Gonna interrupt Ramirez Celebration Week and break from my usual deadpan format because I think this is an important issue and it struck a nerve based on some reading I’ve done. I wonder if Sorensen is aware that what she is jokingly depicting is literally true in the most horrible way.
Derkaoui found his job through the California-based outsourcing firm oDesk, which provides content moderation services to both Google and Facebook. After acing a written test and an interview, he was invited to join an oDesk team of about 50 people from all over the third world—Turkey, the Philippines, Mexico, India—working to moderate Facebook content. They work from home in 4-hour shifts and earn $1 per hour plus commissions (which, according to the job listing, should add up to a “target” rate of around $4 per hour).
…
Like Derkaoui, most agreed that the pay sucked, while also acknowledging that it was typical of the sort of work available on oDesk. Derkaoui was the only one who cited money as a reason for quitting. The others seemed more affected by the hours they’d spent wading in the dark side of Facebook.
“Think like that there is a sewer channel,” one moderator explained during a recent Skype chat, “and all of the mess/dirt/ waste/shit of the world flow towards you and you have to clean it.”
Each moderator seemed to find a different genre of offensive content especially jarring. One was shaken by videos of animal abuse. (“A couple a day,” he said.) For another, it was the racism: “You had KKK cropping up everywhere.” Another complained of violent videos of “bad fights, a man beating another.”
One moderator only lasted three weeks before he had to quit.
“Pedophelia, Necrophelia, Beheadings, Suicides, etc,” he recalled. “I left [because] I value my mental sanity.”
A Sadly Flippant Cartoon.
![agoodcartoon:
jensorensen:
Data Dump by Jen Sorensen. (I kid because I love, Tumblr!)
Gonna interrupt Ramirez Celebration Week and break from my usual deadpan format because I think this is an important issue and it struck a nerve based on some reading I’ve done. I wonder if Sorensen is aware that what she is jokingly depicting is literally true in the most horrible way.
Derkaoui found his job through the California-based outsourcing firm oDesk, which provides content moderation services to both Google and Facebook. After acing a written test and an interview, he was invited to join an oDesk team of about 50 people from all over the third world—Turkey, the Philippines, Mexico, India—working to moderate Facebook content. They work from home in 4-hour shifts and earn $1 per hour plus commissions (which, according to the job listing, should add up to a “target” rate of around $4 per hour).…
Like Derkaoui, most agreed that the pay sucked, while also acknowledging that it was typical of the sort of work available on oDesk. Derkaoui was the only one who cited money as a reason for quitting. The others seemed more affected by the hours they’d spent wading in the dark side of Facebook.
“Think like that there is a sewer channel,” one moderator explained during a recent Skype chat, “and all of the mess/dirt/ waste/shit of the world flow towards you and you have to clean it.”
Each moderator seemed to find a different genre of offensive content especially jarring. One was shaken by videos of animal abuse. (“A couple a day,” he said.) For another, it was the racism: “You had KKK cropping up everywhere.” Another complained of violent videos of “bad fights, a man beating another.”
One moderator only lasted three weeks before he had to quit.
“Pedophelia, Necrophelia, Beheadings, Suicides, etc,” he recalled. “I left [because] I value my mental sanity.”
A Sadly Flippant Cartoon.
Informative.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3enlzioqZ1r6dygxo1_500.png)
