The In-House Decency Patrol At Facebook 157
theodp writes "How'd you like a job where you get fired if you DON'T view porn at work? Newsweek reports on Facebook's internal police force of 150 staffers who are charged with regulating users' decorum, hunting spammers and working with actual law-enforcement agencies to help solve crimes. Part hall monitors, part vice cops, the $50,000-a-year 'porn cops' also keep Facebook safe for corporate advertisers."
I'm sure it gets real old (Score:5, Insightful)
50k$ is not enough (Score:5, Insightful)
For such a boring job.
No thanks (Score:4, Insightful)
Being spied upon (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:50k$ is not enough (Score:3, Insightful)
Unskilled = anyone can do it = no-one cares what you think = just shut up and do it or we'll get someone eles in = low paid
Re:so lest get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
You know those porn sites on that there Interwebz? Well guess what... each and every single one needs someone to at the very least maintain and run the sites, if not to adjust/crop/re-size/airbrush the material.
I remember reading the first-hand experiences of a guy hired to maintain such a site. The end result was that he found himself totally desensitized to the material, even the really hardcore stuff, to the point that porn had absolutely no thrill. So be aware of this if you every find the opportunity to check out porn on a daily basis. :)
Re:50k$ is not enough (Score:2, Insightful)
You are still in school, right?
Well, that implies that the median is unskilled and menial or worse. You may not like that, but it could well be an accurate description of your society.
Yes, because, mr. great economist, if everyone was skilled, everyone would command large sums of money for their work.
Re:50k$ is not enough (Score:4, Insightful)
Facebook is in Palo Alto. For $50K/y you can barely pay for apartment, car, and maybe some kind of food.
Re:I'm sure it gets real old (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect they spend more time viewing JEWS DID WTC than porn, but I don't know.
Re:Rampant Sexism (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:50k$ is not enough (Score:2, Insightful)
Hey! Welcome to the 21st Century and the development of the Internet! We now do not need to live anywhere near our place of employment to do work for said employer!
(PS: Yes, there are more tinfoil hat [wordpress.com] nuts than ever....)
Re:I'm sure it gets real old (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:so lest get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
You also have to consider that what you will be looking at is mostly homemade stuff that is probably not very exciting, maybe even a little off putting. Most people don't look to good shoot under poor light with a low res cell phone camera. I suspect this is going to be a good deal of what you find on facebook.
Light does a lot, a photo of female with a shadow on her often makes it appear as if she has hair. Ever wonder why professional photographers almost always use direct light on girls in studio work? They don't do this as much with men which they may shoot under flood because a little darkness on parts of the face make him appear rugged and manly. Then you have all those dorm room fluorescents that are going to make people look pale or green. Finally most people are just not as good looking as models who are almost always air brushed themselves.
Now when this is your girl friend or something your brain can sorta compensate for the unflattering camera effects, you can image what she really looks like and its possible very arousing. When its someone you don't know you are going to see what is on the page. So when you girl or guy friend sends you a titillating image its fun, when you are sifting though other peoples images I don't much of it is going to be a turn on. As to the models being air brushed and such, well again when its someone you have affection for you probably see what you want to see, when its someone you don't know well; her breasts are really uneven and her nose is sort big etc etc.
Finally although our society is much more open about the female form than the male; I am sure Facebook has its share of flamers and men sending pictures to their girlfriends alike. Truly, I don't think many men are as disgusted at seeing other men nude as most of us pretend. Its not like we don't see dick when we look down in the shower every morning. Still this is probably going to be at least of fourth of the images or so; that is 25% of the time you are just classifying what to you are uninteresting images. If I was doing something as dull as identifying common images a quarter of the time I was at the office, I would get to hate work pretty fast.
Frankly sifting though slightly off putting images for eight hours day, with only a handful of them making me go "Nice" sounds like a pretty terrible job.
Re:so lest get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
That would be a matter of taste, now wouldn't it? Personally, I'm just fed up with all those Paris Hilton wannabes wit porno pouts and oh so realistic 'acting'. I am fed up with silicone tits on top of malnourished torsos.
I'd rather look at someone's chubby girlfriend really having fun than most of those 'professionals'.
You wouldn't like it at all (Score:5, Insightful)
I had the job ages ago of invesitgating complaints about a large dutch ISP's servers and user accounts content. If you send a mail that on our network there was inappropriate content, then I investigated and took appropriate action.
Do not think this inappropriate content is restricted to some David Hamilton pics ("this content is legal with in the jurisdiction of the account it is hosted from")or even the early ancestors of "two girls and a cup" ("No laws are broken").
Times might have changed a bit. The internet is a bit less of a wild west zone and facebook might not attract the very worsed of content as it is by its nature linked to your indentity but then, so was your IP to your account in my time.
I quit after a few months despite a fairly high salary because there is only so much child porn, dead bodies or both you can look at.
People actully use their real names on facebook? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Rampant Sexism (Score:5, Insightful)
There are protests around the world where women basically go topless and get arrested for it
Not in most european countries IMHO (Techno parades, beaches,etc).
I didn't think that the restrictive Facebook policy could be that conservative. Topless "forbidden!", mothers breast feeding children "forbidden!"...I'm quite surprised.
American media companies have no problem to show a crime scene with blood everywhere and a victim lying on the ground. but a healthy female body is considered more obscene than that. I find it so absurd in a way.
Re:I'm sure it gets real old (Score:1, Insightful)
I recently left my job as a 'moderator' for text and images for several online services, and I can agree completely that it gets old fast. I'm back in a regular IT job, but it's genuinely difficult to hold conversations with my co-workers that aren't about obscure fetishes or the exact borderline between allowed and disallowed naughty content.
The other major factor you have to consider: most people who attempt to put dirty photos up are unattractive. Most are men. almost all of them know nothing about camerawork. Of all the images we rejected, about 80% were badly-lit photos of male genitalia.
My office only had about 50 casual employees, for relatively low-key sites. I feel for the facebook moderators..every action they take has the chance of hitting the newspapers.
Getting a job at Facebook (Score:3, Insightful)
It's revealing that the porn patroller featured in the article -- a fellow whose job is to view photos all day and press "yes" or "no" buttons -- is a Stanford graduate.
This illustrates how many people apply to work at Facebook, and how hard it must be to get a job there. This guy got his degree from Stanford and took a job that could easily be outsourced to Mechanical Turk -- just to work at Facebook.
For what it's worth, the $50K salary quoted might sound like a lot to those of you in the flyover states but it's pretty dismal by Bay Area standards. My first job out of college in the Bay Area, by comparison, paid $30K -- and that was 20 years ago.
I hope the guy is buried in options.
Easy (Score:3, Insightful)
Last part says it all (Score:2, Insightful)
. . . the $50,000-a-year 'porn cops' also keep Facebook safe for corporate advertisers.
They wouldn't give a ripshit otherwise. It's sorta like how eBay doesn't give a ripshit about scammers, but woe betide you if you have the temerity to try and resell an authentic Burberry scarf or somesuch.