Facebook moderators believing in conspiracy theories

Marin B

Active Member
I listened to an NPR interview with a technology reporter, Casey Newton, regarding an article he wrote about employees at a company in Phoenix, Cognizant, that Facebook contracts for content moderation. A link to the NPR interview and transcript is here: https://www.wfae.org/post/working-lives-facebooks-content-moderators#stream/0 And the original article is here THE TRAUMA FLOOR The secret lives of Facebook moderators in America

According to the reporter, what surprised him most about this assignment was that
the majority of the people that I spoke with said that the longer they looked at the kind of fringe conspiracies that get posted on to Facebook, the more they found themselves sympathetic to those ideas.
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From the original article:
The moderators told me it’s a place where the conspiracy videos and memes that they see each day gradually lead them to embrace fringe views. One auditor walks the floor promoting the idea that the Earth is flat. A former employee told me he has begun to question certain aspects of the Holocaust.
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I listened to an NPR interview with a technology reporter, Casey Newton, regarding an article he wrote about employees at a company in Phoenix, Cognizant, that Facebook contracts for content moderation. A link to the NPR interview and transcript is here: https://www.wfae.org/post/working-lives-facebooks-content-moderators#stream/0 And the original article is here THE TRAUMA FLOOR The secret lives of Facebook moderators in America

According to the reporter, what surprised him most about this assignment was that
the majority of the people that I spoke with said that the longer they looked at the kind of fringe conspiracies that get posted on to Facebook, the more they found themselves sympathetic to those ideas.
Content from External Source
From the original article:
The moderators told me it’s a place where the conspiracy videos and memes that they see each day gradually lead them to embrace fringe views. One auditor walks the floor promoting the idea that the Earth is flat. A former employee told me he has begun to question certain aspects of the Holocaust.
Content from External Source
We don't deal with conspiracy theories. We deal with evidence and the removal, where required, of bunk.
 
the majority of the people that I spoke with said that the longer they looked at the kind of fringe conspiracies that get posted on to Facebook

i'm not sure 7 people out of 15,000 moderators gives us much to go on. and these 12 people interviewed were probably disgruntled employees, since they apparently were willing to break their non disclosure agreements (or they are lying about their non disclosure agreements).

i'm more interested in the bit about whether the post of the guy being murdered should be removed. REMOVED??? how about an instant account ban? and why are you sitting there watching a full video of a guy being murdered? After the first stab you should just turn it off and ban the account. Which also makes me wonder why they are allowed to spend an hour watching 911 conspiracy videos. The whole Verge article reads odd.
 
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