Big social media companies hire moderators to scrub their websites of obscene pics, hateful content and all manner of trollery. How many? 1000? 5000? Try well over 100,000. Mostly in the third world, but some in the first.
It sounds a lot less fun than on this board: [INDENT]“Everybody hits the wall, generally between three and five months,” says a former YouTube content moderator I’ll call Rob. “You just think, ‘Holy shit, what am I spending my day doing? This is awful.’”
Article: The Laborers Who Keep Dick Pics and Beheadings Out of Your Facebook Feed | WIRED
Some say this website does not need moderation. They say it would do just fine, like the rest of the internet. Oh yes it does. Oh no it wouldn’t. And oh no it doesn’t.
Once again, thanks to the volunteer mods who corral the trolls and keep the spammers at bay.
As I interpret it, the poster thought this forum would do just fine without moderation, and that furthermore this assessment was obvious. I opine that spam alone would inundate this board within a few days. And the OP demonstrates that the internet, like many conveniences, rests upon a foundation of mostly anonymous hard work.
Thank you, Measure for Measure, for posting a link to that Wired article. It is certainly eye-opening. All I ever see here is the occasional spam or spam attack. I hope a moderator or two will post about their experience in this area when they get a chance.
We get a fair amount of spam that sneaks past the screening. We usually catch it fairly quickly, but the mods aren’t on 24-7, we don’t have shifts for coverage, so it can take a wee while. We do rely, heavily, on people reporting such when they see it, so spam-removal is a co-operative effort among all of us, posters and mods alike.
All I need to do is read the comments on any newspaper site, or especially Youtube, to realize how sane this place is thanks to the moderators. One Canadian newspaper site in particular wants to make me throw my laptop out the window every time I start to read the comments.
This is the biggest reason I’m opposed to enabling images and such. Heck, even avatars - which I don’t want to discuss - are open to that sort of abuse. Sure, they can be reported, but who needs the headache?
Senior Moderator: We’re not getting enough harrumphs out of you!
Junior Moderator: Sorry! Harrumph! Harrumph!
Senior Moderator: You watch your ass.
ETA: I endorse the modding here. I have enough chaos and madness in the rest of my life. This place is positively stable in comparison to all that.
Ok, that I will concede, and if anybody wants to argue that the original contention was ill-informed I’ll concede that as well. This thread should put that dead horse into the grave: just because twisting your faucet provides you with instant hot water, doesn’t mean that such amenities are not backed by hard work and hard engineering. Obvious? Sure, to most people.
Still, I thought the article was noteworthy. You-tube et al strike me as having fairly lax moderation, but in aggregate they still require a gigantic 100,000+ workforce to curb the blatant trolls and spammers. Some of whom are paid $20 per hour - and do all they can to move on to another job.
