The Hell Known As Internet Screening Services 557
circletimessquare writes "Do you think your job is bad? Some websites outsource their moderation to firms where every work day, all work day, workers do nothing but sift through depravity after depravity. '"You have 20-year-old kids who get hired to do content review, and who get excited because they think they are going to see adult porn," said Hemanshu Nigam, the former chief security officer at MySpace. "They have no idea that some of the despicable and illegal images they will see can haunt them for the rest of their lives."' Some places only do year-long contracts, and have counseling services and staff psychologists, because of the psychological issues caused by this kind of work. One psychologist 'reached some unsettling conclusions in her interviews with content moderators. She said they were likely to become depressed or angry, have trouble forming relationships and suffer from decreased sexual appetites. Small percentages said they had reacted to unpleasant images by vomiting or crying. "The images interfere with their thinking processes. It messes up the way you react to your partner," Ms. Laperal said. "If you work with garbage, you will get dirty."'"
solution: (Score:5, Insightful)
hire via 4chan?
Re:solution: (Score:5, Insightful)
That's no good, they won't filter anything.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:solution: (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, they'll filter alright. Just the other way around.
Actually, a better solution: Just upload EVERYTHING to /b/. If it gets reposted by anonymous, automatically add it to a filter list. That way you don't have to pay people to do the work. This reverse-filter idea is a good one!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
How about:
wget <posted-page> | wc "bump" | echo "Page: <posted-page>\tDepravity level: $1\n" > filter.txt
Phillip.
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Hire surgeons?
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So its like Idle on Slashdot - but dumber with more depravity?
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"...would immediately hit /b/ within 30 minutes of them leaving work. "
I've seen a couple of references to this "/b/"....what is this?
NSFW links, but not as bad as people tend to make out.
http://boards.4chan.org/b/ [4chan.org] The random board. A bunch of kids messing around basically.
http://boards.4chan.org/s/ [4chan.org] A good source of porn.
Both those boards get filled with spam, and some of the spam is advertising for child porn download services. In fact a lot of the spam is exactly that. The boards are moderated (sometimes) but the torrent of spam often gets ahead of the volunteer moderators. The landing page for 4chan and the other chans (7, 420, etc) ad
Re:solution: (Score:5, Insightful)
The grain of truth is that there are plenty of people who can watch anything and laugh about it, while functioning just fine and having no emotional problems from doing so.
Overly sensitive people shouldn't mess with shit that will damage them.
Not everyone is sensitive, and not everyone has to "suppress" themselves to cope with seeing Bad Things.
Re:solution: (Score:4, Insightful)
The grain of truth is that there are plenty of people who can watch anything and laugh about it, while functioning just fine and having no emotional problems from doing so.
Yes, they are called sociopaths, but they already have far deeper issues to deal with.
Re:solution: (Score:5, Insightful)
"Yes, they are called sociopaths, but they already have far deeper issues to deal with."
Being able to cope comfortably is only a pathology to those who fetishize sweet, delectable sensitivity. One can understand and see things which are unusual and outside social taboos without giving a shit. It's called perspective, as opposed to morbid emotional wallowing.
In most cases, IMO, the term "sociopath" is used in society the way "troll" moderations are commonly used in Slashdot, which is to express Bitchy Disagreement.
"I disagree with you, you a sociopathic troll!" brings to mind the Soviet practice of sending those who didn't agree with commie politics to asylums, because such wrong thought MUST be pathological.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
People in general need to grow the f* up and be adults.
*Deal* with it!
- Dan.
Re:solution: (Score:5, Insightful)
Being able to cope comfortably is only a pathology to those who fetishize sweet, delectable sensitivity. One can understand and see things which are unusual and outside social taboos without giving a shit. It's called perspective, as opposed to morbid emotional wallowing.
You yourself assume a superior, balanced attitude, while in fact you don't use argument but personal attack to defeat the opposite perspective. You come out as pretty aggressive in fact. And your 'big guy' pretension that you would not be affected by this shit is not backed by any actual knowledge or argument: you are just making it up... "all sissies..." I see you thinking and boasting.
Do a bit of anthropology. We have evolved into a highly cooperative species through a very, very long process and our emotions, feelings of compassion, sense of ethics, etc. do define our individual characters and our common human culture. The grandparent does have a valid point when he suggest that someone unaffected could qualify as a sociopath. Your rationalizations don't even begin to convince me to the contrary.
Re:solution: (Score:5, Insightful)
Sociopaths lack the empathic response. People that respond negatively to disturbing videos are responding emotionally, though not necessarily empathically.
There is obviously overlap, but that overlap can be trained away in many people. It is quite common, for instance, for surgeons to initially respond to use of a cautery gun by getting ill or faint (mostly because of the normally out-of-context smell of cooked meat that one knows is produced from a live human...the association is unsettling). But talk to any surgeon that's been doing the job for a long time, and that smell simply makes them hungry.
Why shouldn't it make them hungry? Cooked meat, human or otherwise, is supposed to trigger that response. The hunger response is the mechanical reaction of a working human brain. Feelings of guilt at being hungry are, in the operating room, entirely misplaced; why should a surgeon feel guilty because of an automatic response when, in the offing, they are helping the patient? Much in the same way, these workers are ostensibly helping customers by protecting them from content they presumably don't want to see (though that is debatable).
I know a doctor that once told me she gets great satisfaction from draining cysts. Despite the absolutely foul smell and gross result, she said it is absolutely one of the most satisfying activities she does as a doctor because it is a nearly risk-free procedure to a patient and the payoff is profound in that the patient immediately feels better. In that scenario, where you might think she's sick because she enjoys dealing with gross stuff, she sees herself as someone willing to endure something gross in particular because it does have such a great and positive effect; emotionally speaking, when viewed in the proper context (and it is the indisputably correct view), it is perhaps one of the most emotionally satisfying demonstrations of empathy I can think of.
So it's mediation and mitigation of the guilt response that allows people like her to continue helping people, and if anything it makes them the opposite of a sociopath...likewise with any gruesome job—if one works in a slaughterhouse, a mortuary or morgue, crime scene cleanup, etc. So I tend to think that only people that are internally emotionally secure could do such a job. If your response is that it would take a sociopath, that is probably based primarily on fear about what you might discover about your own emotional stability in the same situation.
Just do a backround check. (Score:3, Insightful)
Usually a thorough backround check can determine if the individual is a sociopath or not. Just being able to see disgusting images and not react doesn't make one a sociopath. It depends on whether or not it was their first time seeing it, and it depends on how they look at it.
You can look at images of dead bodies, you've seen them before so you have no reaction. This doesn't make someone a psychopath or sociopath, as a sociopath would react like that in all situations no matter whos dead body it is, while m
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm as hardened as any anon - no shock site will faze me anymore - but I would probably be seriously disturbed if I saw someone die in real life, or saw a lot of blood or something. It's the difference between real pain and suffering and pictures on the internet that are probably fake anyway.
Also, cue moar pooper comic
Re:Just do a backround check. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm as hardened as any anon - no shock site will faze me anymore - but I would probably be seriously disturbed if I saw someone die in real life, or saw a lot of blood or something. It's the difference between real pain and suffering and pictures on the internet that are probably fake anyway.
Also, cue moar pooper comic
Life is long. It's very likely that before you die you will see many people die. Some will be your friends, some will be family members, and some of them will die right in front of you.
This does not change the fact that death is a part of life. It's an exceptionally gross/disgusting part of life, but it's an experience we all share and will all have to face. We will all have to watch loved ones die, but most people try to imagine a world where nobody they know will ever die and everything is perfect.
The truth is, seeing images of dead strangers is absolutely nothing once you've seen a few dead family members and or friends. If you live long enough eventually these sorts of things happen. It might not happen for people in their 20s in most cases but by their 30s they'll have lost some people, by their 40s significantly more people, by their 50s even more, and by the time they are 60 or 70 most of the people they've ever known will be dead.
If you ever work in a hospital you see people die every day. The first time you see someone die it's shocking, but just like with anything it's most painful the first time you experience it and you do get stronger. Just like if your first bf or gf breaks up with you it feels horrible, but after you've been through that experience before it's not as bad anymore. Dealing with death is a part of growing up.
Re:solution: (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking as a sociopath (which I am - I can cut off anything even vaguely resembling emotion at will)...I am capable of love, dedication, grief..., happiness, anger, the full spectrum of human emotion.
I don't think "sociopath" means what you think it means.
Re:solution: (Score:5, Funny)
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You haven't really lost your mind until the dead hookers start waking up on you...
Re:solution: (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to think I was one of those people, until I saw a full length, uncut video of some terrorists beheading a captured American.
I would advise anybody who thinks they're not one of those "overly sensitive" people to give it some serious thought before they decide to watch something like that, much less get a job doing it all day long. Some things you just cannot un-see - although you'll certainly wish you could.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You see worse things on TV all the time. It's only different because you've convinced yourself that one is real and the other one fake. If someone had taken that footage and spliced it into a Hollywood film, you would have taken it completely in stride. And the IMDB page would have at least one comment saying "I only gave it 6 starts because the execution scene wasn't realistic enough".
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You're an idiot. There was no mistaking this as real. This was several minutes of pure terror, unlike any movie you've ever seen. If you really believe that bullshit, then you've obviously never seen the video I'm referring to.
Re:solution: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:solution: (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:solution: (Score:5, Insightful)
I think he was talking about Daniel Pearl, a journalist kidnapped and killed in Pakistan in 2002.
And sorry, but the "real world" does not involve frequent beheadings. Being unable to see another human being brutally murdered without being disturbed isn't a result of living "sheltered".
That's the vast majority of the world. Going by the numbers, lack of brutal decapitations is the norm. You talk down to people who can't stand such a sight, and think you somehow value life more?
Yours was the most bizzare high-horse post I've ever read.
Re:solution: (Score:4, Insightful)
If you eat meat, the "real world" most certainly DOES involve things like that. They're just hidden from you. And you're happy with that.
The grandparent post was mostly correct... the real world is brutal. We're just sheltered from a lot of it, and we compartmentalize a lot of it away from ourselves in modern Western society. I personally think that this is a huge mistake because it prevents us from being able to put things into proper perspective, and causes things like children not getting perfect grades to have panic attacks. How did we ever get to this point?
Re:solution: (Score:5, Insightful)
No, that definitely wasn't it. I think it may have been Daniel Pearl, but the video I'm thinking of wasn't the highly-edited version with all the Arabic subtitles and what not. The one I saw was a full length unedited version with full audio, that started with the victim on his knees pleading for his life, and ended with his head being cut completely off and held in front of the camera. The camera never panned away, and there were no edits. It showed every scream, every tear, every cut and slice, etc. They guy was in complete and utter terror from the time they made the first cut, and the only thing that made the poor guy stop screaming was when they sliced through his trachea and he started making these horrific gurgling sounds. And quite unlike the guillotine executions you might have seen in old black & white movies, this was no quick and clean beheading - it took several minutes before he was finally dead.
If you can watch that and be completely unaffected, well then congratulations - you're an asshole!
This moronic drivel doesn't deserve a response.
Re:solution: (Score:5, Insightful)
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One idea, (probably a terrible one but maybe worth mentioning here) is have confessed child molesters do it.
I am not any type of psychologist, nor do I know much about the criminal system, but maybe experiencing that flood of sewage will give them negative associations with those images that they lack naturally. Maybe seeing some CP that would appeal to them among tons of images that would be repugnant to anyone, which sounds like what these screening services have to deal with, would make the whole mess l
Here's the thing (Score:2)
Just get rotten.com to run a banner ad for these positions. Anyone who has ever been to that site is inured to anything anyone could post to MySpace.
Re:Here's the thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, come on. Rotten isn't actually bad.
Rotten displays very candid pictures that you won't see in the mainstream media; things like terrible gunshot wounds, accidents, strange medical cases and so on. They're candid, and they're shocking, but they're not disturbing, at least once you've seen a couple and have gotten used to seeing things you don't usually see in our society.
Disturbing is something else. Have you ever seen a video of a puppy getting tortured and killed slowly, for instance? Even if you can't actually see much, it's horrifying. In fact, it's horrifying precisely WHEN you can't see anything, because between the frenzied howls of pain and anguish, your mind fills in the blanks of what must be happening, and you're powerless - absolutely powerless! - to stop the whole thing. You don't know who's doing it, you don't know where they are, you don't know anything. The only thing you know is that the moment you're watching it, the puppy already HAS died a horrible, painful, slow death, and even if they catch the guy who did it, the events in the video can't be undone or prevented anymore.
THAT is disturbing.
It's something that happens for police officers, too, BTW; those who're working on serial killer/rape/... cases will often need psychologica help after reviewing photographs and videos and so on.
And these are trained professionals who're only doing it *sometimes*, as part of their job, and they're officers who've already seen a lot, who're older and have already got more life experience and so on.
Can you imagine being a 20-year old who's doing NOTHING ELSE but review things like that, eight hours a day, five days a week, for an entire year or more?
It's gonna mess you up something bad. And rotten? Rotten doesn't even begin to compare to it. Rotten is harmless.
Re:Here's the thing (Score:5, Insightful)
there needs to be a +5 horrifying
Re:Here's the thing (Score:5, Insightful)
I was about to post how I can't imaging anything so gross or horrible I haven't already seen on the Internet and how it wouldn't bother me.
Thanks for fixing that.
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Interesting comment, improfane. If we're going to start setting bars, who gets to place them?
Re:Here's the thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Here's the thing (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Here's the thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Please. There are images of sick shit out there because sick shit happens in the world. And most of what's on Rotten.com is little more than occasionally shocking ... gory injuries and deaths, oh no. Nothing compared to some of the shit that's out there.
Re:Here's the thing (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a little phrase at the core of the American society. "Freedom of speech". You might be familiar with it.
When any person or group has the ability to make decisions on what the whole of society can say or read, it brings an end to our liberties. Just because you don't believe Rotten.com should be up doesn't mean that there aren't others who appreciate it. I don't like seeing mythology based rantings which are frequently misrepresented as factual historical accounts or a basis for modern life (i.e., religion for those who didn't catch that). The difference is, if anyone made a move to censor their speech, I would defend their right to say it, even if I disagree with every word they say.
If a person, group, or even mob rule were to guide censorship, virtually everything would be censored.
The stuff on rotten.com really isn't bad. It seems bad, because you have likely been protected from it your whole life. It's not necessary to see such things, but there are people world wide who see first hand the reality of what is portrayed in those images. For every picture they post, there was at least one witness, the photographer.
Re:Here's the thing (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yes.
That's a categorical answer, but for Rotten.com in particular, trust me, if you ever have to deal with gore in real life, you'll be glad for every ounce of desensitization you got.
4chan (Score:4, Funny)
So it's like getting paid to browse /b/?
Re:4chan (Score:4, Funny)
"Words", eh?
/.ers (Score:4, Funny)
I thought that was the definition of "browsing the Internet".
yup. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've done this as an Information Security person. Get a report, validate, pass it on to the cops and FBI.
Not fun at all.
Glad it's 10 years behind me.
Re:If you aren't tough enough, don't take the job. (Score:4, Insightful)
Obviously you don't have children yourself. As a parent, one of my worst fears is: "that could happen to my child."
So you're childless when you get the job, then a bit down the road you have one and then it starts hitting you. Or the nature of the job changes and you're now exposed to something that you weren't before (A site being used to evade child porn investigations would absolutly qualify if it wasn't when you started)
Sometimes you don't know what you're going to be exposed to until you already are, you think you can handle anything until you don't. It's why people say, "you wish you could unsee something".
Or you think you're cool with it, but then it comes back a a horrifying flash at random moments or in a dream, the mind is weird that way.
If it's bad enough and fast enough, they call it Post Traumatic Stress.
Hell (Score:5, Insightful)
...is other people.
Goatse Posters (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Goatse Posters (Score:5, Funny)
Without reading your comment, I got the impression from your subject that you were selling something. Now that, I thought, is truly depraved.
Re:Goatse Posters (Score:5, Insightful)
And how frequently do you click on random URLs from people you don't know now that you've had that experience?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And how frequently do you click on random URLs from people you don't know now that you've had that experience?
All. day. long! :'(
Re:Goatse Posters (Score:5, Funny)
You're hired
Grown men crying like babies? (Score:3, Interesting)
4chan'll do that to you...
Words of Wisdom: (Score:5, Funny)
I notice with interest (Score:4, Informative)
I notice with interest the posters of "can it really be that bad?" type of comments.
It can.
I spent some years handling abuse@ for a national-sized ISP that allowed "homepages" via dialin. Let's just say that I had severe temper-issues for a long while after that.
Re:I notice with interest (Score:5, Interesting)
Because he didn't know the depths of depravity he would see before taking it, and after he had it he felt pressured by "macho" assholes not to "whuss out" by proving he's a human with human reactions?
Re:I notice with interest (Score:4, Insightful)
They should hire people who are qualified in the first place and this would not happen.
Who's "qualified"? Is there a certificate you can get for that?
You've posted a lot of posts to this thread now, and all I get out of any of them is that you think you're the world's biggest tough guy with brass balls the size of cantaloupes. What I get out of them, on the other hand, is you have an obnoxious need to brag about your lack of empathy as mask to conceal your insecurities. You'd probably be terrible at this job.
Dirty Jobs episode? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"It's a dirty job but someone's gotta do it. Whoa-oh-oh-OH-oh."
[[ cut to Mike in front of a web browser, screen not visible ]]
[click]
"Oh, God!"
[click]
"Oh, God!"
[click]
"Oh, God!"
[click]
"Oh, God!"
[click]
"Oh, God!"
[[ commercial break ]]
[[repeat]
goddamnit! (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not even going to bother to verify that one.
Re:Dirty Jobs episode? (Score:4, Informative)
Heh. Because watching Mike sitting in front of a monitor all day, with his brand of narration/commentary, on a bunch of stuff that Discovery can't show or even possibly talk about given the subject matter and their audience would be great to watch.
That wouldn't make for very good TV.
I'm sure it's a dirty job (I certainly wouldn't want to do it), but I'd imagine there are quite a few dirty jobs that Discovery just wouldn't be willing to air. Heck, they've aired some stuff (like the episode where he castrates goats) that I couldn't believe they aired.
Cause and effect? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not saying this is the case, but it's a possibility...
I used to be a content moderator (Score:3, Funny)
I wonder how these guys relax after work (Score:3, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_centipede
(warning, even reading the description will make you reach for the brain bleach)
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warning, even reading the description will make you reach for the brain bleach
Meh.. I'm a huge pussy when it comes to seeing *actual* injury, especially intentional, but fictional scenarios don't bother me much at all -- especially a highly implausible and unworkable scenario such as this. I haven't watched the film, but you'd have to prevent suffocation, dehydration, malnutrition, and infection. Not to mention that popping stitches is hard enough to prevent accidentally, let alone intentionally. It's ri
Incongruity (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem for many people is the incongruity between how they were raised and reality. People are generally raised to believe that people are good, that there are norms of behavior, there is justice in the world, authority figures can be trusted, things happen for reason and are overseen by an omnipotent deity. As we grow up, we learn that these are simply convenient lies that define our society.
When presented with conflicting visual evidence, we can be shocked and damaged - our world view is broken. Some go into denial (classifying the content as depravity), and some go into depression (recognizing that society is simply a veneer). Education and experience over time tends to break these falsehoods more gently, incrementally. The Internet is not so gentle.
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Insightful as hell. If I had mod points I'd toss you one.
It does make you wonder what other kinds of jobs are disillusioning -- certainly I'd put government jobs that are actually public-facing in that bin, if in a slightly different way. I recently did some contract work for a city government and the people I worked with there had an unreal collection of stories in which they were shot at, otherwise attacked, or inappropriately urinated on or near by people. As someone who still believed that, if not ex
Re:Incongruity (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem for many people is the incongruity between how they were raised and reality.
People are generally raised to believe that people are good, that there are norms of behavior
Most people are good, most of the time. I wasn't raised that way, I've observed this to be the case.
there is justice in the world
There is, most of the time. The existence of exceptions doesn't negate the rule, and certainly doesn't justify giving up.
authority figures can be trusted
This is a tough one. Many authority figures can be trusted, but not unconditionally. Any authority figure should be open to question and monitored closely. The problem isn't that someone with authority can't be trusted most of the time, it's what happens when they stray and the trust is misplaced. Even if rare, the ramifications are great.
things happen for reason
Generally true. You may not like the reason, but cause and effect seems to affect most things that happen, in my experience.
[Things] are overseen by an omnipotent deity
Nope. I have no evidence of that. I'll grant you this point.
As we grow up, we learn that these are simply convenient lies that define our society.
They aren't convenient lies. Believing in good, justice, trust and reason are things to be aspired to, because if you don't, you have given in to evil, injustice, distrust and unreason. The existence of the latter does not necessarily make the former "lies".
your description of reality (Score:4, Insightful)
only shows that you are out of touch with reality, and that you have some serious problems
"People are generally raised to believe that people are good, that there are norms of behavior, there is justice in the world, authority figures can be trusted, things happen for reason and are overseen by an omnipotent deity. As we grow up, we learn that these are simply convenient lies that define our society."
reality is that most people really are good, there really are norms of behavior, and there is a genuine concerted effort to promote justice in the world (the trustworthy authority and the god part: yeah, you're right, those are lies)
point is, there are some really screwed up people in this world: for example, that chinese chick who put a kitten under her high heels and maciated it to death on camera. it is the genuine truth that most people would never do this. i'm not asking for your comment about how under force, most people would do this: of course, under force, anyone would do this, but this woman chose do it of her own volition. she's screwed up, she's outside the norm, she's rare and demented
so the really fucked up things you see on the internet is not some sort of baseline of the genuine reality as you suggest, and is not the truth of human behavior. it is the work of some really, really fucked up depraved people
most people are good and decent, really
Re:Incongruity (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem for many people is the incongruity between how they were raised and reality. People are generally raised to believe that people are good, that there are norms of behavior, there is justice in the world, authority figures can be trusted, things happen for reason and are overseen by an omnipotent deity. As we grow up, we learn that these are simply convenient lies that define our society.
When presented with conflicting visual evidence, we can be shocked and damaged - our world view is broken. Some go into denial (classifying the content as depravity), and some go into depression (recognizing that society is simply a veneer). Education and experience over time tends to break these falsehoods more gently, incrementally. The Internet is not so gentle.
Rubbish.
If society is only a veneer, how do you explain that it works at all? I mean, why can you go out in the street and feel secure? We evolved those social behaviors over a very long time. We react with strong emotions to those things because we have slowly built a cooperative culture through those choices, however arbitrary they may seem, and we have integrated them into our limbic system. Our distant ancestors could have chosen otherwise: they could have decided that it would be more reproductively advantageous to assume a bullying, no mercy attitude. Well, some might have done so, but they have failed to reproduce, or at least to dominate. Those who advocate insensitive attitudes through an ideology (I think of fascism here) have not made it through history either.
I find it funny that the most naked cynicism is always accompanied by aggressive injunctions to "get real". I would answer to that: get a clue.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe (Score:4, Interesting)
Hmmm..... (Score:5, Interesting)
So it has similar effects as playing world of warcraft?
digital fingerprinting can save a lot of work (Score:3, Interesting)
TFA mentions google doing something like this with YouTube videos, but it sounds like the majority of sites are crowdsourcing their visitors to flag content that gets reviewed by these folks. A digital fingerprinting tool can eliminate tedious review by both visitors and the moderators.
Seth
Use older techies (Score:3, Interesting)
There are enough of us around who're looking for a meaningful job. The dark side of the Internet may disgust us, but in general, the older members of society are jaded to some of the depravities of life, and less likely to be bothered. Not that I'd take that job right now... but there was a time a few years back...
Police photograph archives (Score:5, Interesting)
One of my colleagues' former jobs was to index the photograph archives of an international police organization. He spoke about some unspeakable crime scene photos that he took years to get over. The mere descriptions of the photos also took *us* years to get over.
This kind of thing is not good for anyone.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Pics or it didn't happen.
Meh (Score:5, Funny)
Overworked and underpaid (Score:4, Interesting)
The company's roughly 50 workers view a combined average of 20 million photos a week.
That's 10,000 images per hour per person, assuming a 40-hour week. (For $8-12 per hour). How can they do that? Even if the numbers are exaggerated, just looking at that many images has to be wearing.
Re:Pussies (Score:4, Insightful)
Occasionally seeing disturbing images is not a problem for most people, but if you spend 40 hours a week, every week, looking at all sorts of disturbing crap, your mind will become twisted.
Re:Pussies (Score:4, Insightful)
Occasionally seeing disturbing images is not a problem for most people, but if you spend 40 hours a week, every week, looking at all sorts of disturbing crap, your mind will become twisted.
I think just about anyone could handle seeing someone after a "BOOM HEADSHOT" or one of those other things we take lightly in so-called "violent video games". It's easy to say "It's not me, it's not someone I know" or anything else we tell ourselves.
After seeing it over and over, though, you start to wonder what if it were you or someone you knew. You start immersing yourself in possibilities like we're programmed to, rehearsing the situation in case you ever had to face it. You start living life making sure it doesn't happen to you, watching out for attackers, people out to hurt your family, people out to rape your children. You start to worry about yourself, wondering if another human being did it so can you... because you can't tell yourself to be cruel is inhuman anymore.
When you're immersed in the worst the killer instinct kicks in. Not the Counter Strike bullshit, not that stuff you see in the movies where there's a cause or justification, everything loses intrinsic value, every life but your own loses meaning. It's all about you and surviving.
After that it takes years to fit back in, but it'll never be a perfect fit.
Re:Pussies (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. Soldiers return home suffering from many psychological disorders, including PTSD, due to the horrible things they see and experience while deployed.
Plenty of evil out there... (Score:5, Insightful)
Being forced to look at kiddie porn as part of your job could really mess you up. Looking at pictures of gory violence, torture, and abuse of all kinds, all day, day after day... I'd say that would mess somebody up far more than occasional crap coming up during web browsing.
Re:Pussies (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, i've seen my share of ugly shit in the net. I do think that i've seen most of the worse it has to offer. I mean REALLY? Are there people out there that will get all fucked up because of goatse?
I think it's safe to say that if you think Goatse is even close to the bad things on the internet*, or that you think that the worst stuff you've seen wouldn't mess someone up, than you have not at all seen the worst the internet has to offer.
The world is MUCH uglier than what any publication shows. ANY.
*On a scale of -10 to 10 (0 being neutral, 10 being awesome and -10 being disturbing) Goatse Ranks a -2. You don't even breach -5 until you see the involuntary stuff. Where people are tied up and forced into terrible acts of sexual abuse and mutilation. Then you see the same thing happen to children. A man's anus pales in comparison.
Re:Pussies (Score:5, Insightful)
Often times you can just tell. Once you see enough BSDM, you can tell when people are role playing. Especially when its in some room painted all black, and the people come out unmasked, and all those little nuances. When its comes from some tripod across the room in some empty warehouse, the guys wear ski masks to protect their identity and are viciously brutal beyond the point of "just enough to hurt but not leave marks". No one in role playing ever wants a real black eye.
Either way - faked or not - it doesn't really matter. If its convincing enough to seem like real abuse, it's disturbing.
You'll notice more and more BSDM sites are putting the disclaimer at the beginning or end of their videos with both parties saying on camera they consent to the activities.
I mean, not that I would know anything about that.
Re:Pussies (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not true. There are people who are into role-playing who are also into masochism. Some of them even like being marked (bruises, scarring), it's a turn-on for them.
Sure, most masochists are ashamed and don't want to be marked (or they know that being marked will affect their "normal" life). But not all...
Re:Pussies (Score:4, Insightful)
While I'm sure you can often tell when a video is fake, I'm not convinced it's so easy to tell for a fact that a video is not. Without the ability to somehow confirm that a video is real, telling the fakes apart from the real videos is an exercise in futility. That certain videos look real compared to others that look fake to you is no way to confirm the accuracy of your identifications. Some extreme videos may indeed show enough as to leave very little doubt as to their reality, but are all the videos that seem real to you quite so extreme as that?
I do agree, however, that a video that's convincing enough to look real will be disturbing to those who are convinced that it's real. I guess I'm just skeptical about the number of such videos in existence... or it could be I just have my head buried in the sand.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, I suppose thats true. I cannot say for certain that the videos are indeed %100 in their authenticity.
I guess where you are skeptical about how many are real, I'm just more worried that they are.
Re:Pussies (Score:4, Insightful)
No one in role playing ever wants a real black eye ... If its convincing enough to seem like real abuse, it's disturbing.
Oh, bullshit. I've had way worse than a black eye from perfectly consensual BDSM activities. I've been pierced dozens of times at once, taken beatings that left bruises still visible months later, had an electro-shock baton that could throw a spark centimeters long (allegedly of a type favored by Apartheid-era South African riot police) used on me, and enjoyed it all. I wasn't being filmed at the time, but it seems very likely that if I had been, it would look like 'real abuse' to you. To me, it was just fun. Real, intense masochists *do* exist, and 'disturbing' is always in the eye of the beholder.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
i wrote the summary (Score:3, Informative)
i was preparing to apologize for a lack of clarity in the summary, but, on further review, sorry, it really is just you
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's what they have a tendency to post, eg threats against specific persons, calls to violence, etc, that can cross the legality line.
Re: (Score:3)
Of course because porn isn't harmful and any study that says it is must be wrong.
I am sure that their are a lot of "disturbing images" but many studies have also shown that porn also has negative effects.
The thing is that most people on Slashdot do not want to believe it.