you imagine the lawsuits if Google DID have these guys on the payroll and, 5 years later, ONE of them went nuts-o and harmed another employee, and that employee was NOT aware of the attacker's previous job description? Google might win in the long run but they'd have to fight an uphill battle.
It's really a sad thing that we have an easier time imagining a lawsuit in this situation than if Google just dumped these people on the street like an unwanted war vet to let someone else deal with the problem they generated.
I hunt, fish and have been on scene for a few automobile accidents. I've seen what happens when a guy falls from 15 stories onto cement in a construction accident. I've gutted and eaten my share of game. I've familiar with the story of Timothy Treadwell. I know what bears can do to a skeleton, and I can imagine pretty well what that camp looked like. I've seen fire photos.
It's grisly, but it doesn't stay with me because -- and I know I'm venturing into the domain of poets here -- it wasn't Evil. I didn't hate the deer. No one pushed the construction worker. His coworkers mourned for him, and it seemed sad, but proper. Carnivorous predation -- including my own -- and accidents don't "haunt" me. They seem "natural," as poor as that word choice is. I've experienced accidents -- some that put me in a hospital bed with stitches -- but they didn't --- I don't know -- "stain my soul." How's that for florid prose?
I wish I had never seen the Daniel Pearl video. Not that I wish I could have remained ignorant, but I wish I lived in a world where it just didn't happen. That video stuck with me. That video bothered me. I've met grizzled old firemen who were disfigured in a fire while they saved lives. I've shaken the hands of the men, and the burn scars shine like God's own merit badges.
I've seen photos of women disfigured by jealous men. Context seems to be everything. Just looking at the photos of those poor girls twists my guts into a knot. Maybe it's because I'm a parent, but those kiddie porn photos the cops published where all the people were removed and only the background shown make me wish God had personally appointed me to Go Smite Someone. I know the rage is just a cover for the anguish those photos of Best Western hotel rooms cause me.
If I had to spend a year, eight hours a day, looking at the worst the world had to show me, I'd need a padded cell at the end of it, and I'm a man with some scars and some grey in his hair. Shame on Google for doing this to some kid fresh out of school and then flushing him like toilet paper at the end of it. When you're the Boss, you're responsible for your people, and anyone who could do this is a reprehensible human being.
Not everyone believes in god and evil. I don't believe in good and evil, just ignorant and wise, smart and dumb, people who don't know what they are doing will do "evil" inane violent shit. If you believe in good and evil you probably shouldn't be watching people because most everyone is bad and evil just as most everyone is good.
http://www.videntifier.com/
I am a fascist, you insensitive clod!
But it takes two to tango. In this case I assume this guy was convinced to go to google with the promise of a large sum of money. I hope it was not just the promise of a job. Leaving a job for the promise of a future job is not so rational. So the question of fairness in this ase is how much money was paid. Since this is an unskilled position, anything over minimum wage is compensation for pain and suffering, like at the meat packing plant. so if this guy requires a year of therapy twice a week, which is expensive, but doable especially with non profit clinics with sliding scales.
I think the cautionary tale here is that money for nothing does not exist. It is easy to promise a job, then just say metrics have not been met when it comes time to give the job. In an economy where people with low skills or high supply scales are not getting jobs, such scams are easy. That google would resort to such 'scams' for jobs that are difficult to fill is not surprising. This is nothing new. I once had an employee leave a job in a firm where pay was high and most position in management were filled from within. This person left to work minimum wage at a fast food place. They said that within a year she would be manager. Of course they did not say that it would require 60+ hour weeks which meant no time with her kid.
Also, the military is as guilty as anyone. Years of research has shown that a soldier should not be on the front line for more than a month or two. Any longer than this significant psychological damage occurs. Of course the military ignores this data. What saves the soldier is an unlimited amount of tax dollars going to compensate for the military commands incompetence.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
That's because a lot of rape stories involve certain actions taken by the women in them that put them at greater risk. And there are lots of welfare stories like Obama's Aunt Zeituni who was on Section 8 as an illegal alien, or the "It's free, swipe yo EBT" video on youtube. And lots of car crashes involve at least one driver doing something wrong.
And sometimes a woman is raped or a car is crashed or someone goes on welfare and they were doing everything right.
What's the difference between that position
The difference? I'll know it when I see it...
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Hey Google I'll do it for 5 grand a year less than that guy.
I don't believe in good and evil, just ignorant and wise, smart and dumb, people who don't know what they are doing will do "evil" inane violent shit.
Then you're deluding yourself. Has it not occurred to you that there exist people in this world who kill merely for their own pleasure? In fact, not only do they enjoy killing but they know exactly what they're doing and even that society considers it to be "wrong" and yet they do it anyway. What else would you call that if not "evil"? If you don't believe in evil, then why not play the Ouija board just for the hell of it (pun intended) because evil doesn't exist, right? What could possibly go wrong, it's all fake right? Wrong.
As Orwell said, all animals are equal but some are more equal than others. My employment history is a string of 10 and 11 month assignments brought to an end before the fish-or-cut-bait moment of hire-or-discard. So that this guy was cut loose is nothing to be shocked or surprised at: it's what the labor market is now. And even that the substance of the gig was misrepresented to him up front is hardly stunning: happens all the time, albeit not so dramatically. That he was offered no support or counseling amid such an appalling assignment is, the bizarre conditions aside, pretty ordinary too. So it appears the bottom line to this story is: Google is no different in its attitudes to contract workers than any other corporation. How perfectly shocking.
Development is programmable; Discovery is not programmable. (Fuller)
I used to be a content moderator and then a trainer for content moderators, and I can tell you that it's slightly different. Child pornography investigators will spend a lot of time over a small amount of images, all of which are horrific. Content moderation is all about getting through a large amount of material quickly, most of which will turn out to be false positives.
Two months isn't an option. It takes a month to get up to an acceptable speed, and about three months to really hit your stride. You have to moderate quickly - the article suggests 15k images per day, which is two seconds per image over an 8 hour shift. That would be about a second on each innocent image, and maybe 8-10 seconds on those that are borderline or need responding to.
The job isn't for everyone. It will change how you look at life and people around you, because you're essentially training yourself to see the worst in every image. Over a third of people quit shortly after being hired because they genuinely cant deal with doing it every day, and that's fine. But it doesn't have to fuck you up long term.
What google did wrong here was letting him work alone: The way to get through a job like this is to be in a room with other people doing exactly the same thing as you. Asking for advice, pointing things out, joking about the images...sharing helps you distance yourself from it.
This is a job that's screaming for AI. At the very least, they could be basing Bayesian filters on the decisions made by the human workers. That wouldn't take the humans totally out of the loop, but it would reduce the number of screeners required. Unfortunately, you still need humans in the system to render the final verdict. Allowing an AI to convict people would bring in a whole bunch of other ethical issues.
You did not know the job was not for you.
Either you love the smell of napalm in the morning or you are a candy ass.
Yeah no...please provide existing precedent where
A) An insanity plea allowed someone entirely off the hook in either a legal sense a social sense or both
B) Anyone had any sympathy for an insane person that killed even 10% of the victims of say the Bhopal incident
Actual *investigating* would be a far cry than just looking at images fly past your face.
In those cases the police get up and personal with what is going on, sometimes for months on end, the children and the offenders. They get involved. This is why they are effected.
Effected to do what?
The guy doesn't have to watch the whole video. He can shut it off after determining it is objectionable. Doesn't this make it a little less extreme than what people are saying here in the comments?
12 years ago, I worked at a place where they categorized online content and looked for answers to common questions. All the "editors" had their own subset of the content assigned. So, naturally, a couple of them did sex. At first they probably thought it was great (I never asked this), but after some time it got boring and depressing, and they didn't want to do it any longer. That was well within a year. So how come Google doesn't know this? Because if looking for mainstream porn is wearing you out, the stuff mentioned has got to be killing.
From http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2000/12/a-new-way-to-be-mad/4671/
Yes, lucky there's that test that can tell you with a fair degree accuracy who can handle sifting through images of graphic violence/torture/abuse, and who can't.
Oh wait, my mistake, there isn't.
Only if they are weak and had no business there in the first place.
I think there's a case for calling that a fairly twisted meaning of the word "weak."
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Google got someone from a federal agency to talk to me, and that’s when it occurred to me that I needed therapy. She showed me photos of seemingly innocuous activities (kind of like a modified Rorschach test) and asked me for my first visceral reaction. I was like, “That’s fucked up!” It was just a father and a child.
I think my manager was a little shocked, too, when I couldn’t get hired full-time by Google. He gave me the news around the nine-month mark, so I had two months to find a job. [Ed. note: Google contractors can only stay for a year before leaving or becoming regular employees.] But he couldn’t tell me why I wasn’t hired.
Presumably the first happened before the second. If so chances are that having done the job had so seriously distorted your perceptions that you were no longer able to tell a 'good' image from a 'bad' image and therefore were no longer able to perform the job of vetting the images effectively. That's understandable.
Just letting you go having done so much damage to you really sucks though. Part of what comes from being a contractor and having very few rights I guess (but the pay packet to compensate you for that). But it still sucks, I hope they're still helping you with therapy bills etc after you've left.
Three states in the US don't even allow insanity as a defense.
I haven't fact checked it but Wikipedia adds:
However, a mentally ill defendant/patient can be found unfit to stand trial in these states
Every population has a few people that are just bat shit insane, people that obviously aren't evil because they're so zoned out of reality they've got no idea what they're doing. I think they have pretty good tools to tell the really insane people from the ones who think they can play insane.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Google recruiters, please contact me.
Maybe some people can convince themselves that slutty dressed drunk teens "asked for it" - I can't - but I doubt anyone can justify a five year old being raped and killed in their "Just World". If you're watching the worst of the worst, you're looking at things that nobody could possibly deserve. I think it's more the opposite, if you take on a job like this any illusion you might have about a just world and your faith in humanity will be utterly and completely crushed. The world will be just a nasty and cruel and unfair place where you either grow a stone hide and heart or get crushed by it.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"Hint that Winter is Coming for all of us, and he won't thank you."
It doesn't seem to be working out well for the Stark's at least.
Thank you. You may claim to be no poet, but your words were very eloquent.
By cop, perhaps?
look at the images. First one: Youtube, and so much gauss, you cannot see anything. Second one: Fake looking glass with fake pixels, absolutely no benefit to the article, too. ... just a site looking for clicks, nothing of value there.
and buzzfeed, the name says it all
No there isn't a "test", but it should be pretty apparent when you started the job if it was going to bother your not.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
But what about long-term exposure to perfectly legal images of violence? What about legal adult porn that is, by design, intentionally degrading to one or more of the actors in it? What about very detailed, explicit, gore and violence in video games?
In your first 2 examples, although people may arguably get harmed, they placed themselves in that situation willingly and knowingly.
There's a difference between watching something that is pretend and something that is real, especially when children are involved.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
"If you can imagine it, there is porn of it [on the internet]"
http://xkcd.com/305/
I just read "Rule 34" by Charles Stross. It has a law enforcement department in charge of internet policing. One of the things it addresses is this issue of what happens to the people who have to see this stuff.
Or you are just an ignorent kid. Doctors have the highest levels of suicide. Maybe that is because they make so little money of people don't give any special respect to someone who is a doctor, yeah, that must be it. Not all the crap they got to deal with.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
That's bullshit, this concept that they must be weak if it affects them. If it affects you, you are normal, a normal human being with normal mores from a normal rational civilized society. Have you ever killed a man or seen it done? Have you ever dealt with child abuse/trafficing? Ever had to deal with any of this sickness? No? Then shut your damn mouth. It is traumatizing, in varying degrees to different people, but it is traumatizing seeing the evil that some parts of mankind are capable of, and it is not something you can just wish away. Some of these things you'll get past it, over it, sure. But every so often you'll get reminded of it, and you can remember it clear as day. I know.
and whoever modded that P.O.S. post Insightful needs smacked upside the head.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Yes i have, and you sound like a pansy ass. Go back to working in a flower shop of something if you cant handle it.
We are also talking about effects of seeing a image, not watching the act in person. I have stated earlier that i fully agree that being there in person would effect most people, but not all, and i wouldn't call them weak if it did. However, if an IMAGE causes you problems, i stand by my statement that you are weak.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You and so many bleeding hearts lack reading capability. YOU are talking about PERMANENT insanity defense. However, most people to try the insanity defense use TEMPORARY insanity, like a psychosis induced by drug use.
Recent case in Holland saw a black guy murder his famous brother during a marijuana induced psychosis. He was released from jail immidiatly when this defence was accepted.
The Netherlands DOES have TBS, which means "Ter beschikking stelling" which means "To be made available" which in theory can see you locked up without a defined sentence period (a human right crime according to bleeding hearts) BUT that is ONLY for permanent crazies. Not for people who claimed they lost it due to drugs or stress.
I am perfectly willing to accept permanent insanity and sent someone to a padded cell instead of a non-padded one. Just as long as the door remains locked for a very long time. To many times, the temp insanity plea results in people walking away from a crime.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If you read his entire post he absolutely contradicts himself however also answers your comment in his post.
He said clearly that stuff that are out of accident does not bother him, while out of spite does.
The good and evil thing can be disputed, if you know enough about psychology you understand that there is no "good" or "evil" it's just how you percieve things, you and me thinks that killing out of spite is evil, however a person born into this world raised where killing out of spite is just and right - they would think its a "good" thing to do.
It's all in the eye of the beholder, it's not "deluding yourself". I personally believe that everyone who kills another human for fun, pleasure or revenge even love are mentally damaged somehow in some way, doesn't mean they're "evil" just means their reality differs from ours.
but it should be pretty apparent when you started the job if it was going to bother your not.
What are you basing that on?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Just source your talent from 4chan. They're used to that stuff.
This story sounds a lot like how our government treats our war veterans here in the USA.
"Thanks for your service. We're sort of sorry that you're not feeling well. Please go away."
Inexcusable behaviour.
My Heart Is A Flower
I dunno I could sift through a mass of shit for a job. I mean I avoided goatse forever and a few other things that eventually got put in front of me, and then I screamed--that was new, getting legit directed to tubgirl was like something being slammed through my skull, it took a good 15 seconds to shake off the initial impact--but it doesn't have a lasting effect. For the most part I just move on to the next thing.
Worked at a web host that hosted most of this stuff, we passed it around as a joke to coworkers. Sort of hazing ritual, not really. Not really pleasant but not terrible.
Then again I am auto-stable. Emotional and mental stability is notably poor, but I internally break everything down and try to understand it. My social life is terrible because I'm very, very bad at being social; but I also scan back through everything and cite out mistakes, even years later. I look back at minor body language, tones of voice, exact wordings that stand out, and recognize things I should have seen that I didn't. I replay my own thoughts and feelings and figure out what errors were there and where they went into a run-away state and I don't react as severely in the future. It's definitely a process, but I like to think I get better instead of worse as I'm exposed to more and more shit.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
You think that admitting that you have enough empathy for other people, that looking at pictures of their suffering for hours on end would affect you... makes you weak? Seriously? I'd rather be your version of weak and retain my humanity thanks. Especially since your sole criteria for being weak, seems to be a lack of empathy. You know who I'd trust to look after my kids? Who I'd rather have a beer with?... hot tip, it isn't someone who is ok with looking at this sort of stuff, and is so devoid of empathy that they are convinced seeing it for hours on end wouldn't affect them.
But that doesn't mean I wouldn't monitor in general what's going on, and set time for a chat if things stray over the line.
No one is capable of objectively evaluating their own mental health.
This is the most insightful thing I've heard today so far. This is correct on so many levels.
So, 4chan is full of sociopaths.
Is this something you'd actually dispute? Even a brief familiarity with 4chan should convince you of that. This is a group whose loudest members absolutely delight in the offense and sometimes in the outright misery of others. Cyberstalking, goading people to suicide, racist harassment, etc. The very definition of "lulz" might as well be sociopathy.
as watching political debates. I'd kill myself if I had to watch those for a year.
...pity the poor censor. Have any of you asked yourself why this is Google's business? Please don't tell me they need to do it, because the material is objectionable--I got that. Unfortunately, that metric can be applied to your political opinion, too. Is this just one of those little things we need protection against? Well, thank god there's someone to sort that out.
Empathy for actual people and animals yes, pixels on the screen, no.
And dont worry, i dont consume alcohol as its bad for you. But, your kids would be safe with me, as they are real and not some digital representation.
I bet you voted democrat too.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
A prolonged study of history will convince you that sociopaths are made, not born. Look at the culture of the Iroquois, Chaco Canyon, certain periods in Japan - there's no real shortage of cultures that glorified torture and derived aesthetic satisfaction from inflicting suffering in "artistic" ways.
Just to hit you with a clue-by-four:
Pictures like this are pictures OF ACTUAL REAL BONAFIDE PEOPLE. If you see a picture of a child being raped, that child was actually raped. That is why normal people have an adverse reaction to pictures and movies, as well as in-person, because they have that realization.
What you're saying is, you'd be horrified if anything depraved happened to his children while you were there, but you'd be A-ok watching pictures of the same happening. Please, seek counseling, you need it.
Agreed. There is something uniquely different about those sorts of evil acts. The beheadings, or CP, and a few other things. In the military, or on a police force, there are a bunch of other people around that get what your going through and provide a support system. This poor guy apparently had no outlet at all to release the stress, no one to relate too, no one to share the demons with.
To just be thrown out into the street when they were done with him is simply morally wrong. His boss had an OBLIGATION to fight for him, and others on that team if there were any... And google has an obligation to find them a position, or at the very least some meaningful support after his contract ended.
I don't believe in good and evil, just ignorant and wise, smart and dumb, people who don't know what they are doing will do "evil" inane violent shit.
Then you're deluding yourself. Has it not occurred to you that there exist people in this world who kill merely for their own pleasure? In fact, not only do they enjoy killing but they know exactly what they're doing and even that society considers it to be "wrong" and yet they do it anyway. What else would you call that if not "evil"? If you don't believe in evil, then why not play the Ouija board just for the hell of it (pun intended) because evil doesn't exist, right? What could possibly go wrong, it's all fake right? Wrong.
I don't believe they are evil. I don't believe in the concept of evil. Psychopaths aren't evil, they simply don't have the same brain structure as others. They are emotionally retards but not evil. The fact that you think they are evil shows you have an ignorance of neuroscience.
Their brains are defective. The consequence of their mental illness is that they like to torture animals and they don't have the ability to resist their urges because their brain never developed in a way to allow them to be able to have that level of self control.
Do we call a child evil for acting like a child? If we are the adults in the room it doesn't help if we believe in anachronistic concepts like Good and Evil when we know better. If you don't know better do some research and look up James Fallon on Youtube.
If you read his entire post he absolutely contradicts himself however also answers your comment in his post.
He said clearly that stuff that are out of accident does not bother him, while out of spite does.
The good and evil thing can be disputed, if you know enough about psychology you understand that there is no "good" or "evil" it's just how you percieve things, you and me thinks that killing out of spite is evil, however a person born into this world raised where killing out of spite is just and right - they would think its a "good" thing to do.
It's all in the eye of the beholder, it's not "deluding yourself". I personally believe that everyone who kills another human for fun, pleasure or revenge even love are mentally damaged somehow in some way, doesn't mean they're "evil" just means their reality differs from ours.
I'm saying pretty much the same thing. There is no good and evil, but some people are more dangerous to our health than others and that can be objectively measured. But in my opinion an industrial polluter is as dangerous as a serial killer because the consequences of their actions are often the same yet in our society we don't treat it as the same.
I don't think killing is always wrong, it's wrong most of the time because it's unnecessary. In most cases the problem can be solved non-lethally, whether it's self defense or a means to an end situation most of the time no one has to die, and the consequences of killing people if it is discovered that you did it are pretty bad as well.
Basically I think it's stupid to kill people just because you feel like it. If you'll die if you don't kill them then it's a very different decision, or if you have no other option because all prior options have been exhausted it's a different decision than the person who kills to satisfy an emotion which while I don't consider evil I do consider it weak and stupid.
You may have missed it due to all the nonsense being posted, but i never said i would just sit there and enjoy them like i would watch batman or something. The simple fact is, I can easily disconnect from the images so they are nothing more than pixels, as that is all they really are. Then purely react on reflex, and the images never register at all. I DON'T ACTUALLY PROCESS THE IMAGE AT A CONSCIOUS LEVEL. ( its really a simple concept, or is it just too complex for your tiny little mind to comprehend ? )
Getting emotionally involved with some image because you are too week and cant look away or control your own emotions would be a better cause for getting counseling then being able to not be effected and picking the wrong career for yourself.
And I'm done arguing. You are a pansy ass, period. Just accept it, be happy, and go sniff some flowers. Just don't turn on the tv, it might eat you.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You have not seen enough. Inserting objects/beheadhings/murders are not the worse thing you can see in the internet. For a "tech site", everyone seems to forget that not every image/videos are indexed/seen by google. Which means it is likely that most of what he is seeing are "normal weird" stuff which you can see in dedicated forum/sites that caters on those weirdness.
I am not saying he should quit or anything. All I am saying that seeing those things can change a person but it is up to that person to do something about it. A weak mind has nothing to do with it. Even if you have what you can call a "strong mind", you are still affected by it one way or the other. If you haven't thought of insertions while holding a bottle even once in your life, then you are lying.
Congratulations, you just scored yourself a new job, you get paid to film your parents have sex every day. Make sure you get plenty of close ups and catch all the dirty language? Don't want to do it? Think you might view things differently afterwards? Weak.
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
I dunno. You learn to spot the symtoms after a while.
I suppose it depends on the health issue.
There are plenty of colourful people who are cuckoo and freely admit it. Some wear it as a badge. They are fully aware of their issues but powerless to do anything about it, or maybe they don't want to.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
Mate if you can parse it like that and remain unaffected then great, someone needs to do this job - and I personally wouldn't want it to be me. And I'm grateful to the people who do it. Even those who say it doesn't affect them. But I don't think characterizing the people who are affected by these things as weak is helpful or fair. That is where I had an issue with what you said. Why do or say things to discourage empathy in the human population, or portray it as a negative attribute? I think it's a good trait and one that it would be nice to have more of in general not less, and in my mind the people who are affected by this are probably those with more empathy. After all if these images were just pixels to everyone, and we could all just refuse to process them at a conscious level, then why is the job of removing them even necessary?
You are either an example of what is wrong with society, or full or crap. I vote the latter because I can smell it from here. Just another internet tough guy, probably about 14 years old, who thinks he's figures it all out.
And for the record: 12 years Marine Corps, and counting.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
As i stated earlier up, i have been tasked with this very thing in the past, and while i cant tell you exactly how many images/sites i verified, by making some guesses with how long i did it ( about a year, 1.5 hour a day ) i would say in the 5 figure range. And since i didn't 'register' them, i don't remember the content of a single one.
Furthermore, back to the real subject, I do not consider myself extraordinary so if i completely disconnect, anyone can, or they are a complete looser.
And for the record: 12 years Marine Corps, and counting.
Ya, sure you are.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
After all if these images were just pixels to everyone, and we could all just refuse to process them at a conscious level, then why is the job of removing them even necessary?
If you ask me, i do think its unnecessary as i don't ask anything of anyone that i wouldn't/couldn't do myself.
And i didn't mean try to portray empathy as a bad thing, as its not, i just don't see viewing some images as a valid situation to have it with.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
In situations like this, it is useful to remember the original context of the "Don't be Evil" line associated with Google. It was as a précis of an employee policy handbook. In other words, it meant that employees should not be evil to Google, NOT that Google should not be evil to employees.
Ok, I was with you until you mentioned Ouija board - after that you just seemed like christian nutjob intolerant against other religions.
Btw, have tried Ouija board, and guess what? Yeah, nothing happened, that's what - big surprise there...
His therapy may actually be my interest. His trauma is somebody else s need... and our evidence. If he finds a real proof that he _IS_ in psychosis, would he need therapy because of it? You are promoting a shady individual anonymously who besides claims he needs THERAPY! What we need is a better mapping from IP to final consummer, without supressing everything (but being able to arrest if needed). I mean mainly murders, maimings, tortures, corpses, kidnappings, massacres, dismemberments and the like... that were evidenced but not prosecuted, not even reported? I argued about it, let the index SHOW IT UP and others decide. Anyway, I found examples of each of this some very unexpected but better to know than close eyes, right? Incidentally, you closed the thread... do not UNIONIZE, it is like tying up your shoelaces before running, otherwise the HOPPING guy would have no advantage over you...
"Completely off-topic, but love the sig - Brent Spiner is an *excellent* addition to Warehouse 13 this season. They've written him particularly well in that it's still rough to tell whether he's a tyrant attempting to cling to power, or genuinely concerned about the fate of the world. A friend and I were discussing it, and of all the Star Trek actors of all the different series, we concluded that just about the only regular character who could have done a similarly convincing job was Chief O'Brien. "
Someone noticed! Glad you like it! At least a quarter of the Star Trek actors (from all the series!) have been "ruined" by that show. Brent Spiner went through a period where even his side roles came out a little like Data. In a couple of lines I thought he almost came out sounding like Lore, but then he recovered and went into a different character zone. I have to say I don't exactly care for Colm Meany, and I *don't* think he could have pulled off the new role as well. If I had to pick an "Alternate" I'd go with John DeLancie aka Q, or, with a little "work", Robert Picardo, the Hologram Doctor from Voyager. ("Work" = give him two extra cups of coffee then run over his cat! Watch him go from doctor to snarling beast!)
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine