The moderator of content: the worst job in Silicon valley

The work for Facebook, Google, Microsoft looks like a dream for many people. But not for content moderators who perform the role of a filter of questionable content posted on the Network.

Such a position is in Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter and almost any company that publishes content on the Internet. Viewing illegal videos, photos containing scenes of violence, aggressive statements that people publish on the Internet – these are the daily duties of the moderator.

Long-term work with toxic content can cause severe emotional reactions, and sometimes mental disorder. Former moderators even called it the worst in the IT industry. And two moderators from Microsoft filed a lawsuit against the company, accusing it of having acquired post-traumatic syndrome at such work.

Close contact with the aggressive environment, many can not stand and quit on the first day. Those who remain are able to work no more than a few months a year.

Add to this the not chocolate working conditions. Although the largest corporations are employers of Facebook, Google and Microsoft, the hourly fee of moderators is from $ 13. up to $ 28. Thus, they receive the lowest salaries in the industry and are not practically protected before the employer - they are hired, as a rule, freelance, for a limited period without guarantees of contract extension.

It would seem that a good solution would be to replace people at such work with robots. In addition, technology giants, including Facebook, are actively using machine learning algorithms in the analysis of information.

However, ironically it turned out that in the field of content security, artificial intelligence is not smart enough to work without human control. This became apparent after the story that happened this year on Facebook. Then the robot allowed to publish several videos containing scenes of murder and suicide.

This means that the so-called dirty job of a moderator is still the lot of man. Meanwhile, mark Zuckerberg has promised to hire in addition to the existing 4500 moderators another 3000 to distribute only safe content.

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