this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
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Asklemmy
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Social media moderator
God I cant even imagine the shit they see. I saw a podcast episode of one and it just made me sad, think the podcast was other people's lives
They don’t get thanked, they get PTSD.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebook-content-moderator-interviews-trauma-working-conditions-arizona
It's a long read, but very much worth it. It goes into detail about the types of material these people have to spend all day watching and reviewing, and talks in length about some of the unhealthy coping mechanisms these teams develop for themselves. Lots of drug use, sex in the office, and suicidal ideation.
While the article focuses mainly on Facebook moderators, I used to share an office with YouTube's content moderation team around the time this article came out, and a lot of the article rings true for YouTube, as well. I imagine it's similar across all the big platforms.
There was that whole fiasco with the CSAM issue very recently on Lemmy. All of those poor moderators had to deal with all of that.
I hadn’t heard about this, is there any posts about it?
a significant portion of my job is to moderate and provide first line direction of all the social media pages for a huge company that commissions my company. We dont do any marketing or real engagement just moderation and essentially telling people to reach out to customer service per big company’s poorly provided directions. I don’t particularly care much for big company’s product but ive seen some really nasty people with attitudes towards my and my coworkers as if we physically made and handed them a defective product. We do sympathize and understand a certain level of anger but there are some people who are just outright cunts. It doesent help that big company does big company things and barely has customer support so more of the anger is directed towards us social media people
If you're a public moderator (eg. on reddit) you get thanked if you're doing a good job.
But not nearly as much as you get verbally abused or defamed.
There are (or were) definitely some subs that were harder to moderate than others I'd imagine.
Gaming subs: Easy
Ask subs: Intermediate
Location-based subs: Hard
Political subs: Ironman
If you did politics I think reddit should have had to compensate you for the years lost deleting all the hate and bs.
It's certainly thankless but is it a job if you don't get paid?
Yes, definitely - being the caregiver for a child is often unpaid but still very much a job. Many volunteer positions are important jobs which are unpaid.