Revenge of the moderators: Facebook’s online workers are sick of being treated like bots
Mark Zuckerberg may try to minimise their concerns, but Facebook moderators and other online workers are beginning to organise for their own protection, explain Jennifer Beckett, Fiona R Martin and Venessa Paech in this crossposting from The Conversation.
Reports of Facebook moderators’ appalling working conditions have been making headlines worldwide.
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Workers say they are burning out as they moderate vast flows of violent content under pressure, with vague, ever-changing guidelines. They describe unclean, dangerous contractor workplaces. Moderators battle depression, addiction, and even post-traumatic stress disorder from the endless parade of horrors they consume.
Yet in leaked audio recently published by The Verge, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg can reportedly be heard telling his staff that some of these reports “are, I think, a little over-dramatic”.
Out of touch and dismissive
While Zuckerberg acknowledges that Facebook moderators need to be treated humanely, overall he comes across in the recording as a person who sees human suffering as “a math problem”, as The Verge’s editor-in-chief Nilay Patel suggested on Twitter.
