I long time ago, I was operating a "social network" which allowed image uploads. (India local, didn't amount to much as was shutdown.).
Immediately at launch, we started having a huge amount of (image) pron being uploaded into the pages. We put in some rate limits etc, but did not want to put any major restrictions of user signups etc as that would hurt signup figures (important to the ceo!).
We already had some content review people thru a temp agency on site, so we checked with them and they were fine doing this manual filtering of these images for us. All young (early 20s) women. While my team built a quick "dashboard" for them to be able to do this image filtering quickly and conveniently, I had a detailed conversation with them as I was very concerned about having them review this kinda stuff for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Truly nasty stuff.
They were _perfectly_ clear that they had no issues with it, and they told me in so many words to not give it a second thought and to let them get back to work.
It was a surprise, but it was a point of realization: there are much worse things they could be doing. And looking a porn has shock value only the first time. I was under-estimating these women and assuming they were some "snowflakes" who could not deal with something this silly and non-threatening.
It's good that you warned them in advance, but I don't think "there are much worse things they could be doing" really is a reason to discard those who are hurt by this as "snowflakes" and the content they're exposed to as "silly and non-threatening."
From what you're saying, there's also a big difference between what you were dealing with and what this article is talking about: in your case it was only still images, and only "regular" porn (and I assume they probably had to monitor every image posted if it was "a long time ago" so overall they were not exposed only to that content); in this case they're reviewing videos content including not only porn but also violence and sexual abuse, that was pre-flagged by an AI so with way less rule-abiding content mixed in.
People butcher livestock for pay on a daily basis, rendering a live animal dead and cutting it to bits, on a massive scale to provide the food that we eat. Rescue and medical personnel deal with the injured, ill, and dying on a daily basis on a massive scale. Merely watching videos, even of disturbing material, doesn't even come close to being as bad as those and some other professions.
I think watching children being butchered or prisoners being tortured to death could be equally or more traumatic. Killing in processing animals is at least socially acceptable and (arguably) necessary for survival.
> Merely watching videos, even of disturbing material, doesn't even come close to being as bad as those and some other professions.
The research and reporting, which looks at actual people's experiences says otherwise. This issue has been coming up for years.
People live through war, murder, torture, rape, etc. We can always find something worse but that doesn't make the current situation better. Human experience of pain and trauma isn't scaled relative to the worst possible pain and trauma.
As I've said, images can be horrific, and some people can be traumatized by them. That must not be dismissed.
However, It is also important to carefully and properly quantify these things and not sensationalize. You've linked a 50+ minute documentary, without comment, that seems to prove that one person hired to curate content can become traumatized by that process. I can't be certain that is what it is about, because I will not waste time watching documentaries (the vast majority of which are outright propaganda or incredibly biased, while pretending to be objective), but still, I've no doubt the general claim is true, since I never claimed or believed otherwise.
But you've not provided meaningful statistical or scientific evidence properly quantifying such harms in general.
You stated an opinion but i gave you hard data by pointing you to a documentary which you are refusing to watch. You have not even read the description for the video which gives you a ToC with timestamps to jump to for the major themes. I can point you to lots of relevant data on the web but the onus of educating yourself is on you.
If you had just spent 5-10mins watching excerpts from above timestamps you would have seen interviews with workers doing such jobs from rural America/Canada/Spain/France/etc., sleazeball CEOs of sleazy companies taking these sort of contracts from Facebook/etc. and then farming it off to poorer parts of the World in Asia/Africa/South America/etc., psychologists who study and warn of the very real dangers of such a job etc.
So before asking for more data, start with the one i have already given you. The psychological harm caused by repeated exposure to graphic imagery is well studied; AI image annotation is one subset of that.
"Some workers report nightmares in which the violent images they reviewed replay in gruesome loops. Others experience intrusive flashbacks while riding the bus or shopping for groceries. Over time, many describe a numbing of their emotions-a flattening of joy, sorrow, or empathy-because the only way to cope is to feel nothing at all."
and bla bla bla. "Some", "Others", "many"... Wikipedia itself couldn't generate a better example of "weasel words". Like I said, we all know some people are traumatized, but all that matters is the amount. What if some is less than 1%? Less than 5%? More than 50%? The answer matters, but you are not providing answers to this.
Also, learn to basic science. Anecdotes are not data.
No, I am not watching a documentary for a collection of anecdotes, I clearly explained why documentaries don't count as serious sources of info when trying to accurately quantify things.
EDIT: And if you really know that traumatization from images on computer screens is "well-studied", you can surely link to one to three of such studies, rather than lame documentaries telling cherry-picked sob-stories.
Your opinions have no basis in facts; talking about quantitative statistics without having any idea of the raw data is ignorance. The documentary/article point you to such data. The article in particular has links to others including the book Ghost Work - https://ghostwork.info/ which contains lots of data. AI content annotation falls under this umbrella.
I had already mentioned that graphic imagery causing psychological harm is well studied. Psychologists call it Secondary Trauma with symptoms similar to PTSD (which you have helpfully noted above) - https://www.ptsduk.org/secondary-trauma/?ref=thebrink.me
In fact, Facebook was taken to court over this, forced to acknowledge the harm done and paid out a hefty amount;
A simple google search would have given you any number of articles/papers on the subject. But instead of educating yourself, you are merely asking to be spoon-fed.
Nevertheless, start here (two broad classes of graphic imagery);
I really don't think it's fair to minimize someone's struggles just because their situation could be worse. Is only the most miserable person on the planet (by what metric anyway?) allowed to complain about their condition?
I also don't think it's fair to exploit people who are in terrible situations by pushing jobs we don't want onto them, pay them a handful of crumbs, and then say they should be happy with what they get because their neighbor who does another job gets half a handful of crumbs.
The women in this situation aren’t complaining. Very much the opposite.
Why the compulsion to paternalistically ‘protect’ everyone even to the point of making them unemployed? I assume they weighed their options and decided this was the best one. It sounds like you want to stop them from doing that?
You're misrepresenting both what the article says and what I wrote.
The article explicitly mentions that the jobs aren't clearly labeled so they couldn't weigh their options beforehand, that concerns raised by the workers are being dismissed by management, and that several workers have developed mental health problems.
I'm not arguing that these women should be "protected" by taking their jobs away or that they can't make their own choices; of course they're weighing their options and deciding accordingly (the article even mentions that some of them decided to leave). But it's not unreasonable to critique a system where the only choices they have are all horrible in (often more than) one way or another.
I actually had a conversation about this with my mom. We were talking about the hotel cleaners in Dubai walking around with toothbrushes to clean the shower which seemed mildly ridiculous to our European eyes.
But we came to the realisation that these folks were probably happy that they could send money back to their villages. And we left a nice tip.
I don't question your good faith. You seem to have fallen into a trap of many of good faith (and those of not-so-good faith):
For ~ the first half of the 20th century, the leading scholarly theory on US slavery was that the slaves were happy living in a civilized land, etc. You'll see the same claim about many things.
I think the trap has two sufficient components: First, it lacks empirical observations - actual fact that tethers us to reality - and therefore is very prone to drift far from the ground truth. Second, it's a much more comfortable worldview for us, and we tend to adopt such worldviews until compelled to do otherwise.
Just because there is an upside for them - sending money home - doesn't make them happy or make it good or ok. As an extreme example, some underage people go into prostitution because they need the food and shelter to survive - the fact that they get those benefits doesn't make them happy or make it good or ok.
Wow, what a way to conflate consenting adults making rational economic choices (which, btw, the finger wagging in the article and here doesn’t actually PROVIDE BETTER ECONOMIC CHOICES) with…. child prostitution?
The reality is that I’m not seeing anyone proposing actually making the situation better, or addressing why people might consider these jobs better than their alternatives.
Rather people trying to shut down these jobs - and defacto pushing other people into what those people clearly seem to consider to be worse alternatives?
Having actually seen up close and personal the alternatives many of these people are facing, while I think everyone would of course prefer the nice comfy joys of an office programming job, no one here seems to be offering those people those jobs are they? In fact, people are scrambling to keep those jobs.
Instead, those folks would end up taking a similar job elsewhere, or even more fun - something likely far worse. Which is why they are applying for those jobs in the first place.
Can we make the jobs a bit better? Likely, and we should.
Does it change the nature of those jobs? Or make the alternatives better? Not a bit.
Is this attached to the wrong comment? We weren't talking about the OP.
> I’m not seeing anyone proposing actually making the situation better, or addressing why people might consider these jobs better than their alternatives.
Wouldn't it be better to give women more choice in general and the option of therapy if they take on a job with a risk of PTSD? Dismissing the concerns of the women actually doing the work isn't making things any better.
That not only doesn’t answer my question, but might as well be ‘have you stopped beating your wife yet’.
And how have you done re: ongoing jobs? The thing that was the actual topic here?
The reality is that if there were better jobs available for folks relative to number of available employees, the employer wouldn’t be able to find the people to do the crap jobs we’re talking about, and would have to make them better to get anyone to do them.
Or result to actual (or just de-facto) slavery anyway, which does happen in some places.
It’s a continuum.
Actual living conditions in India, in particular, are pretty brutal for most people. But certainly not just there!
While one can blame corporations, the most blame lands on the Indian government(s). Decades and decades of corrupt local, state, and central governance has led to dire poverty and high levels of unemployment. The current and past leaders have had no care to fix it, and it’s only getting worse. Their incompetence is what creates these kinds of jobs as alternatives to abject poverty and death.
As an Indian living in India's Silicon Valley, I am calling BS on this.
"All young (early 20s) women" doing explicit content manual filtering is not normal. No Indian Family would allow their daughters (and sons) to take up such a job if they knew about it.
As the article itself points out, the workers are drawn in by non-explicit/non-pron image annotation and then switched to psychologically harmful work when they cannot leave due to job-needs/contracts-enforcement.
This is pure bait-and-switch scam which has severe psychological effects on the women (and men) involved and should not be blithely hand-waved away.
For a detailed understanding of the psychological harm of explicit image annotation see this documentary (not specific to India) The "Modern Day Slaves" Of The AI Tech World. Undercover reporter does annotation of explicit images for AI but is so traumatized by what he sees that he quits in two weeks. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPSZFUiElls
I’ve noticed that the type of people to have problems with these kind of jobs - people who think this is some type of neocolonialism - can not appreciate the difference between real material poverty and metaphysical problems with watching some abusive content.
This person is earning a really competitive wage. She’s getting the power and independence to lead a materially good life. This will trump every other metaphysical concern you can have by watching these abusive videos.
Some one has to moderate these videos and it’s great that it’s someone poor who’s getting the opportunity.
This argument is somewhat true in the small case (e.g. if you are starving and the only job for you is shoveling bodies into a furnace, may as well).
But I think the reason people have a problem is that giant multi-national corps have created a system where shoveling bodies into the furnace is the most profitable option for these desperate people.
The wealth available in the world right now is completely unfathomable, and its mostly going to ads, privacy invasion, burning massive amounts of energy to make fake videos and articles and more adware, etc. Its not wrong to think "is something wrong with having droves of poor people wading through our shit so they don't starve?"
Similar to how the coal mining companies were happy to watch miners die in the mines from blacklung, and their services were indeed useful, and they were quite proud of it. Its a complex issue because it was critical work at the time. However, only a little while later, we realize the system we had was broken and poisoning the planet, ourselves, and the workers. I'm sure many coal miners are remiss that they no longer can work the mines, and many companies would be happy to employ them if it was profitable enough, but ultimately its not a good system for anyone. And if I hear that "coal miners in high demand in China" I'm not going to say "oh I'm so glad they have employment" I'm going to ask "why aren't they using a clearly better alternative for those people?"
"The wealth available in the world right now is completely unfathomable, and its mostly going to ads, privacy invasion, burning massive amounts of energy to make fake videos and articles and more adware, etc. Its not wrong to think "is something wrong with having droves of poor people wading through our shit so they don't starve?""
Why is the sole blame on countries other than India. We should be focusing on the government of India and why the system there creates a society with a much larger percentage of poverty than many other parts of the world.
"Similar to how the coal mining companies were happy to watch miners die in the mines from blacklung, and their services were indeed useful, and they were quite proud of it."
How is this similar? Nobody is dying from looking at terrible content.
"why aren't they using a clearly better alternative for those people?"
This article is about the better alternative. They aren't physically risking their lives every day to make a living.
> Why is the sole blame on countries other than India
You can blame India all you want; Modi is very much due for criticism, his political leadership is pitiful and merits no quarter from Western governments or otherwise.
But the Russian Federation doesn't care, they've got crude to process. The Knesset won't convene to denounce their enemy's enemy. The US loves buying cheap oil and siphoning Indian labor. They'll blame India right alongside you all day long, but they won't ever stop supporting their broken system. India's suffered from this for the better part of a century and it's becoming apparent that foreign influence is the issue.
Governments allowed corporations to gain enough control that they are defacto states unto themselves. Some control more resources than mid-sized countries.
> I’ve noticed that the type of people to have problems with these kind of jobs - people who think this is some type of neocolonialism - can not appreciate the difference between real material poverty and metaphysical problems with watching some abusive content.
I think THIS shows that you've never dealt with people in abject poverty. Just because you live in poverty doesn't mean you lack humanity.
People lie, cheat, steal, sell their bodies and kill to subsist in poverty. Whatever it takes to survive. That is totally separate from the toll that that type of surviving takes.
It is true that employment and pay are good. The question is a) are proper protections in place for workers and b) does pay adequately compensate for traumatic stress. Studying the issue is valuable, particularly given the potential for labor exploitation given the power imbalance between the largest, most powerful organizations in the world and a labor base which as you point out could otherwise be disenfranchised.
I think with this info we can assess whether the wage is indeed competitive. Otherwise claiming "well they're getting paid" can be used to justify exploitative labor practices or negate the need for ethical inquiry.
Also calling psychological harm metaphysical is questionable. Is PTSD experienced by American troops coming back from deployment metaphysical? Not necessarily comparing these cases in degree.
I'm not sure what invoking neocolonialism adds to the discussion. Best to engage on a factual rather than ideological basis.
I generally agree with the broader point you're making, but I also think there's nothing wrong with pointing out how messed up it is that that's the reality of the choice. The whole point of improving society is to eliminate this kind of dilemma
You’re saying there were no forum boards nor comment sections anywhere? And everyone self hosted every single piece of content they wished to send it into the world?
I think that it is grotesque to take some moral high ground while global companies are exploiting the most desperate workers that they can find. They don’t give a shit about poor people in India, they need people with marginal English language ability whom have little or no worker protections.
People will do what they have to do to survive. But this is hurting these people who long suffer long after the social media company’s contractor discards them.
What’s your alternative? The people in villages are struggling without jobs and they are poor. They don’t even have food to put on their plate.
They make irrational decisions - don’t send their kids to school, make them work in farms. They are mentally stunted because of low quality food. They vote for idiots which stall progress even more.
You show concern but what is the alternative? Ask the capitalists for even more money?
Let women work the jobs, and laws mandating upfront transparency and mental health support. It shouldn't increase costs significantly and the benefits in human dignity will be more than worth it.
And don't stop working to make governments more honest, so other jobs can be established. Improve education so silly superstitions don't keep women locked out of large swathes of society and work.
yes, all that profit they are making should be invested into the future of our society. globally.
poor people don't send their kids to school because school costs money, which they don't have. school is an investment into the future. but you can't make an investment if you don't have anything to invest. which is why that investment needs to come from those who have the money.
i am not necessarily agreeing with any of the opinions shared above. when someone jumps into a thread like i did this can easily be missed. so please forget all of that discussion, as it is not relevant to my argument. i am a different commenter.
what i am suggesting is that the only way to lead people out of poverty as a society is to heavily invest in education. paid for by taxing those that make all the profits. paid in such a way that sending children to school offsets the loss of income the family would have from letting the children work in the fields. (in some places in africa this works because the school is the only place where the kids get food.)
i am not suggesting that these jobs should go away. that's besides the point. i am not sharing any opinion about those jobs or the current situation.
what i am suggesting is that instead of arguing about the situation or complaining about those jobs, the best way to make life really better for these people is to improve their education.
the companies that provide these jobs could be contributing to that too by not only paying good salaries as they are but also directly investing into the building of schools, and making sending children to school a condition of employment.
That's verging on a white man's burden kind of argument. We can help tackle global income disparity without telling poorer people that they should be happy we're offering them the jobs we don't want to do ourselves.
Growth in manufacturing products for export, first in wrecked post-war Japan, then in Taiwan, and then in China, is what lifted all of them out of deep poverty into global powerhouses and technology leaders. You better believe that they were happy to have those jobs others didn't want and to capitalize on them to grow themselves.
Manufacturing jobs produce locallly useful materials, pay for locally useful machines and equipment, and atleast in the first 2/3rs of industrializarion locally useful skills.
This stuff does bring them money which is nice, but a person having access to and learning to use a welder or lathe or loom or repair or fabricate such thhings has value far beyond merely their wage.
Tools and the skills to use them is the most important thing in building a modern society. Countries don't really ever transition from agrarian straight to a modern service economy.
We could but we don’t. Like, let’s buy artificial diamonds so kids in the Congo aren’t mining blood diamonds, but you never hear about the follow-up of helping those kids out of poverty. I’m all for ethical sourcing, but we are horrible at the other things we should be doing to alleviate poverty around the world.
I can see why many think that our global social activism would be better redirected at simply making poorer people less poor as opposed to their exploitation. It’s definitely a jaded view though.
As long as it doesn't involve just giving them money. This experiment has been done in Africa for as long as I can remember and there's only more poverty and a higher birth rate.
"without telling poorer people that they should be happy we're offering them the jobs we don't want to do ourselves"
A corrupt government is usually the reason a country doesn't prosper. There's no jobs because businesses end up just getting ripped off and move elsewhere (along with anyone smart). What's left is a broken infrastructure and abject poverty.
> A corrupt government is usually the reason a country doesn't prosper
You're probably ignoring the centuries of corporate rule in India that systematically removed wealth to Britain, and which left behind a traumatised and humiliated population that was allowed to play in a game of capitalism they didn't start with the cards already stacked against them.
People who raise these concerns don't understand true poverty. They might have seen it during trips but don't really "grok" it. That's one place where the expression "First world problems" is relevant. Being able to pay for housing, food and some degree of safety is an immense improvement in life quality versus the previous state with poverty and no videos.
I agree with you but disagree with how you phrased your comment. They aren't being threatened, they were either born into poverty/starvation or went into poverty. In their perspective (or at least some of them), they view it as a sacrifice to lead their families into a better life.
I think it's perfectly reasonable to have distaste for farming out unpleasant work to poorer countries. But also I think it's perfectly reasonable to accept that it's a fact of life and realise that it's literally redirecting wealth from the richest companies in the world to some of the poorer people in the world.
I'm more bothered by the fact that once again an article focuses on the plight of an identity deemed oppressed rather than broader concern for working classes. All it does is sell it as pandering rather than exposing a genuine issue. And as usual from the post-modern left, dividing rather than uniting. The article's entire justification for this is the absolute cop-out: >Women form half or more of this workforce.
As another example, I read an article the other day complaining about an advertising campaign from a colossal multinational company replacing the "o"s in London tube stop names with "0.0"s. Why? Not because of excessive corporate encroachment into public spaces, but because it might be confusing for disabled people. Maybe it would be, but once again the broader problem of capitalist overreach is ignored in favour of identity. Corporate exploitation is fine as long as it doesn't impact people who aren't able white men
It is perfectly reasonable to not like it. But it's important to point out that generally you don't go from mass starvation to Starbucks on every corner in one step. There are coal mines and abusive videos in between.
Watching this stuff all day can literally cause you to have lifelong PTSD. I want poor people to have enough money to provide for themselves, but this is exploitative - they should get paid a LOT more to do this kind of work, the same way someone who does something physically dangerous gets paid more for the risk.
Are you suggesting that the same people in India (the same woman) be employed but be paid, say, 2x her salary and the company would do it out of generosity (2x the market rate).
I am a lower caste Indian one generation removed from being farmhands. I have seen my parents go without for decades until I became successful. I still think this is utter cruelty and another way the poor are taken advantage of. Mr Paternal westerner, I reject your false dichotomy.
Do they? Maybe you can never get to zero, but I'd be surprised if there weren't any ways to materially reduce the frequency of such videos being uploaded.
Of course, many of these ways will probably affect growth metrics, and since these directly translate into revenue, I can imagine how the economic tradeoff that was made here looks like...
There are other trade offs, requiring a real world id to connect to the Internet and fragmenting it to connect only aligned countries will mostly take away problem of illegal porn, fraud and spam. But at some cost.
Im with you... to some extent. I come from parts of the world where there is real material poverty and so this is tangible food on the table and a better life in some sense...at least for her family if not for her.
The question though is why that material poverty exists in so many parts of the world that were once pretty advanced civilizations.... Colonialism def had a part to play there. So the irony isn't lost that western powers exploited and extracted from civilizations and cultures that were different from theirs..all in the name of progress of course..and now those parts of the world are dependent on the breadcrumbs thrown their way by different western powers.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'metaphysical' here, but I get the impression that you're dismissively trivializing real psychological problems by using that word.
An improvement in material conditions does not straightforwardly make up for these problems. What if they cause the viewer to commit suicide, or be so distraught they can no longer continue to work? People who do this work tend not to be able to do it for very long.
You also seem to be evaluating this by taking the current order of things for granted, as if it were not possible for this kind of thing to not be necessary in the first place. Quite a stunted imagination.
_you_ don’t know what it means to be under material poverty.
Look up farmer suicides in India an you can understand how material poverty leads to even more suicides statistically.
These people don’t even have food to sustain. One of the biggest problems is that poor people in India have low IQ because they literally can’t afford food with vitamins.
Low IQ leads to irrational decisions, low productivity and they get equal vote so they vote in idiots that slow progress.
These jobs are the best deal for overall progress of India. Sure they have to struggle in the middle but at least they have good food on the plate. Some safety net to make long term decisions and vote for better leaders.
You wouldn’t get it. You would just show concern. But Indians have to deal with the problems.
I know what it means to be under material poverty in this hell of a country. Even so I think this is another poisoned chalice. We are where you export your garbage to, whether material or digital. I spit on your false charity.
_you_ don't seem to understand what I wrote, or are not attempting to genuinely respond to it. But you've demonstrated a certain thickheadedness, potentially willful, so I can't say I was expecting better.
They're suggesting that you listen to and address the points they made rather than simply rephrase your original viewpoint.
I'd suggest you try to understand that psychological problems are real and that you only get one brain. You may say "you don't understand poverty", but it equally sounds like you don't understand trauma and psychological issues. You only get one brain and life is about being happy. If you rise out of poverty, but you're less happy than you were, is that better? It sounds like it is for you as long as they stop voting for candidates you don't like. It's easy to not care about people's happiness if they don't vote for the candidates you like, right?
Can you address the point I made where farmers suicides happen because of material poverty?
If you saw that my main point was that metaphysical concerns of “trauma” and “psychological issues” are a non issue for people who don’t have food on their plate.
> If you rise out of poverty, but you're less happy than you were, is that better?
Who are you to suggest they are less happy than otherwise? They took that decision voluntarily. I’m also suggesting that it’s the best decision.
You seem to think you have a better alternative for those people. Pray tell me, what is it that you are suggesting? What would you have rather done if you were the poor mother in middle of nowhere India and you had 6 children with complete lack of material stability. You would have rejected it?
If it were me or my friends or family- I would have definitely taken the job or adviced my friends to take it.
Apologies for inserting myself into this exchange, but I'd like to point out something that both your primary interlocuter seem to be overlooking.
> They took that decision voluntarily
Doesn't really describe the experience of the woman in the original article. She took a job in "data classification" which was initially boring but benign. Then her job assignments changed to reviewing NSFW and NSFL content that she herself recognized as psychologically harmful, without a pay increase, or affordance for her discomfort. In fact, the altered nature of her job was callously dismissed: "it's still data classification"!
I could probably agree with you that there's a market-clearing price where reviewing disturbing material becomes a worthwhile sacrifice for some to take, or even an actual opportunity for people psychologically suited to the work, but an informed, freely-taken choice is not the situation described. That's the exploitation that I see in this story.
> Who are you to suggest they are less happy than otherwise?
Who are you to assume they always are? Once again, you're just dismissing the problems away.
> They took that decision voluntarily.
As if nobody in the history of the world took a deal that turned out to be bad for them. A voluntary choice does not inherently imply that the choice made them better off.
Regardless, you've completely ignored the last sentence of my original reply, but I'll try to spell it out for you. The neocolonialist objection does not boil down to, take these women's jobs away and make people in the corporation's home country do it. It is primarily a critique of the society that benefits from or depends on labor its own members consider unacceptable or beneath them. It is inherently exploitative by that society's own standards, and retaining such an economy is either unsustainable or incentivizes the perpetuation of the conditions which allow it to exploit. In other words, the US has a vested interest in making sure some people are always poor and desperate enough to do the jobs it doesn't want to do.
You’ve ignored my point on material poverty leading to suicides again. This means you can’t appreciate that Indians suffer mostly from people lack of money than anything else.
> As if nobody in the history of the world took a deal that turned out to be bad for them. A voluntary choice does not inherently imply that the choice made them better off
I’m suggesting that it’s the best decision for them. They’ve clearly taken the decision so they also think the same. I asked you for alternatives, or what you could have rather done but you’ve not answered. Maybe consider that it’s the best option for them?
> In other words, the US has a vested interest in making sure some people are always poor and desperate enough to do the jobs it doesn't want to do.
This shows clearly you have no idea what you are talking about. It’s mostly because of US that India has great IT jobs. It’s also because of products and services made in the US that we use in India that India enjoys some prosperity. Think of all the pharmaceutical innovations. Think of the internet, iPhones and everything. The USA has a massive part in reducing poverty in India.
What you are doing is clear: moral grandstanding without suggesting any clear alternative. It’s always nice to show easy empathy.
Your perspective is consistently too black and white. No one in this comment chain has once said that this should not be allowed. At most it's been said that paying poor people to take trauma is concerning. Your response has consistently been "How dare you say poor people shouldn't have these jobs? These jobs are great!". You're trying to make it black and you white, when it's neither.
If your argument was "These jobs probably will scar some people for life, and that's troubling, but I do think the overall gain in welfare will likely outweigh that", then no one reasonable would be arguing with you. As it is, you haven't bothered to include this nuance, or even once admit or consider that some people could be made worse off overall by these jobs, even if perhaps most aren't. It basically just sounds like you want to see fewer "low IQ" poor people and you aren't really bothered how they feel afterwards. I'll say again, exceedingly many people have all the things you said are required for happiness, and still aren't happy. And that is usually due to trauma, the very thing we're talking about.
> No one in this comment chain has once said that this should not be allowed. At most it's been said that paying poor people to take trauma is concerning
There's a commenter saying that they were forced to do it.
>Being able to force someone to do something is not justification for doing so. Further, it is ridiculous to try and label that as 'beneficial for everyone involved'. By the same token you can call outright slavery under threat of execution 'beneficial for everyone involved'. What tripe.
That's simply a logical conclusion from your own thought process. You keep saying that any job is okay if the person is desperate. i.e. it's okay to force people to do what you want if they've got no other choice
yeah no sorry. there's clearly a person who thinks this should not be done. the way to interpret what they said is that they are forced to take this option.
> No one in this comment chain has once said that this should not be allowed
this is incorrect.
I did say that its okay for people to be forced to do the job if no other option exists (with some caveats).
If you disagree, tell me how and be specific about it. What would you rather do in this case?
>What would you have rather done if you were the poor mother in middle of nowhere India and you had 6 children with complete lack of material stability. You would have rejected it?
There's a major inconsistency here. You're consistently claiming that other people don't understand poverty, and yet you essentially made the point that you're not poor ("those people have lower IQ"). So either you started off poor and then worked your way up via some route that's obviously not this job, or you haven't experienced it either, or you are actually poor and aren't doing this work. Which is it?
>Can you address the point I made where farmers suicides happen because of material poverty?
You haven't provided any evidence. If you can prove the suicide rate is higher for these farmers, you may have a point, but even then, the suicide rate does not necessarily have any bearing on the overall rate of happiness. It's possible that a bigger majority are happier farming, but a small minority are pushed more inexorably towards suicide. Perhaps that isn't true either. We simply don't know without evidence.
That's my basic point. You're making strong claims, but you quite clearly simply do not know and are deciding based on instinct and perhaps a vague desire to have your favoured political candidates get more votes. You haven't provided any justification whatsoever. "I think it's right", "maybe they commit suicide" and "they don't vote for people I prefer" are not justifications, they're guesses. As much as you may want me to ("Who are you to suggest they are less happy than otherwise?"). I have made no claims whatsoever, simply pointed out the lack of nuance using hypotheticals.
Having more money is very good. Psychological damage is very bad. Your point is that psychological damage doesn't matter and having more food is all that matters. Okay, so should you send your child off to fight for a warlord if it means they have more food? Please try to grasp that's there's nuance.
>If you saw that my main point was that metaphysical concerns of “trauma” and “psychological issues” are a non issue for people who don’t have food on their plate.
I've put this at the end because its beside the main point, but this sentence is just a barrel of conceptual misunderstandings. Trauma is a type of psychological issue, so "trauma and psychological issues" makes no sense without a prepended "other". Neither trauma nor psychological issues are metaphysical concerns. Metaphysical concerns are issues of first principles and deeper understandings of concepts. It's a branch of philosophy. If you don't believe me, Google it, or ask ChatGPT.
>There's a major inconsistency here. You're consistently claiming that other people don't understand poverty, and yet you essentially made the point that you're not poor ("those people have lower IQ"). So either you started off poor and then worked your way up via some route that's obviously not this job, or you haven't experienced it either, or you are actually poor and aren't doing this work. Which is it?
Have you considered that I have more knowledge of poverty, not because I have experienced it, but because I have spent time understanding it?
> You haven't provided any evidence. If you can prove the suicide rate is higher for these farmers, you may have a point, but even then, the suicide rate does not necessarily have any bearing on the overall rate of happiness. It's possible that a bigger majority are happier farming, but a small minority are pushed more inexorably towards suicide. Perhaps that isn't true either. We simply don't know without evidence.
You didn't understand the point I was trying to make.
Lets make it clear here: people are either unhappy because of material poverty like lack of money/food or because of higher level needs like love, safety and in this case - not watching abusive videos (so ridiculous that I even have to compare this).
Do you genuinely want to challenge me in claiming that people are more unhappy by watching abusive videos than because of material poverty? Really?
>Having more money is very good. Psychological damage is very bad. Your point is that psychological damage doesn't matter and having more food is all that matters. Okay, so should you send your child off to fight for a warlord if it means they have more food? Please try to grasp that's there's nuance.
Yes I would? The actual equivalent here is that the child does not have other means of earning and would go hungry. And that fighting for the warlord is overall good for the society. In that case its obvious. Are you this naive to not understand that this is _exactly_ why you have an army in your country? Why do you think people become soldiers? You are so naive and stick to moral grandstanding that you have not even grasped why people work.
I have asked you the third (I think) time now. What would you rather do if you were in the woman's situation? You have conveniently ignored it.
Pray tell me, what is the best choice for the woman to make? I have made it clear that I would have done the same thing. I actually think there's a reason why you ignored this question. By answering it, you would clearly admit that
1. this is the best choice she can take
2. this job has to be done by someone anyway so its net benefit to society
3. this means the overall story is a net positive for everyone and your moral grandstanding has no place here
>Have you considered that I have more knowledge of poverty, not because I have experienced it, but because I have spent time understanding it?
If this is true, you haven't shown any evidence of it.
>Lets make it clear here: people are either unhappy because of material poverty like lack of money/food or because of higher level needs like love, safety and in this case - not watching abusive videos (so ridiculous that I even have to compare this).
Again you're making a value judgment and not providing any evidence besides saying it's true. Happiness is far more complex than this, and exceedingly many people who do have all the things you just stated are still unhappy, and very very often that's due to trauma.
>Do you genuinely want to challenge me in claiming that people are more unhappy by watching abusive videos than because of material poverty? Really?
My friend, you are consistently failing to understand nuance. This isn't a contest, no one is "challenging" you. Maybe what you said here is true, maybe it isn't, let's discuss the "why"s and the justifications and the evidence, but all you seem to be able to do is say "this is true and it's true because I say it's true, and also maybe suicides but with no evidence".
>Yes I would? ... 3. this means the overall story is a net positive for everyone and your moral grandstanding has no place here
This entire section boils down to an argument that could equally made for slavery. Well if they have a roof over their head and food, why not have slavery? At least they're not starving, right?
The funny thing is that there's absolutely nothing unjustifiable about your position. I actually genuinely don't disagree that people should be able to have these jobs. I'm bringing all this up because your justifications and motivations are completely immoral and illogical. Of course I would take the choice to do this job, but equally I would take the choice of slavery if it stopped me from starving. That doesn't make it right or a good thing for society.
>This entire section boils down to an argument that could equally made for slavery. Well if they have a roof over their head and food, why not have slavery? At least they're not starving, right?
What's the alternative? This is the 6th time I'm asking this. Without answering this question, you are playing rhetorical games.
What is a rhetorical game if "ignoring the entire comment and then complaining you didn't answer one question that's entirely irrelevant to the central point" isn't? Read the comment again and try to figure out why it's irrelevant. I'll give you a hint: read the last paragraph. Once you've done that I may continue speaking to you.
you have not answered - "its not a good thing for society". so what is? having enough money? what's the point in moral grandstanding to say something so obvious? of course it would be good if everyone has a lot of money.
Read a history book to learn how all this bad stuff was abolished in the West. Ofcourse that requires a basic respect for poor people to develop in India...
If I was in that position, and you gave me the choice to ritualistically mutilate myself for your amusement so my children could escape, I'd probably take it.
Your entire chain of argument is vacuous; devoid of any sense of empathy for your fellow humanity.
I show empathy which is why I’m happy that they have this job and can put food on their plate. You show fake empathy and fake concern by prioritising metaphysical needs.
Again, vacuous. You deride as 'metaphysical' what is psychological. But the health and well-being of
children too is a 'metaphysical' concern to the worker by this metric, and yet you call it up to
support yourself? Your argument is empty, hypocritical: there can be no substance to calling the one
metaphysical and the other physical, thereby dismissing all suffering.
If you're going to play the game you're playing, play it everywhere: their children don't matter, their
suffering doesn't matter, they don't matter.
The core of your argument is merely that if it is possible to force someone to do something, it is right
and proper. What a vile philosophy, to make what is detestable into that which is desirable.
At least have the grace to be ashamed and turn away, if you cannot stomach the taste but to replace it
with deception.
My point is that material needs are more important to people under poverty than metaphysical like feeling bad about watching abusive videos.
You agree that this job is necessary to be done. You agree that this is the best option they have and they are better off with it.
You would also do the same thing if you were in their position. You agree that this job exiting is overall beneficial for everyone involved.
Then what’s with the moral grandstanding? Yes it’s not ideal that someone has to do the job.
What point do you want to make other than virtue signalling?
Being able to force someone to do something is not justification for doing so. Further, it is ridiculous to try and label that as 'beneficial for everyone involved'. By the same token you can call outright slavery under threat of execution 'beneficial for everyone involved'. What tripe.
Repeatedly stating that it's 'better for them' because they have no choice is not the slam dunk you seem to think it is. The entire class of argument does not hold water; this line of reasoning will not convince me. It does not even slightly support your position.
I'd thank you to not put words in my mouth. You're wrong about them.
What point do I make other than virtue signaling? Mayhap read what you replied to, and you'll find it. But if you struggle still: your load-bearing use of 'metaphysical' is basically nonsense. I explained why already, why should I endlessly repeat myself?
> Being able to force someone to do something is not justification for doing so. Further, it is ridiculous to try and label that as 'beneficial for everyone involved'
He likely betrayed his real motivations a few comments back. He's annoyed about candidates getting elected by "low IQ" voters, and he wants them to get smarter by eating more so they can vote for the right people.
how privileged of you! thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve you while you centralize my brain power and start charging me a tax on thinking. GTH
I was not big fan of Liveleak, but I really enjoyed WatchPeopleDie community, one could learn a lot in the comments about how to be safer in the enviroment (I'm aware they moved to website, but it's not same anymore, too much friction to visit it)
after being the regular visitor of WPD I stand at the junction waiting for my turn shielded by the traffic lights pole and always look in the eye of the driver when crossing the road, especially if it's tall truck
some ppl don't realize how many lives actually WPD saved, but hey now we have victory nobody is exposed to this disturbing content and making silly jokes about death, right?
Watching it once in a while because your brain craves novelty (good or bad) is not the same as watching all sorts of graphic imagery (not just pron) for 8+ hours a day 6/7 days a week.
This is obviously a flippant comment that shouldn't be taken seriously. But the loss of LiveLeak seems like the loss of the journalism that the Internet was supposed to bring. There were a lot of odd things posted on there with some unneeded commentary but it was a place that would post unfiltered content that other places were scared to post. A lot of it was disgusting that I wouldn't watch, but it's weird to think that the Internet is censored now in a way where it's hard to even find it.
You can find areas of propaganda where site rule breaking will be allowed if it serves the interest of the owner, but you really have to seek it out. It's even weirder that the latest generation is self censoring common words so they can show up on sites like TikTok. Billionaires buying newspapers to censor seems less strange but sadly something I also didn't expect.
When I was in my 20s I worked for a well-known global telco. In our office, we had a group of people whose literal job was watching streaming porn from around the world all day. They had walls of screens running simultaneously.
Those streams were customers. Our people’s job was to monitor the streams for video and audio quality issues. When I would tell my friends that I worked with guys who’s literal job was watching porn on a sofa all day, they thought it must be the best job in the world.
But when I talked to the guys that actually had the job, they said it was a terribly boring chore. Even worse, they said you quickly become so desensitized that it bled over into their non-work life in a negative way. Almost everyone that had that job eventually grew to hate it.
These kinds of jobs have always existed. To some extent someone needs to do it. While we may be outsourcing it now, there is a long history of paying people in the US to do it.
It's a well compensated job vs local opportunities but feels like it should be an extravagantly compensated job vs local opportunities. Someone has to do it, but also somewhere along the continuum of doing factory garment work for $100 and deep sea welding for $100k, it feels like this should be closer to latter.
Seems like kind of job that needs physical filtering. Onboard bunch of candidates, measure their vitals, find low responders to abusive stimulus, hire them. I'm sure there's some poorly replicated psych study done on 1st years to draw from.
I see a contradiction. If they are not responsive, their psyche is safe and there are no reasons for them to be compensated much more than minimum wage workers.
"Safer" - I think essentially filtering for 1-2% of population high on sociopathy / anti social spectrum. Doesn't mean they're immune, just better equipped for job cognitively. I surmise compensation goes up when weeding out 98% of population.
All right, the twist. They may hire Tantric Buddhists or Shaivites. Some of them even pay to meditate on stuff like that, and will be happy to do the practice and get paid for it.
This is not new. The British boast of banning slavery but they will never tell you about their invention of bonded labour. They imported bonded labour to South Africa, Guyana and other parts of their empire.
Now companies can use the Internet to keep the labour remote. Doesn't even require a degree.
Honestly, I love this comment, and I’m going to save it.
You’re so convinced that money is more important than human dignity you use the word “generosity” as invective. It can be hard to remember that this point of view exists, so thank you for the reminder.
its easy to talk about "human dignity" but its hard to talk about practical concerns on how to get the money for the dignity. please tell me, how do you expect the poor women in villages to get above market rate? unions? then the companies wouldn't even step foot in India and would rather move to Cambodia or Bangladesh or Ghana.
yeah how else do you want to organise who gets paid what? its nice and virtuous to claim that poor women should get paid more.
but there's simply not that much money to redistribute, unless more companies provide employment and drive labour demand up - exactly what is happening in this article.
so you can gesture all you want about women being poor and deserving more money, but it doesn't mean anything. you can't pay them above market rate, where will the money come from? certainly not taxes - there's simply not enough to go by.
I get why a firefighter may be asked to take risks to save lives. We should not ask these women to take these risks so that billionaires can become trillionaires.
I had the same thought. I think the job is unavoidable BUT it needs much better screening. There are already countless of mindless individual who love watching that content, why not hire them? Finally a job sex offenders are good at.
It could also be a Clockwork Orange therapy for them.
The onus should be on the job provider to care for their employees too. They have a responsibility to ensure their employees are not physically harmed while they work. And to help or compensate their workers for any work injury. Right? Why not use the same criteria for psychological harm too? They should be provided psychological counselling. And note that this is not a new industry.
You're thinking US. What happens when most of the world doesn't even have an ID? Does Facebook suddenly drop 80% of users? Do US Facebook users only see US content?
The internet is not only "the west." What you're thinking is what's already happening in the Chinese internet, and even they cannot really limit the amount of disgusting content released by Chinese websites.
As long as non-verified users have access to the same internet as you, that content will continue to exist.
I'm thinking most countries. Most countries have some kind of ID. Most countries in Europe does. If not its easy to setup one if there is will.
I've never said is an 100% solution, nothing is an 100% solution. This is a 90% solution, which is already a huge improvement. Why would non-verified users have same access as you? Sure they can read, but no creation.
I'm from China and use the Chinese Internet regularity. The amount of disgusting content is way less then the global internet and they have less people doing filtering for abusive content.
No one should have to do this job. And if you can't make your social network function or AI thing function without it, then maybe, just maybe, we shouldn't have that social network or AI thing.
How do humans with very little exposure to grotesque violence or extreme content universally label such content so well? This is not graduate level data that needs labeling.
What is missing in an AI model for it to intuitively understand what content is extreme from very few labeled sample in training?
Eww. Like 19th c. children in dangerous factories, abusing poor people's mental health sifting through the Global North's cavalcade of depravity. There must exist more productive and honest uses of people's time, and some jobs shouldn't be done for any amount of money. Some jobs done risky ways shouldn't be done by human beings at all in dangerous manners (coal mining without safety equipment, loom maintenance while running, carrying sulfur chunks out of active volcanoes) because they lower us all. "But they're making money" is not a good enough excuse because that's a false choice as there infinitely other activities, and any number of safer activities or similar tasks done with meaningful precautions are needed, desirable, and could be done instead.
For a detailed understanding of the psychological harm and detrimental long-lasting effects of explicit image annotation see the following documentary (not specific to India). Undercover reporter does annotation of explicit images for AI but is so traumatized by what he sees that he quits in two weeks;
In 2027, virtual assistants like Sarah seamlessly handle our daily tasks, making life appear effortless. But behind this technological marvel lies a hidden reality. This documentary unveils the untold story of the ghost workers who power our digital world, performing the tedious and often traumatic tasks that machines can't handle.
Meet the invisible workforce behind tech giants like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Uber. These underpaid and disposable workers label images, moderate content, and train AI systems, often earning less than minimum wage. Their work is essential yet remains in the shadows, unacknowledged by the companies that depend on them.
00:00 - Introduction: The Illusion of Effortless AI
02:15 - The Hidden Workforce: Who Are the Ghost Workers?
05:30 - Undercover: Life as a Content Moderator
09:45 - AI Training: The Tedious Tasks Behind Smart Machines
13:20 - The Psychological Toll: PTSD and Stress Among Moderators
17:00 - The Future of Work: What Lies Ahead for These Workers?
> Murmu, 26, is a content moderator for a global technology company, logging on from her village in India’s Jharkhand state
> With just four months left on her contract, which pays about £260 a month
Earning US$350/mo working remotely in a village in one of the poorest states in India is an extremely competitive given that the alternative would be spending 12 hours sewing fast fashion for Zara earning US$130-150/mo [0], doing bit piece ag labor for around US$100/mo and participating in MGNREGA for US$50/mo, become a housewife, or become a Naxalite/Maoist insurgent to earn a couple thousand dollars when surrendering [1].
Content moderation means interacting with extremely depressing and horrid content, but someone needs to do it, and once models get good enough we would start seeing articles about how "all the good 100% remote first jobs with no barrier to entry" are being automated to oblivion.
Yes it sucks, but the alternative is becoming a migrant worker or working in light manufacturing where QoL is worse. Heck, we used to see similar articles about Chinese workers for Apple barely 14 years ago in then equally poor Sichuan [2], but you don't see those kinds of articles anymore.
Development takes time and the fact that US$350/mo remote data annotation and content moderation jobs are now penetrating into villages in what used to be the Naxalite/Maoist/Red Corridor where bombings and gun battles were a part of normal life just 10 years ago [3] is a massive step up developmentally - it means that there is robust enough internet, literacy, banking, and public services penetration for the seeds for a services economy to form.
Edit: Thanks for the downvotes westerners - my family is from these kinds of villages in India and Vietnam. The alternatives are extremely bleak - especially for a tribal woman like Ms Murmu at the bottom of the social and patriarchal hierarchy.
>>given that the alternative would be spending 12 hours sewing fast ...
That is the best case scenario. Mostly women roll beedis(a kind of needle sized cigar) on which you get like 1 paise per 10 rolls or something like that. Or worse do assorted labor chores which can really sap one's soul real fast.
Even with all that women actually have it a lot better than men. Men literally die and are reborn every day in most parts of India.
Just drive 30 kms North of Bangalore, and you will see abject poverty scenes. People scavenging bovine dung for fuel, children with flies, no clothing. The ever present scene is always that of an elderly person with pencil thin legs wearing shorts he likely is wearing since a decade with nothing but boiled rice and salt water+turmeric to eat daily. 8 - 10 hr power cuts are the norm, that is if you can afford electricity at all. Most health care is either entirely absent, or you have to travel to the nearest metro and hope you don't die out of hunger getting treatment there. I could go on but that is life here.
£260 a month is actually great for some place like this.
The alternatives in these kinds of villages in rural Jharkhand's tribal and red corridor are literally
1.) bit-piece agriculture work for the local landlord who will never pay salaries on time because he has the power
2.) migrate to the nearest big city (in this case Ranchi, Dhanbad, or Patna) and work at a factory for 12 hours a week with the exact same risks
3.) get married off
4.) join a Maoist outfit in order to surrender and get government rehabilitation benefits.
And all of this is assuming the men (and it's always men) who they are reporting to are not lecherous abusers which is a very real risk in these kinds of jobs for women in Ms Murmu's status.
Like out of all the bad options, this is the least bad one - especially in an area that was a warzone barely a decade ago.
I don't think anyone is disputing that this job is terrible, it clearly is. The counter argument is that many other jobs are also terrible, and it's not clear whether you can really stack rank them and this one is at the bottom of the pole.
The counter counter argument is that we all talking here know what manual job or not getting paid feels like. But we don't know what it does to you if you have a job where you must watch humans hurt/torture/rape other humans day in day out.
we know what work feels like. Maybe it's better maybe it's worse. But we don't know personally and have no intuition about THIS kind of stuff.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here. Am I just too old? What do you mean, people on this forum have no intuition about what watching gore videos online is like? About watching hours of ordinary porn (as the article also mentioned)?
That's more likely to be within the experience of a HackerNews user than serious manual labor.
So can working in the unorganized sector in the heart of the Red Corridor. Like this is literally one of the least developed parts of one of the least developed states in India.
A tribal woman like Murmu who is clearly living in the Red Corridor districts (based on surname and geographic location) doesn't have any better choice.
Yes content moderation introduces you to horrid content, but the alternatives give the very real risk of physical and sexual violence.
Yeah and you for sure know what went through all of their heads.
If a kid enjoys it it's a very big red flag. If a kid is horrified by it (as I was) even if pretending to be cool in front of peers, then there you have your answer as to what it must feel to do it every day 9 to 7.
> Lots of people just aren't that bothered by gore videos
and here again you are alluding to that access you have to what goes on in other people's heads. although of course "lots of" is relative. i'd say 0.01% of population is lots enough in this case.
> they are well-adjusted members of society
a psycho can function just great in society. maybe this work is great for a psycho. however, majority of people aren't that.
> I see few people coming from Jharkhand and working as waitresses in my state
Ststistically, a young Santali woman from rural Jharkhand would most likely end up working in West Bengal, Maharashtra, or Karnataka [0] according to Jharkhand's Migration Survey.
> Also, your first link mentions Bihar not Jharkhand
Because HDI and developmental indicators remain roughly comparable in both states. Salaries in Bihar are comparable to salaries for similar roles in Jharkhand, Eastern UP, or Northern portions of West Bengal.
Jharkhand was formerly part of Bihar >25 years ago, and they were administered jointly with Orissa before independence. Then, my family worked in the police service and were transferred between Patna and Hazaribagh without any problem.
Your entire argument falls down due to not understanding the psychological harm caused. This sort of Secondary Trauma with symptoms of PTSD literally destroys people and families over time.
As they say, "being poor make you invisible" and therefore nobody cares on how they end up over a longer time period but only look at immediate benefits. Given that the Govt. has lots of schemes for the underprivileged, it is better to utilize those and do some other job however difficult that does not destroy one's mental health like this one does.
Quite simply, the companies are taking advantage of poverty in poorer regions of the World to pay pennies for a job which literally destroys one's mental health.
See also my other comments in this thread where i link to informative documentaries/articles on this topic.
That's false. We expect that jobs are growing at both ends of the income distribution with AI [0][1] - yes there are a ton of data annotators and content moderators now, but literally the overwhelming majority of us also expect to see an expansion in standard SWE and SWE adjacent roles with AI/ML vibe coding becoming the norm.
The reason you are facing job losses right now is because Joe in Cary who learnt to code at a bootcamp can't justify being paid $180k a year when I can hire Jan for $90k in Karlin [2] or Jamila for $60k in Koramangla [3] while maintaining equivalent performance and output. Having a president pass an executive order to distract from the Gold Card announcement [4] also played a role [5] just like we warned would happen.
I long time ago, I was operating a "social network" which allowed image uploads. (India local, didn't amount to much as was shutdown.).
Immediately at launch, we started having a huge amount of (image) pron being uploaded into the pages. We put in some rate limits etc, but did not want to put any major restrictions of user signups etc as that would hurt signup figures (important to the ceo!).
We already had some content review people thru a temp agency on site, so we checked with them and they were fine doing this manual filtering of these images for us. All young (early 20s) women. While my team built a quick "dashboard" for them to be able to do this image filtering quickly and conveniently, I had a detailed conversation with them as I was very concerned about having them review this kinda stuff for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Truly nasty stuff.
They were _perfectly_ clear that they had no issues with it, and they told me in so many words to not give it a second thought and to let them get back to work.
It was a surprise, but it was a point of realization: there are much worse things they could be doing. And looking a porn has shock value only the first time. I was under-estimating these women and assuming they were some "snowflakes" who could not deal with something this silly and non-threatening.
Just my own person anec-data.
It's good that you warned them in advance, but I don't think "there are much worse things they could be doing" really is a reason to discard those who are hurt by this as "snowflakes" and the content they're exposed to as "silly and non-threatening." From what you're saying, there's also a big difference between what you were dealing with and what this article is talking about: in your case it was only still images, and only "regular" porn (and I assume they probably had to monitor every image posted if it was "a long time ago" so overall they were not exposed only to that content); in this case they're reviewing videos content including not only porn but also violence and sexual abuse, that was pre-flagged by an AI so with way less rule-abiding content mixed in.
People butcher livestock for pay on a daily basis, rendering a live animal dead and cutting it to bits, on a massive scale to provide the food that we eat. Rescue and medical personnel deal with the injured, ill, and dying on a daily basis on a massive scale. Merely watching videos, even of disturbing material, doesn't even come close to being as bad as those and some other professions.
I think watching children being butchered or prisoners being tortured to death could be equally or more traumatic. Killing in processing animals is at least socially acceptable and (arguably) necessary for survival.
> Merely watching videos, even of disturbing material, doesn't even come close to being as bad as those and some other professions.
The research and reporting, which looks at actual people's experiences says otherwise. This issue has been coming up for years.
People live through war, murder, torture, rape, etc. We can always find something worse but that doesn't make the current situation better. Human experience of pain and trauma isn't scaled relative to the worst possible pain and trauma.
[flagged]
> Yes, images and videos can be horrific, but that horror absolutely pales in comparison to what the world has to offer.
"Eat your dinner, there's kids starving in Africa."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46921505
As I've said, images can be horrific, and some people can be traumatized by them. That must not be dismissed.
However, It is also important to carefully and properly quantify these things and not sensationalize. You've linked a 50+ minute documentary, without comment, that seems to prove that one person hired to curate content can become traumatized by that process. I can't be certain that is what it is about, because I will not waste time watching documentaries (the vast majority of which are outright propaganda or incredibly biased, while pretending to be objective), but still, I've no doubt the general claim is true, since I never claimed or believed otherwise.
But you've not provided meaningful statistical or scientific evidence properly quantifying such harms in general.
You stated an opinion but i gave you hard data by pointing you to a documentary which you are refusing to watch. You have not even read the description for the video which gives you a ToC with timestamps to jump to for the major themes. I can point you to lots of relevant data on the web but the onus of educating yourself is on you.
If you had just spent 5-10mins watching excerpts from above timestamps you would have seen interviews with workers doing such jobs from rural America/Canada/Spain/France/etc., sleazeball CEOs of sleazy companies taking these sort of contracts from Facebook/etc. and then farming it off to poorer parts of the World in Asia/Africa/South America/etc., psychologists who study and warn of the very real dangers of such a job etc.
So before asking for more data, start with the one i have already given you. The psychological harm caused by repeated exposure to graphic imagery is well studied; AI image annotation is one subset of that.
Here is a detailed article; The Ghosts in the Machine: Inside AI’s Hidden Human Trauma - https://www.thebrink.me/the-ghosts-in-the-machine-inside-ai-...
From the article you linked:
"Some workers report nightmares in which the violent images they reviewed replay in gruesome loops. Others experience intrusive flashbacks while riding the bus or shopping for groceries. Over time, many describe a numbing of their emotions-a flattening of joy, sorrow, or empathy-because the only way to cope is to feel nothing at all."
and bla bla bla. "Some", "Others", "many"... Wikipedia itself couldn't generate a better example of "weasel words". Like I said, we all know some people are traumatized, but all that matters is the amount. What if some is less than 1%? Less than 5%? More than 50%? The answer matters, but you are not providing answers to this.
Also, learn to basic science. Anecdotes are not data.
No, I am not watching a documentary for a collection of anecdotes, I clearly explained why documentaries don't count as serious sources of info when trying to accurately quantify things.
EDIT: And if you really know that traumatization from images on computer screens is "well-studied", you can surely link to one to three of such studies, rather than lame documentaries telling cherry-picked sob-stories.
Your opinions have no basis in facts; talking about quantitative statistics without having any idea of the raw data is ignorance. The documentary/article point you to such data. The article in particular has links to others including the book Ghost Work - https://ghostwork.info/ which contains lots of data. AI content annotation falls under this umbrella.
I had already mentioned that graphic imagery causing psychological harm is well studied. Psychologists call it Secondary Trauma with symptoms similar to PTSD (which you have helpfully noted above) - https://www.ptsduk.org/secondary-trauma/?ref=thebrink.me
In fact, Facebook was taken to court over this, forced to acknowledge the harm done and paid out a hefty amount;
Facebook will pay $52 million in settlement with moderators who developed PTSD on the job - https://archive.is/M4tdk#selection-1487.0-1487.89
A simple google search would have given you any number of articles/papers on the subject. But instead of educating yourself, you are merely asking to be spoon-fed.
Nevertheless, start here (two broad classes of graphic imagery);
It matters what you see: Graphic media images of war and terror may amplify distress - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2318465121
Pornography Consumption and Cognitive-Affective Distress - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10399954/
The alternative is…. They don’t have a job?
What else is going to happen?
For many people, the alternatives can literally be death, wading unprotected through human excrement, sold into defacto slavery, etc. etc.
AI can do some of it (now), but largely isn’t going to be more accurate and still needs humans to double check its work.
I really don't think it's fair to minimize someone's struggles just because their situation could be worse. Is only the most miserable person on the planet (by what metric anyway?) allowed to complain about their condition?
I also don't think it's fair to exploit people who are in terrible situations by pushing jobs we don't want onto them, pay them a handful of crumbs, and then say they should be happy with what they get because their neighbor who does another job gets half a handful of crumbs.
The women in this situation aren’t complaining. Very much the opposite.
Why the compulsion to paternalistically ‘protect’ everyone even to the point of making them unemployed? I assume they weighed their options and decided this was the best one. It sounds like you want to stop them from doing that?
Isn’t that the real minimization?
You're misrepresenting both what the article says and what I wrote.
The article explicitly mentions that the jobs aren't clearly labeled so they couldn't weigh their options beforehand, that concerns raised by the workers are being dismissed by management, and that several workers have developed mental health problems.
I'm not arguing that these women should be "protected" by taking their jobs away or that they can't make their own choices; of course they're weighing their options and deciding accordingly (the article even mentions that some of them decided to leave). But it's not unreasonable to critique a system where the only choices they have are all horrible in (often more than) one way or another.
I’m responding to the gp comment, which I thought was obvious
I actually had a conversation about this with my mom. We were talking about the hotel cleaners in Dubai walking around with toothbrushes to clean the shower which seemed mildly ridiculous to our European eyes.
But we came to the realisation that these folks were probably happy that they could send money back to their villages. And we left a nice tip.
Risk of developing trauma or mental illness is probably much lower for shower cleaners than CSAM / gore filters.
I don't question your good faith. You seem to have fallen into a trap of many of good faith (and those of not-so-good faith):
For ~ the first half of the 20th century, the leading scholarly theory on US slavery was that the slaves were happy living in a civilized land, etc. You'll see the same claim about many things.
I think the trap has two sufficient components: First, it lacks empirical observations - actual fact that tethers us to reality - and therefore is very prone to drift far from the ground truth. Second, it's a much more comfortable worldview for us, and we tend to adopt such worldviews until compelled to do otherwise.
Just because there is an upside for them - sending money home - doesn't make them happy or make it good or ok. As an extreme example, some underage people go into prostitution because they need the food and shelter to survive - the fact that they get those benefits doesn't make them happy or make it good or ok.
Wow, what a way to conflate consenting adults making rational economic choices (which, btw, the finger wagging in the article and here doesn’t actually PROVIDE BETTER ECONOMIC CHOICES) with…. child prostitution?
The reality is that I’m not seeing anyone proposing actually making the situation better, or addressing why people might consider these jobs better than their alternatives.
Rather people trying to shut down these jobs - and defacto pushing other people into what those people clearly seem to consider to be worse alternatives?
Having actually seen up close and personal the alternatives many of these people are facing, while I think everyone would of course prefer the nice comfy joys of an office programming job, no one here seems to be offering those people those jobs are they? In fact, people are scrambling to keep those jobs.
Instead, those folks would end up taking a similar job elsewhere, or even more fun - something likely far worse. Which is why they are applying for those jobs in the first place.
Can we make the jobs a bit better? Likely, and we should.
Does it change the nature of those jobs? Or make the alternatives better? Not a bit.
Is this attached to the wrong comment? We weren't talking about the OP.
> I’m not seeing anyone proposing actually making the situation better, or addressing why people might consider these jobs better than their alternatives.
That is discussed in many comments on this page.
Mind linking to them? Because I’m not seeing them.
There is plenty of productive work to do in the world that isn’t streaming through the dregs of the internet for hours on end.
This argument is a false dichotomy.
I take it you’ve never lived in India? Visited Pakistan or Bangladesh?
Plenty of people would (literally) kill for those jobs, and have no other useful employment.
In those countries, Women are often widely forbidden from doing most jobs, which makes them particularly vulnerable.
Wouldn't it be better to give women more choice in general and the option of therapy if they take on a job with a risk of PTSD? Dismissing the concerns of the women actually doing the work isn't making things any better.
Of course. I’m literally not seeing anyone offering to actually pay for that in this thread, are you?
Why yes, I've helped pay for girls to stay in school in impoverished countries.
Are you willing to stop carrying water for misogynists and abusive employers?
That not only doesn’t answer my question, but might as well be ‘have you stopped beating your wife yet’.
And how have you done re: ongoing jobs? The thing that was the actual topic here?
The reality is that if there were better jobs available for folks relative to number of available employees, the employer wouldn’t be able to find the people to do the crap jobs we’re talking about, and would have to make them better to get anyone to do them.
Or result to actual (or just de-facto) slavery anyway, which does happen in some places.
It’s a continuum.
Actual living conditions in India, in particular, are pretty brutal for most people. But certainly not just there!
wow, this is absolute peak privilege of someone sheltered.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46921505
It's modern slavery.
Just because it's beneficial for them doesn't mean they are getting exploited.
Looking at porn or something similar or actually really bad , changes people.
Even if it means they get a lot more insensitive
IMO it's only slavery if they truly have no other options. Which, if true, is also worth addressing.
We live in a world we're most people do not do something which directly affects food production.
To not be modern slavery it would/should have above avg pay and benefits.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46921505
While one can blame corporations, the most blame lands on the Indian government(s). Decades and decades of corrupt local, state, and central governance has led to dire poverty and high levels of unemployment. The current and past leaders have had no care to fix it, and it’s only getting worse. Their incompetence is what creates these kinds of jobs as alternatives to abject poverty and death.
As an Indian living in India's Silicon Valley, I am calling BS on this.
"All young (early 20s) women" doing explicit content manual filtering is not normal. No Indian Family would allow their daughters (and sons) to take up such a job if they knew about it.
As the article itself points out, the workers are drawn in by non-explicit/non-pron image annotation and then switched to psychologically harmful work when they cannot leave due to job-needs/contracts-enforcement.
This is pure bait-and-switch scam which has severe psychological effects on the women (and men) involved and should not be blithely hand-waved away.
For a detailed understanding of the psychological harm of explicit image annotation see this documentary (not specific to India) The "Modern Day Slaves" Of The AI Tech World. Undercover reporter does annotation of explicit images for AI but is so traumatized by what he sees that he quits in two weeks. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPSZFUiElls
would the indian families allow their daughters or sons to become part of tech support scams stealing the livelyhood of elderly people?
I’ve noticed that the type of people to have problems with these kind of jobs - people who think this is some type of neocolonialism - can not appreciate the difference between real material poverty and metaphysical problems with watching some abusive content.
This person is earning a really competitive wage. She’s getting the power and independence to lead a materially good life. This will trump every other metaphysical concern you can have by watching these abusive videos.
Some one has to moderate these videos and it’s great that it’s someone poor who’s getting the opportunity.
This argument is somewhat true in the small case (e.g. if you are starving and the only job for you is shoveling bodies into a furnace, may as well).
But I think the reason people have a problem is that giant multi-national corps have created a system where shoveling bodies into the furnace is the most profitable option for these desperate people.
The wealth available in the world right now is completely unfathomable, and its mostly going to ads, privacy invasion, burning massive amounts of energy to make fake videos and articles and more adware, etc. Its not wrong to think "is something wrong with having droves of poor people wading through our shit so they don't starve?"
Similar to how the coal mining companies were happy to watch miners die in the mines from blacklung, and their services were indeed useful, and they were quite proud of it. Its a complex issue because it was critical work at the time. However, only a little while later, we realize the system we had was broken and poisoning the planet, ourselves, and the workers. I'm sure many coal miners are remiss that they no longer can work the mines, and many companies would be happy to employ them if it was profitable enough, but ultimately its not a good system for anyone. And if I hear that "coal miners in high demand in China" I'm not going to say "oh I'm so glad they have employment" I'm going to ask "why aren't they using a clearly better alternative for those people?"
"The wealth available in the world right now is completely unfathomable, and its mostly going to ads, privacy invasion, burning massive amounts of energy to make fake videos and articles and more adware, etc. Its not wrong to think "is something wrong with having droves of poor people wading through our shit so they don't starve?""
Why is the sole blame on countries other than India. We should be focusing on the government of India and why the system there creates a society with a much larger percentage of poverty than many other parts of the world.
"Similar to how the coal mining companies were happy to watch miners die in the mines from blacklung, and their services were indeed useful, and they were quite proud of it."
How is this similar? Nobody is dying from looking at terrible content.
"why aren't they using a clearly better alternative for those people?"
This article is about the better alternative. They aren't physically risking their lives every day to make a living.
> Why is the sole blame on countries other than India
You can blame India all you want; Modi is very much due for criticism, his political leadership is pitiful and merits no quarter from Western governments or otherwise.
But the Russian Federation doesn't care, they've got crude to process. The Knesset won't convene to denounce their enemy's enemy. The US loves buying cheap oil and siphoning Indian labor. They'll blame India right alongside you all day long, but they won't ever stop supporting their broken system. India's suffered from this for the better part of a century and it's becoming apparent that foreign influence is the issue.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46922311
>> giant multi-national corps have created a system where
they didnt do by intention - "market forces" drove them there to do this, i.e. competition / costs etc.
Governments allowed corporations to gain enough control that they are defacto states unto themselves. Some control more resources than mid-sized countries.
> I’ve noticed that the type of people to have problems with these kind of jobs - people who think this is some type of neocolonialism - can not appreciate the difference between real material poverty and metaphysical problems with watching some abusive content.
I think THIS shows that you've never dealt with people in abject poverty. Just because you live in poverty doesn't mean you lack humanity.
People lie, cheat, steal, sell their bodies and kill to subsist in poverty. Whatever it takes to survive. That is totally separate from the toll that that type of surviving takes.
It is true that employment and pay are good. The question is a) are proper protections in place for workers and b) does pay adequately compensate for traumatic stress. Studying the issue is valuable, particularly given the potential for labor exploitation given the power imbalance between the largest, most powerful organizations in the world and a labor base which as you point out could otherwise be disenfranchised.
I think with this info we can assess whether the wage is indeed competitive. Otherwise claiming "well they're getting paid" can be used to justify exploitative labor practices or negate the need for ethical inquiry.
Also calling psychological harm metaphysical is questionable. Is PTSD experienced by American troops coming back from deployment metaphysical? Not necessarily comparing these cases in degree.
I'm not sure what invoking neocolonialism adds to the discussion. Best to engage on a factual rather than ideological basis.
I generally agree with the broader point you're making, but I also think there's nothing wrong with pointing out how messed up it is that that's the reality of the choice. The whole point of improving society is to eliminate this kind of dilemma
It’s messed up that this has to be done. But overall positive change.
Why does it have to be done?
Laws, primarily.
There's also a lot of content that companies don't want to host or show to their users in general.
That poor people get the worst of the jobs? What’s the alternative?
Who says this particular job is a necessary one?
What’s your alternative?
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Jury duty for all online fora maybe?
Because one could sell DDoS services that overload the target network with porn.
Maybe social media for this content isn’t sustainable or wise?
Maybe social media of the kind which creates this problem isn't sustainable or wise.
You're talking about making the internet as a whole a view-only experience where all content is curated and made by trusted gatekeepers.
As long as a website allows user generated content, there will be this need to moderate it
No, he's talking about the Internet of old, where if you wanted to post anything you first had to stand up a server.
You’re saying there were no forum boards nor comment sections anywhere? And everyone self hosted every single piece of content they wished to send it into the world?
I think that it is grotesque to take some moral high ground while global companies are exploiting the most desperate workers that they can find. They don’t give a shit about poor people in India, they need people with marginal English language ability whom have little or no worker protections.
People will do what they have to do to survive. But this is hurting these people who long suffer long after the social media company’s contractor discards them.
They might also be doing it for the sake of a better future for their children, not just for themselves.
What’s your alternative? The people in villages are struggling without jobs and they are poor. They don’t even have food to put on their plate.
They make irrational decisions - don’t send their kids to school, make them work in farms. They are mentally stunted because of low quality food. They vote for idiots which stall progress even more.
You show concern but what is the alternative? Ask the capitalists for even more money?
> What’s your alternative?
Let women work the jobs, and laws mandating upfront transparency and mental health support. It shouldn't increase costs significantly and the benefits in human dignity will be more than worth it.
And don't stop working to make governments more honest, so other jobs can be established. Improve education so silly superstitions don't keep women locked out of large swathes of society and work.
Ending world hunger isn’t that expensive: https://wfpusa.org/news/how-much-would-it-cost-to-end-world-...
Nvidia’s profit alone would’ve been more than enough to end world hunger by these estimates.
this article is false
Baseless accusation. The article is true of course.
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Ask the capitalists for even more money?
yes, all that profit they are making should be invested into the future of our society. globally.
poor people don't send their kids to school because school costs money, which they don't have. school is an investment into the future. but you can't make an investment if you don't have anything to invest. which is why that investment needs to come from those who have the money.
so unless they give enough money, they should not be able to employ the people who need the employment?
You suggest that the state set minimum wage above what the lady already earns? She earns way more than minimum wage.
i am not necessarily agreeing with any of the opinions shared above. when someone jumps into a thread like i did this can easily be missed. so please forget all of that discussion, as it is not relevant to my argument. i am a different commenter.
what i am suggesting is that the only way to lead people out of poverty as a society is to heavily invest in education. paid for by taxing those that make all the profits. paid in such a way that sending children to school offsets the loss of income the family would have from letting the children work in the fields. (in some places in africa this works because the school is the only place where the kids get food.)
i am not suggesting that these jobs should go away. that's besides the point. i am not sharing any opinion about those jobs or the current situation.
what i am suggesting is that instead of arguing about the situation or complaining about those jobs, the best way to make life really better for these people is to improve their education.
the companies that provide these jobs could be contributing to that too by not only paying good salaries as they are but also directly investing into the building of schools, and making sending children to school a condition of employment.
You sound like Johnathan Swift satirically suggesting that the Irish sell their children to be eaten by their landlords.
That's verging on a white man's burden kind of argument. We can help tackle global income disparity without telling poorer people that they should be happy we're offering them the jobs we don't want to do ourselves.
Growth in manufacturing products for export, first in wrecked post-war Japan, then in Taiwan, and then in China, is what lifted all of them out of deep poverty into global powerhouses and technology leaders. You better believe that they were happy to have those jobs others didn't want and to capitalize on them to grow themselves.
Manufacturing jobs produce locallly useful materials, pay for locally useful machines and equipment, and atleast in the first 2/3rs of industrializarion locally useful skills.
This stuff does bring them money which is nice, but a person having access to and learning to use a welder or lathe or loom or repair or fabricate such thhings has value far beyond merely their wage.
Tools and the skills to use them is the most important thing in building a modern society. Countries don't really ever transition from agrarian straight to a modern service economy.
We could but we don’t. Like, let’s buy artificial diamonds so kids in the Congo aren’t mining blood diamonds, but you never hear about the follow-up of helping those kids out of poverty. I’m all for ethical sourcing, but we are horrible at the other things we should be doing to alleviate poverty around the world.
I can see why many think that our global social activism would be better redirected at simply making poorer people less poor as opposed to their exploitation. It’s definitely a jaded view though.
"We can help tackle global income disparity "
As long as it doesn't involve just giving them money. This experiment has been done in Africa for as long as I can remember and there's only more poverty and a higher birth rate.
"without telling poorer people that they should be happy we're offering them the jobs we don't want to do ourselves"
A corrupt government is usually the reason a country doesn't prosper. There's no jobs because businesses end up just getting ripped off and move elsewhere (along with anyone smart). What's left is a broken infrastructure and abject poverty.
Until this is fixed, things will never change.
> there's only more poverty
That's simply not true.
> A corrupt government is usually the reason a country doesn't prosper
You're probably ignoring the centuries of corporate rule in India that systematically removed wealth to Britain, and which left behind a traumatised and humiliated population that was allowed to play in a game of capitalism they didn't start with the cards already stacked against them.
People who raise these concerns don't understand true poverty. They might have seen it during trips but don't really "grok" it. That's one place where the expression "First world problems" is relevant. Being able to pay for housing, food and some degree of safety is an immense improvement in life quality versus the previous state with poverty and no videos.
Maybe it's that we don't think people should be threatened with starvation to force them to perform degrading labor.
I agree with you but disagree with how you phrased your comment. They aren't being threatened, they were either born into poverty/starvation or went into poverty. In their perspective (or at least some of them), they view it as a sacrifice to lead their families into a better life.
Everyone is born naked. Some people are then assigned stuff... by other people.
They aren’t being threatened. They are already starving and this is giving them an opportunity out.
I am thinking that giving them an opportunity is just a happy side effect. To big tech, they are the opportunity.
I think it's perfectly reasonable to have distaste for farming out unpleasant work to poorer countries. But also I think it's perfectly reasonable to accept that it's a fact of life and realise that it's literally redirecting wealth from the richest companies in the world to some of the poorer people in the world.
I'm more bothered by the fact that once again an article focuses on the plight of an identity deemed oppressed rather than broader concern for working classes. All it does is sell it as pandering rather than exposing a genuine issue. And as usual from the post-modern left, dividing rather than uniting. The article's entire justification for this is the absolute cop-out: >Women form half or more of this workforce.
As another example, I read an article the other day complaining about an advertising campaign from a colossal multinational company replacing the "o"s in London tube stop names with "0.0"s. Why? Not because of excessive corporate encroachment into public spaces, but because it might be confusing for disabled people. Maybe it would be, but once again the broader problem of capitalist overreach is ignored in favour of identity. Corporate exploitation is fine as long as it doesn't impact people who aren't able white men
It is perfectly reasonable to not like it. But it's important to point out that generally you don't go from mass starvation to Starbucks on every corner in one step. There are coal mines and abusive videos in between.
There are some countries in East Asia that would be able to disagree with this
Maybe we can hold hands in a circle and sing Kumbaya.
That would be as helpful as these vacuous takes.
Watching this stuff all day can literally cause you to have lifelong PTSD. I want poor people to have enough money to provide for themselves, but this is exploitative - they should get paid a LOT more to do this kind of work, the same way someone who does something physically dangerous gets paid more for the risk.
Are you suggesting that the same people in India (the same woman) be employed but be paid, say, 2x her salary and the company would do it out of generosity (2x the market rate).
I am a lower caste Indian one generation removed from being farmhands. I have seen my parents go without for decades until I became successful. I still think this is utter cruelty and another way the poor are taken advantage of. Mr Paternal westerner, I reject your false dichotomy.
> Some one has to moderate these videos
Do they? Maybe you can never get to zero, but I'd be surprised if there weren't any ways to materially reduce the frequency of such videos being uploaded.
Of course, many of these ways will probably affect growth metrics, and since these directly translate into revenue, I can imagine how the economic tradeoff that was made here looks like...
There are other trade offs, requiring a real world id to connect to the Internet and fragmenting it to connect only aligned countries will mostly take away problem of illegal porn, fraud and spam. But at some cost.
Im with you... to some extent. I come from parts of the world where there is real material poverty and so this is tangible food on the table and a better life in some sense...at least for her family if not for her.
The question though is why that material poverty exists in so many parts of the world that were once pretty advanced civilizations.... Colonialism def had a part to play there. So the irony isn't lost that western powers exploited and extracted from civilizations and cultures that were different from theirs..all in the name of progress of course..and now those parts of the world are dependent on the breadcrumbs thrown their way by different western powers.
Yeah, let's save these poor women by taking their jobs away...
You could use this argument to justify street prostitution.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'metaphysical' here, but I get the impression that you're dismissively trivializing real psychological problems by using that word.
An improvement in material conditions does not straightforwardly make up for these problems. What if they cause the viewer to commit suicide, or be so distraught they can no longer continue to work? People who do this work tend not to be able to do it for very long.
You also seem to be evaluating this by taking the current order of things for granted, as if it were not possible for this kind of thing to not be necessary in the first place. Quite a stunted imagination.
_you_ don’t know what it means to be under material poverty.
Look up farmer suicides in India an you can understand how material poverty leads to even more suicides statistically.
These people don’t even have food to sustain. One of the biggest problems is that poor people in India have low IQ because they literally can’t afford food with vitamins.
Low IQ leads to irrational decisions, low productivity and they get equal vote so they vote in idiots that slow progress.
These jobs are the best deal for overall progress of India. Sure they have to struggle in the middle but at least they have good food on the plate. Some safety net to make long term decisions and vote for better leaders.
You wouldn’t get it. You would just show concern. But Indians have to deal with the problems.
I know what it means to be under material poverty in this hell of a country. Even so I think this is another poisoned chalice. We are where you export your garbage to, whether material or digital. I spit on your false charity.
_you_ don't seem to understand what I wrote, or are not attempting to genuinely respond to it. But you've demonstrated a certain thickheadedness, potentially willful, so I can't say I was expecting better.
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They're suggesting that you listen to and address the points they made rather than simply rephrase your original viewpoint.
I'd suggest you try to understand that psychological problems are real and that you only get one brain. You may say "you don't understand poverty", but it equally sounds like you don't understand trauma and psychological issues. You only get one brain and life is about being happy. If you rise out of poverty, but you're less happy than you were, is that better? It sounds like it is for you as long as they stop voting for candidates you don't like. It's easy to not care about people's happiness if they don't vote for the candidates you like, right?
Can you address the point I made where farmers suicides happen because of material poverty?
If you saw that my main point was that metaphysical concerns of “trauma” and “psychological issues” are a non issue for people who don’t have food on their plate.
> If you rise out of poverty, but you're less happy than you were, is that better?
Who are you to suggest they are less happy than otherwise? They took that decision voluntarily. I’m also suggesting that it’s the best decision.
You seem to think you have a better alternative for those people. Pray tell me, what is it that you are suggesting? What would you have rather done if you were the poor mother in middle of nowhere India and you had 6 children with complete lack of material stability. You would have rejected it?
If it were me or my friends or family- I would have definitely taken the job or adviced my friends to take it.
Apologies for inserting myself into this exchange, but I'd like to point out something that both your primary interlocuter seem to be overlooking.
> They took that decision voluntarily
Doesn't really describe the experience of the woman in the original article. She took a job in "data classification" which was initially boring but benign. Then her job assignments changed to reviewing NSFW and NSFL content that she herself recognized as psychologically harmful, without a pay increase, or affordance for her discomfort. In fact, the altered nature of her job was callously dismissed: "it's still data classification"!
I could probably agree with you that there's a market-clearing price where reviewing disturbing material becomes a worthwhile sacrifice for some to take, or even an actual opportunity for people psychologically suited to the work, but an informed, freely-taken choice is not the situation described. That's the exploitation that I see in this story.
> Who are you to suggest they are less happy than otherwise?
Who are you to assume they always are? Once again, you're just dismissing the problems away.
> They took that decision voluntarily.
As if nobody in the history of the world took a deal that turned out to be bad for them. A voluntary choice does not inherently imply that the choice made them better off.
Regardless, you've completely ignored the last sentence of my original reply, but I'll try to spell it out for you. The neocolonialist objection does not boil down to, take these women's jobs away and make people in the corporation's home country do it. It is primarily a critique of the society that benefits from or depends on labor its own members consider unacceptable or beneath them. It is inherently exploitative by that society's own standards, and retaining such an economy is either unsustainable or incentivizes the perpetuation of the conditions which allow it to exploit. In other words, the US has a vested interest in making sure some people are always poor and desperate enough to do the jobs it doesn't want to do.
You’ve ignored my point on material poverty leading to suicides again. This means you can’t appreciate that Indians suffer mostly from people lack of money than anything else.
> As if nobody in the history of the world took a deal that turned out to be bad for them. A voluntary choice does not inherently imply that the choice made them better off
I’m suggesting that it’s the best decision for them. They’ve clearly taken the decision so they also think the same. I asked you for alternatives, or what you could have rather done but you’ve not answered. Maybe consider that it’s the best option for them?
> In other words, the US has a vested interest in making sure some people are always poor and desperate enough to do the jobs it doesn't want to do.
This shows clearly you have no idea what you are talking about. It’s mostly because of US that India has great IT jobs. It’s also because of products and services made in the US that we use in India that India enjoys some prosperity. Think of all the pharmaceutical innovations. Think of the internet, iPhones and everything. The USA has a massive part in reducing poverty in India.
What you are doing is clear: moral grandstanding without suggesting any clear alternative. It’s always nice to show easy empathy.
Your perspective is consistently too black and white. No one in this comment chain has once said that this should not be allowed. At most it's been said that paying poor people to take trauma is concerning. Your response has consistently been "How dare you say poor people shouldn't have these jobs? These jobs are great!". You're trying to make it black and you white, when it's neither.
If your argument was "These jobs probably will scar some people for life, and that's troubling, but I do think the overall gain in welfare will likely outweigh that", then no one reasonable would be arguing with you. As it is, you haven't bothered to include this nuance, or even once admit or consider that some people could be made worse off overall by these jobs, even if perhaps most aren't. It basically just sounds like you want to see fewer "low IQ" poor people and you aren't really bothered how they feel afterwards. I'll say again, exceedingly many people have all the things you said are required for happiness, and still aren't happy. And that is usually due to trauma, the very thing we're talking about.
> No one in this comment chain has once said that this should not be allowed. At most it's been said that paying poor people to take trauma is concerning
There's a commenter saying that they were forced to do it.
>Being able to force someone to do something is not justification for doing so. Further, it is ridiculous to try and label that as 'beneficial for everyone involved'. By the same token you can call outright slavery under threat of execution 'beneficial for everyone involved'. What tripe.
That's simply a logical conclusion from your own thought process. You keep saying that any job is okay if the person is desperate. i.e. it's okay to force people to do what you want if they've got no other choice
yeah no sorry. there's clearly a person who thinks this should not be done. the way to interpret what they said is that they are forced to take this option.
> No one in this comment chain has once said that this should not be allowed
this is incorrect.
I did say that its okay for people to be forced to do the job if no other option exists (with some caveats).
If you disagree, tell me how and be specific about it. What would you rather do in this case?
Don't beat around the bush, try being specific.
>What would you have rather done if you were the poor mother in middle of nowhere India and you had 6 children with complete lack of material stability. You would have rejected it?
There's a major inconsistency here. You're consistently claiming that other people don't understand poverty, and yet you essentially made the point that you're not poor ("those people have lower IQ"). So either you started off poor and then worked your way up via some route that's obviously not this job, or you haven't experienced it either, or you are actually poor and aren't doing this work. Which is it?
>Can you address the point I made where farmers suicides happen because of material poverty?
You haven't provided any evidence. If you can prove the suicide rate is higher for these farmers, you may have a point, but even then, the suicide rate does not necessarily have any bearing on the overall rate of happiness. It's possible that a bigger majority are happier farming, but a small minority are pushed more inexorably towards suicide. Perhaps that isn't true either. We simply don't know without evidence.
That's my basic point. You're making strong claims, but you quite clearly simply do not know and are deciding based on instinct and perhaps a vague desire to have your favoured political candidates get more votes. You haven't provided any justification whatsoever. "I think it's right", "maybe they commit suicide" and "they don't vote for people I prefer" are not justifications, they're guesses. As much as you may want me to ("Who are you to suggest they are less happy than otherwise?"). I have made no claims whatsoever, simply pointed out the lack of nuance using hypotheticals.
Having more money is very good. Psychological damage is very bad. Your point is that psychological damage doesn't matter and having more food is all that matters. Okay, so should you send your child off to fight for a warlord if it means they have more food? Please try to grasp that's there's nuance.
>If you saw that my main point was that metaphysical concerns of “trauma” and “psychological issues” are a non issue for people who don’t have food on their plate.
I've put this at the end because its beside the main point, but this sentence is just a barrel of conceptual misunderstandings. Trauma is a type of psychological issue, so "trauma and psychological issues" makes no sense without a prepended "other". Neither trauma nor psychological issues are metaphysical concerns. Metaphysical concerns are issues of first principles and deeper understandings of concepts. It's a branch of philosophy. If you don't believe me, Google it, or ask ChatGPT.
>There's a major inconsistency here. You're consistently claiming that other people don't understand poverty, and yet you essentially made the point that you're not poor ("those people have lower IQ"). So either you started off poor and then worked your way up via some route that's obviously not this job, or you haven't experienced it either, or you are actually poor and aren't doing this work. Which is it?
Have you considered that I have more knowledge of poverty, not because I have experienced it, but because I have spent time understanding it?
> You haven't provided any evidence. If you can prove the suicide rate is higher for these farmers, you may have a point, but even then, the suicide rate does not necessarily have any bearing on the overall rate of happiness. It's possible that a bigger majority are happier farming, but a small minority are pushed more inexorably towards suicide. Perhaps that isn't true either. We simply don't know without evidence.
You didn't understand the point I was trying to make.
Lets make it clear here: people are either unhappy because of material poverty like lack of money/food or because of higher level needs like love, safety and in this case - not watching abusive videos (so ridiculous that I even have to compare this).
Do you genuinely want to challenge me in claiming that people are more unhappy by watching abusive videos than because of material poverty? Really?
>Having more money is very good. Psychological damage is very bad. Your point is that psychological damage doesn't matter and having more food is all that matters. Okay, so should you send your child off to fight for a warlord if it means they have more food? Please try to grasp that's there's nuance.
Yes I would? The actual equivalent here is that the child does not have other means of earning and would go hungry. And that fighting for the warlord is overall good for the society. In that case its obvious. Are you this naive to not understand that this is _exactly_ why you have an army in your country? Why do you think people become soldiers? You are so naive and stick to moral grandstanding that you have not even grasped why people work.
I have asked you the third (I think) time now. What would you rather do if you were in the woman's situation? You have conveniently ignored it.
Pray tell me, what is the best choice for the woman to make? I have made it clear that I would have done the same thing. I actually think there's a reason why you ignored this question. By answering it, you would clearly admit that
1. this is the best choice she can take
2. this job has to be done by someone anyway so its net benefit to society
3. this means the overall story is a net positive for everyone and your moral grandstanding has no place here
>Have you considered that I have more knowledge of poverty, not because I have experienced it, but because I have spent time understanding it?
If this is true, you haven't shown any evidence of it.
>Lets make it clear here: people are either unhappy because of material poverty like lack of money/food or because of higher level needs like love, safety and in this case - not watching abusive videos (so ridiculous that I even have to compare this).
Again you're making a value judgment and not providing any evidence besides saying it's true. Happiness is far more complex than this, and exceedingly many people who do have all the things you just stated are still unhappy, and very very often that's due to trauma.
>Do you genuinely want to challenge me in claiming that people are more unhappy by watching abusive videos than because of material poverty? Really?
My friend, you are consistently failing to understand nuance. This isn't a contest, no one is "challenging" you. Maybe what you said here is true, maybe it isn't, let's discuss the "why"s and the justifications and the evidence, but all you seem to be able to do is say "this is true and it's true because I say it's true, and also maybe suicides but with no evidence".
>Yes I would? ... 3. this means the overall story is a net positive for everyone and your moral grandstanding has no place here
This entire section boils down to an argument that could equally made for slavery. Well if they have a roof over their head and food, why not have slavery? At least they're not starving, right?
The funny thing is that there's absolutely nothing unjustifiable about your position. I actually genuinely don't disagree that people should be able to have these jobs. I'm bringing all this up because your justifications and motivations are completely immoral and illogical. Of course I would take the choice to do this job, but equally I would take the choice of slavery if it stopped me from starving. That doesn't make it right or a good thing for society.
>This entire section boils down to an argument that could equally made for slavery. Well if they have a roof over their head and food, why not have slavery? At least they're not starving, right?
What's the alternative? This is the 6th time I'm asking this. Without answering this question, you are playing rhetorical games.
What is a rhetorical game if "ignoring the entire comment and then complaining you didn't answer one question that's entirely irrelevant to the central point" isn't? Read the comment again and try to figure out why it's irrelevant. I'll give you a hint: read the last paragraph. Once you've done that I may continue speaking to you.
you have not answered - "its not a good thing for society". so what is? having enough money? what's the point in moral grandstanding to say something so obvious? of course it would be good if everyone has a lot of money.
Read the comment and then reply.
Read a history book to learn how all this bad stuff was abolished in the West. Ofcourse that requires a basic respect for poor people to develop in India...
If I was in that position, and you gave me the choice to ritualistically mutilate myself for your amusement so my children could escape, I'd probably take it.
Your entire chain of argument is vacuous; devoid of any sense of empathy for your fellow humanity.
I show empathy which is why I’m happy that they have this job and can put food on their plate. You show fake empathy and fake concern by prioritising metaphysical needs.
Again, vacuous. You deride as 'metaphysical' what is psychological. But the health and well-being of children too is a 'metaphysical' concern to the worker by this metric, and yet you call it up to support yourself? Your argument is empty, hypocritical: there can be no substance to calling the one metaphysical and the other physical, thereby dismissing all suffering.
If you're going to play the game you're playing, play it everywhere: their children don't matter, their suffering doesn't matter, they don't matter.
The core of your argument is merely that if it is possible to force someone to do something, it is right and proper. What a vile philosophy, to make what is detestable into that which is desirable.
At least have the grace to be ashamed and turn away, if you cannot stomach the taste but to replace it with deception.
My point is that material needs are more important to people under poverty than metaphysical like feeling bad about watching abusive videos.
You agree that this job is necessary to be done. You agree that this is the best option they have and they are better off with it. You would also do the same thing if you were in their position. You agree that this job exiting is overall beneficial for everyone involved.
Then what’s with the moral grandstanding? Yes it’s not ideal that someone has to do the job.
What point do you want to make other than virtue signalling?
Being able to force someone to do something is not justification for doing so. Further, it is ridiculous to try and label that as 'beneficial for everyone involved'. By the same token you can call outright slavery under threat of execution 'beneficial for everyone involved'. What tripe.
Repeatedly stating that it's 'better for them' because they have no choice is not the slam dunk you seem to think it is. The entire class of argument does not hold water; this line of reasoning will not convince me. It does not even slightly support your position.
I'd thank you to not put words in my mouth. You're wrong about them.
What point do I make other than virtue signaling? Mayhap read what you replied to, and you'll find it. But if you struggle still: your load-bearing use of 'metaphysical' is basically nonsense. I explained why already, why should I endlessly repeat myself?
> Being able to force someone to do something is not justification for doing so. Further, it is ridiculous to try and label that as 'beneficial for everyone involved'
Who's forced here?
He likely betrayed his real motivations a few comments back. He's annoyed about candidates getting elected by "low IQ" voters, and he wants them to get smarter by eating more so they can vote for the right people.
can you answer this specific question: what would you have done differently if you were in their position? You’ve avoided answering this.
This is an absolutely clueless opinion.
Watch the documentary i link to here, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46921505 for a better understanding.
[dead]
how privileged of you! thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve you while you centralize my brain power and start charging me a tax on thinking. GTH
> Sometimes, when I’m with my partner, I feel like a stranger in my own body. I want closeness, but my mind keeps pulling away.
Dissociation. A classic sign of trauma and PTSD.
This is well documented.
In fact, Facebook was taken to court over this, admitted to the harm caused and paid out a hefty amount;
Facebook will pay $52 million in settlement with moderators who developed PTSD on the job - https://archive.is/M4tdk#selection-1487.0-1487.89
Also watch the documentary i link to here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46921505
I remember watching this kind of content for free on Liveleak back in the day.
Maybe they should get edgy teenagers to do the content classification rather than third-world rural women with minimal media exposure.
I was not big fan of Liveleak, but I really enjoyed WatchPeopleDie community, one could learn a lot in the comments about how to be safer in the enviroment (I'm aware they moved to website, but it's not same anymore, too much friction to visit it)
after being the regular visitor of WPD I stand at the junction waiting for my turn shielded by the traffic lights pole and always look in the eye of the driver when crossing the road, especially if it's tall truck
some ppl don't realize how many lives actually WPD saved, but hey now we have victory nobody is exposed to this disturbing content and making silly jokes about death, right?
I actually agree with this, I was a weekly WPD user and it was downright educational.
Watching it once in a while because your brain craves novelty (good or bad) is not the same as watching all sorts of graphic imagery (not just pron) for 8+ hours a day 6/7 days a week.
This is obviously a flippant comment that shouldn't be taken seriously. But the loss of LiveLeak seems like the loss of the journalism that the Internet was supposed to bring. There were a lot of odd things posted on there with some unneeded commentary but it was a place that would post unfiltered content that other places were scared to post. A lot of it was disgusting that I wouldn't watch, but it's weird to think that the Internet is censored now in a way where it's hard to even find it.
You can find areas of propaganda where site rule breaking will be allowed if it serves the interest of the owner, but you really have to seek it out. It's even weirder that the latest generation is self censoring common words so they can show up on sites like TikTok. Billionaires buying newspapers to censor seems less strange but sadly something I also didn't expect.
Blame Visa and Mastercard and the puritanical-when-it's-convenient media
When I was in my 20s I worked for a well-known global telco. In our office, we had a group of people whose literal job was watching streaming porn from around the world all day. They had walls of screens running simultaneously.
Those streams were customers. Our people’s job was to monitor the streams for video and audio quality issues. When I would tell my friends that I worked with guys who’s literal job was watching porn on a sofa all day, they thought it must be the best job in the world.
But when I talked to the guys that actually had the job, they said it was a terribly boring chore. Even worse, they said you quickly become so desensitized that it bled over into their non-work life in a negative way. Almost everyone that had that job eventually grew to hate it.
These kinds of jobs have always existed. To some extent someone needs to do it. While we may be outsourcing it now, there is a long history of paying people in the US to do it.
I can only imagine that watching abuse/porn all day long may cause a person to change- possibly even lead to suicide.
It's a well compensated job vs local opportunities but feels like it should be an extravagantly compensated job vs local opportunities. Someone has to do it, but also somewhere along the continuum of doing factory garment work for $100 and deep sea welding for $100k, it feels like this should be closer to latter.
Seems like kind of job that needs physical filtering. Onboard bunch of candidates, measure their vitals, find low responders to abusive stimulus, hire them. I'm sure there's some poorly replicated psych study done on 1st years to draw from.
I see a contradiction. If they are not responsive, their psyche is safe and there are no reasons for them to be compensated much more than minimum wage workers.
"Safer" - I think essentially filtering for 1-2% of population high on sociopathy / anti social spectrum. Doesn't mean they're immune, just better equipped for job cognitively. I surmise compensation goes up when weeding out 98% of population.
All right, the twist. They may hire Tantric Buddhists or Shaivites. Some of them even pay to meditate on stuff like that, and will be happy to do the practice and get paid for it.
Oh, wait, India?
I'll get started on the business plan boss!
This is an absolutely horrific thing to make a person do. I see comments that say "well someone needs to do it." Then why not volunteer?
They are volunteering! They need the money.
Yes, also this region was ravaged my violent communists (Maoists) not so long ago. So they have very few opportunities.
I imagine myself as the one paying someone to do horrible things and uttering this line, and it makes me shudder.
Who is making them work this job?
Mr Poverty and Ms Hunger
This is not new. The British boast of banning slavery but they will never tell you about their invention of bonded labour. They imported bonded labour to South Africa, Guyana and other parts of their empire.
Now companies can use the Internet to keep the labour remote. Doesn't even require a degree.
Curiously, it's the Indians who have taken it upon themselves to master the practice of bonded labour and draw benefit from its ongoing existence.
Do you not think a person who is literally in poverty and who is actually hungry needs the job?
Of course. And since they truly need it, we may as well make it as cheap and abusive as possible, right?
They should be paid a premium above market rate? Why? Generosity?
Honestly, I love this comment, and I’m going to save it.
You’re so convinced that money is more important than human dignity you use the word “generosity” as invective. It can be hard to remember that this point of view exists, so thank you for the reminder.
its easy to talk about "human dignity" but its hard to talk about practical concerns on how to get the money for the dignity. please tell me, how do you expect the poor women in villages to get above market rate? unions? then the companies wouldn't even step foot in India and would rather move to Cambodia or Bangladesh or Ghana.
"The market says this women is low value. Why should I disagree?"
A take for the ages.
yeah how else do you want to organise who gets paid what? its nice and virtuous to claim that poor women should get paid more.
but there's simply not that much money to redistribute, unless more companies provide employment and drive labour demand up - exactly what is happening in this article.
so you can gesture all you want about women being poor and deserving more money, but it doesn't mean anything. you can't pay them above market rate, where will the money come from? certainly not taxes - there's simply not enough to go by.
Where did I say that? I'm explaining to the parent poster.
She can quit anytime she wants, let's not compare this to indentured servitude, Sanjay.
This is a consequence of communism and big government of India.
I don’t think she can quit anytime soon unless she wants to be homeless. If she has option she wouldn't be doing such kind of job.
Generally, Indians live with their parents until their marriage. So I am guessing she won't be homeless.
Subtle argumentation is not one of your strengths, Leo.
I get why a firefighter may be asked to take risks to save lives. We should not ask these women to take these risks so that billionaires can become trillionaires.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46921505 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46922271
None of the tech companies really want to moderate. Not because free peaches but because it costs a metric ton of money.
Is there a solution to this?
Let's say these jobs are bad. What do we do then? Just not have people do this job? Not allow uploads?
I had the same thought. I think the job is unavoidable BUT it needs much better screening. There are already countless of mindless individual who love watching that content, why not hire them? Finally a job sex offenders are good at.
It could also be a Clockwork Orange therapy for them.
If the choice is let's have [facebook|linkedin|bluesky] and someone has to suffer like this, or we don't have those things, than let's not have them.
The onus should be on the job provider to care for their employees too. They have a responsibility to ensure their employees are not physically harmed while they work. And to help or compensate their workers for any work injury. Right? Why not use the same criteria for psychological harm too? They should be provided psychological counselling. And note that this is not a new industry.
RealID + Ban + Legal Enforcement (depending on the content)
It will cut this work down by 90%, but I doubt many people here will go for it.
I think that would require someone looking at the content.
It does but way less. As I said "It will cut this work down by 90%, but I doubt many people here will go for it."
You're thinking US. What happens when most of the world doesn't even have an ID? Does Facebook suddenly drop 80% of users? Do US Facebook users only see US content?
The internet is not only "the west." What you're thinking is what's already happening in the Chinese internet, and even they cannot really limit the amount of disgusting content released by Chinese websites.
As long as non-verified users have access to the same internet as you, that content will continue to exist.
I'm thinking most countries. Most countries have some kind of ID. Most countries in Europe does. If not its easy to setup one if there is will.
I've never said is an 100% solution, nothing is an 100% solution. This is a 90% solution, which is already a huge improvement. Why would non-verified users have same access as you? Sure they can read, but no creation.
I'm from China and use the Chinese Internet regularity. The amount of disgusting content is way less then the global internet and they have less people doing filtering for abusive content.
No one should have to do this job. And if you can't make your social network function or AI thing function without it, then maybe, just maybe, we shouldn't have that social network or AI thing.
How do humans with very little exposure to grotesque violence or extreme content universally label such content so well? This is not graduate level data that needs labeling.
What is missing in an AI model for it to intuitively understand what content is extreme from very few labeled sample in training?
A finely tuned set of heuristic triggers for fear, horror, disgust, etc. You might as well ask why pain is so painful.
Eww. Like 19th c. children in dangerous factories, abusing poor people's mental health sifting through the Global North's cavalcade of depravity. There must exist more productive and honest uses of people's time, and some jobs shouldn't be done for any amount of money. Some jobs done risky ways shouldn't be done by human beings at all in dangerous manners (coal mining without safety equipment, loom maintenance while running, carrying sulfur chunks out of active volcanoes) because they lower us all. "But they're making money" is not a good enough excuse because that's a false choice as there infinitely other activities, and any number of safer activities or similar tasks done with meaningful precautions are needed, desirable, and could be done instead.
For a detailed understanding of the psychological harm and detrimental long-lasting effects of explicit image annotation see the following documentary (not specific to India). Undercover reporter does annotation of explicit images for AI but is so traumatized by what he sees that he quits in two weeks;
The "Modern Day Slaves" Of The AI Tech World. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPSZFUiElls
Description of the above video;
In 2027, virtual assistants like Sarah seamlessly handle our daily tasks, making life appear effortless. But behind this technological marvel lies a hidden reality. This documentary unveils the untold story of the ghost workers who power our digital world, performing the tedious and often traumatic tasks that machines can't handle.
Meet the invisible workforce behind tech giants like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Uber. These underpaid and disposable workers label images, moderate content, and train AI systems, often earning less than minimum wage. Their work is essential yet remains in the shadows, unacknowledged by the companies that depend on them.
> Murmu, 26, is a content moderator for a global technology company, logging on from her village in India’s Jharkhand state
> With just four months left on her contract, which pays about £260 a month
Earning US$350/mo working remotely in a village in one of the poorest states in India is an extremely competitive given that the alternative would be spending 12 hours sewing fast fashion for Zara earning US$130-150/mo [0], doing bit piece ag labor for around US$100/mo and participating in MGNREGA for US$50/mo, become a housewife, or become a Naxalite/Maoist insurgent to earn a couple thousand dollars when surrendering [1].
Content moderation means interacting with extremely depressing and horrid content, but someone needs to do it, and once models get good enough we would start seeing articles about how "all the good 100% remote first jobs with no barrier to entry" are being automated to oblivion.
Yes it sucks, but the alternative is becoming a migrant worker or working in light manufacturing where QoL is worse. Heck, we used to see similar articles about Chinese workers for Apple barely 14 years ago in then equally poor Sichuan [2], but you don't see those kinds of articles anymore.
Development takes time and the fact that US$350/mo remote data annotation and content moderation jobs are now penetrating into villages in what used to be the Naxalite/Maoist/Red Corridor where bombings and gun battles were a part of normal life just 10 years ago [3] is a massive step up developmentally - it means that there is robust enough internet, literacy, banking, and public services penetration for the seeds for a services economy to form.
Edit: Thanks for the downvotes westerners - my family is from these kinds of villages in India and Vietnam. The alternatives are extremely bleak - especially for a tribal woman like Ms Murmu at the bottom of the social and patriarchal hierarchy.
[0] - https://theprint.in/ground-reports/industries-finally-return...
[1] - https://www.thehansindia.com/news/national/18-yr-old-maoist-...
[2] - https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-...
[3] - https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2016/Nov/23/six-maoi...
>>given that the alternative would be spending 12 hours sewing fast ...
That is the best case scenario. Mostly women roll beedis(a kind of needle sized cigar) on which you get like 1 paise per 10 rolls or something like that. Or worse do assorted labor chores which can really sap one's soul real fast.
Even with all that women actually have it a lot better than men. Men literally die and are reborn every day in most parts of India.
Just drive 30 kms North of Bangalore, and you will see abject poverty scenes. People scavenging bovine dung for fuel, children with flies, no clothing. The ever present scene is always that of an elderly person with pencil thin legs wearing shorts he likely is wearing since a decade with nothing but boiled rice and salt water+turmeric to eat daily. 8 - 10 hr power cuts are the norm, that is if you can afford electricity at all. Most health care is either entirely absent, or you have to travel to the nearest metro and hope you don't die out of hunger getting treatment there. I could go on but that is life here.
£260 a month is actually great for some place like this.
I agree with you completely, but I'm confused by this phrase?
>Men literally die and are reborn every day in most parts of India.
There is an argument.
but maybe you have an idea of how manual labor feels (people always do some of it) but no idea how this type of horror feels and what it does.
The alternatives in these kinds of villages in rural Jharkhand's tribal and red corridor are literally
1.) bit-piece agriculture work for the local landlord who will never pay salaries on time because he has the power
2.) migrate to the nearest big city (in this case Ranchi, Dhanbad, or Patna) and work at a factory for 12 hours a week with the exact same risks
3.) get married off
4.) join a Maoist outfit in order to surrender and get government rehabilitation benefits.
And all of this is assuming the men (and it's always men) who they are reporting to are not lecherous abusers which is a very real risk in these kinds of jobs for women in Ms Murmu's status.
Like out of all the bad options, this is the least bad one - especially in an area that was a warzone barely a decade ago.
> this is the least bad one
not that I wish this on anyone but you would change your mind very quickly if you had to do this job for just one hour. it can fuck you up for life
I don't think anyone is disputing that this job is terrible, it clearly is. The counter argument is that many other jobs are also terrible, and it's not clear whether you can really stack rank them and this one is at the bottom of the pole.
The counter counter argument is that we all talking here know what manual job or not getting paid feels like. But we don't know what it does to you if you have a job where you must watch humans hurt/torture/rape other humans day in day out.
we know what work feels like. Maybe it's better maybe it's worse. But we don't know personally and have no intuition about THIS kind of stuff.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here. Am I just too old? What do you mean, people on this forum have no intuition about what watching gore videos online is like? About watching hours of ordinary porn (as the article also mentioned)?
That's more likely to be within the experience of a HackerNews user than serious manual labor.
I mean literally what I wrote.
> people on this forum have no intuition about what watching gore videos online is like
as a job day in day out no they don't
(also abuse is not gore which can be consensual)
(also HN is mostly men aka people who statistically are performers of abuse not receivers of abuse so adjust accordingly)
I guarantee you approximately nothing on LiveLeak was consensual. Consensual cartel executions?
Men are more likely to be victims of violent crime than women. Adjust according to what?
I am replying to the term "gore" which means violence and violence could in rare cases be consensual,
> according to what?
to the fact that men are more likely to be perpetrators:)
So can working in the unorganized sector in the heart of the Red Corridor. Like this is literally one of the least developed parts of one of the least developed states in India.
A tribal woman like Murmu who is clearly living in the Red Corridor districts (based on surname and geographic location) doesn't have any better choice.
Yes content moderation introduces you to horrid content, but the alternatives give the very real risk of physical and sexual violence.
This is utterly ridiculous. The majority of teens I knew watched a few hours of LiveLeak at some point and turned out fine.
a few hours! Watching it for 40+ hours a week for months on end is going to fuck you up more than a casual perusal of a shock website.
Yeah and you for sure know what went through all of their heads.
If a kid enjoys it it's a very big red flag. If a kid is horrified by it (as I was) even if pretending to be cool in front of peers, then there you have your answer as to what it must feel to do it every day 9 to 7.
Lots of people just aren't that bothered by gore videos and they are well-adjusted members of society, I dunno what to tell you.
> Lots of people just aren't that bothered by gore videos
and here again you are alluding to that access you have to what goes on in other people's heads. although of course "lots of" is relative. i'd say 0.01% of population is lots enough in this case.
> they are well-adjusted members of society
a psycho can function just great in society. maybe this work is great for a psycho. however, majority of people aren't that.
> I dunno what to tell you.
right back at ya buddy
I see few people coming from Jharkhand and working as waitresses in my state.
Also, your first link mentions Bihar not Jharkhand.
> I see few people coming from Jharkhand and working as waitresses in my state
Ststistically, a young Santali woman from rural Jharkhand would most likely end up working in West Bengal, Maharashtra, or Karnataka [0] according to Jharkhand's Migration Survey.
> Also, your first link mentions Bihar not Jharkhand
Because HDI and developmental indicators remain roughly comparable in both states. Salaries in Bihar are comparable to salaries for similar roles in Jharkhand, Eastern UP, or Northern portions of West Bengal.
[0] - https://iimad.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/salx20170525s-i...
Jharkhand was formerly part of Bihar >25 years ago, and they were administered jointly with Orissa before independence. Then, my family worked in the police service and were transferred between Patna and Hazaribagh without any problem.
Yeah what’s the alternative to moderation…no moderation?
Your entire argument falls down due to not understanding the psychological harm caused. This sort of Secondary Trauma with symptoms of PTSD literally destroys people and families over time.
As they say, "being poor make you invisible" and therefore nobody cares on how they end up over a longer time period but only look at immediate benefits. Given that the Govt. has lots of schemes for the underprivileged, it is better to utilize those and do some other job however difficult that does not destroy one's mental health like this one does.
Quite simply, the companies are taking advantage of poverty in poorer regions of the World to pay pennies for a job which literally destroys one's mental health.
See also my other comments in this thread where i link to informative documentaries/articles on this topic.
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When VCs and investors keep saying 'There will be new jobs', they never tell you exactly what they are - on purpose.
Now we know that it is actually being a data labeller, AI tutor and content moderator, but in very low wage countries such as in India.
This is the post-AGI reality. 'Abundance', but not for you.
That's false. We expect that jobs are growing at both ends of the income distribution with AI [0][1] - yes there are a ton of data annotators and content moderators now, but literally the overwhelming majority of us also expect to see an expansion in standard SWE and SWE adjacent roles with AI/ML vibe coding becoming the norm.
The reason you are facing job losses right now is because Joe in Cary who learnt to code at a bootcamp can't justify being paid $180k a year when I can hire Jan for $90k in Karlin [2] or Jamila for $60k in Koramangla [3] while maintaining equivalent performance and output. Having a president pass an executive order to distract from the Gold Card announcement [4] also played a role [5] just like we warned would happen.
[0] - https://www.ft.com/content/267037e8-a71f-4025-acca-f441fe712...
[1] - https://www.ft.com/content/d6fdc04f-85cf-4358-a686-298c3de0e...
[2] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/prague-...
[3] - https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater...
[4] - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-signs-proclamati...
[5] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-03/alphabet-...