Facebook Is Not Protecting Content Moderators From Mental Trauma, Lawsuit Claims (reuters.com)

A former Facebook contract employee has filed a lawsuit, alleging that content moderators who face mental trauma after reviewing distressing images on the platform are not being properly protected by the social networking company. Reuters reports: Facebook moderators under contract are "bombarded" with "thousands of videos, images and livestreamed broadcasts of child sexual abuse, rape, torture, bestiality, beheadings, suicide and murder," the lawsuit said. "Facebook is ignoring its duty to provide a safe workplace and instead creating a revolving door of contractors who are irreparably traumatized by what they witnessed on the job," Korey Nelson, a lawyer for former Facebook contract employee Selena Scola, said in a statement on Monday. Facebook in the past has said all of its content reviewers have access to mental health resources, including trained professionals onsite for both individual and group counseling, and they receive full health care benefits. More than 7,500 content reviewers work for Facebook, including full-time employees and contractors. Facebook's director of corporate communications, Bertie Thomson, said in response to the allegations: "We take the support of our content moderators incredibly seriously, [...] ensuring that every person reviewing Facebook content is offered psychological support and wellness resources."

Comments

Re:The new America.

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet that facebook moderators only rarely see a truly grisly image. (Those posting child porn or mob killings tend to do it in less public forums than facebook.). 99% is acceptable pictures - tons and tons of really boring stuff from the lives of people.

And occationally, there is an exposed tit that somehow isn't acceptable to Americans, and therefore has to be deleted. Even if it is posted in a Russian-language art pictures group local to Vladivostok.

Also, the occational troll who toss some plain porn into discussions. Not exactly horrible to reject either.

But still - if they want less "horrible pictures", use their power to ban people. Don't just delete the picture, delete the user & blacklist him. E.g. lock someone out of facebook a month for porn, or for life for an IS beheading. As for fake accounts - no need to have them. Account validated by official ID or it gets closed.

Re:*Imagines the job qualifications and interview*

[AmiMoJo]

There are ways to limit the harm that this sort of work can do. Military orgs around the world have been studying it for decades, to try to prevent their soldiers getting PTSD and becoming ineffective. They have also been studying how to make it worse, as a tactic to use against the enemy.

One example would be limiting exposure. Rather than doing this for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week they might get only be assigned half an hour a day, with the option to continue for up to say two hours if they feel they are okay to do that. The limited exposure and granting of some control over the process really helps psychologically.

Of course the problem for Facebook is that they don't have enough staff already, and reducing them all from 37.5 hours/week to 2.5-10 will mean they have to hire a huge number more and either make the part time or find them other work to do in the mean time.

Re:And how do these people want to do it?

[swb]

I think there's a whole weird world of Facebook that ordinary people who have friend lists that mostly mirror their real lives never see.

My guess is its comprised of people making low-end money pushing scams and social-media-as-a-career, various swaths of low-income populations, bored and lonely shut-ins who will friend/like anything and have zero privacy settings, and then the truly weird and crazy bottom end of the population.

Plus, it's an international system. You can participate in high weirdness outside your geography.

I've been in lots of bars, but I've never seen a bar fight, gang rape or other type of horrible thing in a bar. I think it mostly just means I don't associate with those kinds of people or go to those kinds of bars, not that they don't exist.