Facebook Content Moderators Break NDAs To Expose Shocking Working Conditions (theverge.com) 169
Three former Facebook content moderators agreed to put themselves in legal jeopardy to expose the appalling working conditions they experienced while employed by a vendor for the tech giant, according to a new report by The Verge. From a report: Workers reported a dirty office environment where they often find pubic hair and bodily waste around their desks. Conditions at the Tampa site are so strenuous that workers regularly put their health in danger, several people told The Verge. One worker kept a trash can by her desk to throw up while she was sick since she had already used all her allotted bathroom breaks. Cognizant is not required to offer sick leave in Florida. One man had a heart attack at his desk and died shortly after, The Verge reported, and the site has not yet gotten a defibrillator. Following an earlier report that uncovered shocking working conditions at the vendor's Phoenix facility, The Verge spoke with 12 current and former Cognizant content moderators in Tampa, Florida. Three of those former workers agreed to break their nondisclosure agreements signed as a condition of employment. The Tampa site is Cognizant's lowest-performing site under the Facebook contract in North America with an accuracy score of 92 compared with Facebook's stated target of 98.
Dismayed (Score:2)
I'm shocked; FaceBook is such an honorable company.
Re:Dismayed (Score:4, Insightful)
Facebook, Google,Twitter, Airbnb - all the major (and minor) tech companies use contractors to fuel their backend.
The real evil is companies like Cofnizant, Accenture and all the other agencies - they over promise and underpay their workers and being third world working conditions to tech.
What needs to change is the labor laws that promote companies like Facebook using these agencies.
Re: (Score:1)
Wrong solution. This problem is caused by companies like Facebook looking to increase their profits, so they outsource to smaller companies that pitch lower prices and treat their staff like shit. It is the big companies fault. The only way this will change is if people stop using them. This is an issue with the larger society chasing after the almighty dollar, instead of important things like a stable, happy lifestyle. Toxic Capitalism, in other words.
Re: (Score:3)
pubic hair and bodily waste
Sounds like Facebook all right.
The site I mean, not the premises.
Wait, republican neocons are progressive leftists? (Score:3, Insightful)
Dick Cheney is a progressive leftist?
As a German, I might be out of touch with the current US definitions, but last time I checked, you only had one batshit insane radical extreme right-wing neocon fascist lobbyist-staffed party with two arms merely named "democrats" and "republicans", playing good cop bad cop with an artificially bisected population via superficially different expressions of batshit insanity.
Am I getting this right?
Re: (Score:1)
Well mostly right, but you left out the born-again-nazi-sympathizing casino fraud and Russian mob money launderer (who lost a BILLION dollars in 10 years while proclaiming himself a business genius despite 6 bankruptcies)..
who has effectively divided America into two camps : Those who think facts empirically exist and education is useful and lying 10,000+ times is a sign of something wrong, (not to mention treason in this case), and inbred deplorables,
who are so angry and uneducated they can't even hack it
Re:why would you work here? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would you work here?
Even fast food would be a better environment.
This can't be said enough. The economy is doing pretty well right now. Fast food places are hiring. Grocery stores are hiring cashiers. Given the description of working conditions, better a metaphorical shit job than a literal shit job any day!
I think people have a strong bias for any sort office job over any sort of retail job. Fair enough as a starting point, but if the place reeks walking in, then walk right out.
Re: (Score:2)
For people who own stock. For those that work for a living, some areas have never recovered from NAFTA, much less the 2007 recession.
Re: (Score:2)
Crash started with the subprime bubble popping in 2007, with the big slide when Lehman Brothers imploded a year later.
Re: why would you work here? (Score:1)
It still pays slightly better (Score:2)
$0.50 - $1.00/hr doesn't sound like much but for a lot it's the difference between eating that week and not eating.
Re: (Score:2)
So people should put up with any working conditions, however bad, go get a little bit more money per hour? No, that's really bad advice.
If you can only find part time work, you work two jobs, as anyone who has ever lived that way would know. But if you're reliable and not an idiot (i.e., you could hold down a call center job in the first place), Those part time jobs get a lot better after a year or two. Experienced cashiers do OK, and while fast food can be more limiting, assistant manager jobs are also
You do what you have to (Score:2)
Getting hired at Costco is _hard_. They're welling paying jobs with good health benefits that don't require any skills. Outside of Costco and maybe Quick Trip Experienced cashiers don't do well. They make very slightly over minimum wage with very crappy benefits and virtually no access to healthcare. Their median income is $19,800. That's around $10/hr. Most call centers will pay about $1-$2/hr above that. That's 10-20%.
Like I said, That's the difference between buying
Re: (Score:2)
I made my way up, because that's what you do.
Re: (Score:2)
BUT, if you don't walk right out, buy a goddamn mop and some Clorox wipes and start scrubbing!
Re: (Score:3)
Them doing well literally means us doing worse.
Only if economics is zero sum. It is not. But it is a common fallacy to believe it is.
Zero sum thinking [wikipedia.org]
Facebook 'mysteriously locks out Hungarian users' (Score:1)
Facebook 'mysteriously locks out Hungarian users':
https://www.bbc.com/news/techn... [bbc.com]
FB will be shocked to learn this is happening (Score:2)
They believe that all vendors should meet generally accepted standards for working conditions and the treatment of employees. They will look into this to understand how this lapse occurred* and then put in place policies and procedures to ensure that such things do not happen again until the next time,
* Money
To anyone who's ever worked at a call center (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a reason 25% of the population is in "gig" economy crap like Uber. At the low end of the employment spectrum we treat folks like crap and turn a blind eye. Very briefly during the 60, 70s and 80s we started to back away from that and even more briefly during the
It's natural. (Score:1, Interesting)
Being at the bottom of a dominance hierarchy sucks. This is true throughout the animal kingdom, and has been true of humans since before recorded history. It's just how it works.
On the one hand, the general shittiness of being on the bottom naturally creates an incentive for people to strive to move up a few levels. Such efforts at self-betterment, and such competition, benefits us all.
On the other hand, if we make it not suck to be at the bottom, we would expect to see a significant growth in that class
That's not actually how any of this works (Score:5, Insightful)
As for the middle and higher classes, the middle class professionals can and will be driven by other wants and needs besides a constant fear of starvation, homelessness and death. The higher classes are a much more interesting example though. They already have more money then they can ever spend and yet they keep working. Why? Well, it's because people can be motivated by more than satisfying physical needs.
TL;DR;, we're not animals, we're people.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
He didn't have a busibody labor department to send him letters that he'd damned well better start paying himself.
This is not a joke.
Where the hell do you live (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
TL;DR;, we're not animals, we're people.
Actually....
TL;DR;, we're more than just animals, we're people.
We are still animals.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, the need for physical human contact is another physical need. A rich hermit generally goes crazy (we usually call them "eccentric") - and it turns out people need other people.
It's part of being social, and even the rich need it.
Work generally provides both social contact and a way to occupy what would otherwise be idle hands (ther
Re: (Score:3)
On the one hand, the general shittiness of being on the bottom naturally creates an incentive for people to...
...chop off the heads of those at the top and use them as door stops
FTFY
Re: (Score:1)
But of course it does. The USSR was free of capitalism for many decades. Cuba and North Korea still are.
False, see above. But even if that were the case - you just bring the guillotines out of storage.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
A non sequitur is made up of words, but that doesn't mean you've made any kind of relevant point.
Re: (Score:2)
The replacement tends to be a bit more careful about how far they push things for a while. Then you have to make more doorstops.
Re:To anyone who's ever worked at a call center (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe the time frame was more during the 50s, 60s, and 70s. You know, the post war boom when America was basically the only intact industrial power. The American rich could afford to treat workers right and still make out like bandits.
Also around the turn of last century, with the rise in power of unions and before the government started to suppress them. That was when we first started to get workplace safety and child labor laws, the eight hour day, and the five day work week. Thank a union that your kids don't have to work 7 days a week, 12 hours a day in dangerous, unsanitary factories.
By the eighties, "greed is good" was the motto, and neoliberals had taken over the democratic party turning it into just another big business party.
Re:To anyone who's ever worked at a call center (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh god. I work in a union shop. You know what?
They treat everyone worse than the private businesses I used to work at. No problem doing horrible things as long as the Ts are crossed and the Is are dotted and the contract is followed to the letter of the law.
The private shops I've worked at actually worried more about what they SHOULD do, and how to lessen the effect on staff.
This surprised me. I had expected it to be the other way around.
Re:To anyone who's ever worked at a call center (Score:4, Insightful)
I know a kneejerk anti-union story when I hear one. Newslash: unions have people in them. Sometimes, people can be shitty. But no one looks at Enron and does eighteen levels of extrapolation to argue that all money-making businesses are bad. Not even communists are that willfully stupid.
So why are you?
Re: (Score:1)
Oh god. I work in a union shop. You know what?
They treat everyone worse than the private businesses I used to work at. No problem doing horrible things as long as the Ts are crossed and the Is are dotted and the contract is followed to the letter of the law.
The private shops I've worked at actually worried more about what they SHOULD do, and how to lessen the effect on staff.
This surprised me. I had expected it to be the other way around.
Sounds like the place you work now would be much worse without the union.
Kudos on the previous employer for doing the right thing without a union to hold their feet to the fire.
Really, you seem to think this is some kind of anti-union example, but all it shows is that unions will appear where they are needed.
Re: (Score:2)
Bernie Sanders & Liz Warren are trying (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't believe it was that the rich could pay the workers better, and still be rich. The rich are rich because they can never be rich enough. Therefore they have, and will, always look to exploit resources. It was true then and it's true now.
I think the bigger reason is that, in the time you cite, there was a greater middle class with the potential for upward mobility than we have today. Therefore, you simply had less workers in these lower tiers, and couldn't afford to lose them. Now, we effectively h
Re: (Score:2)
Legal question (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Legal question (Score:5, Interesting)
The doctrine of clean hands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Also, yes.
It's unlikely any laws are being broken here (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Reports to the police are protected in most rule-pf-law countries: From Simon Chester at Slaw (the Canadian legal blog):
So how does this apply to those making statements to the police? The answer is clearly shown in an Ontario case from 2003, Gittens v. Brown, 2003 CanLII 40565 (ON SC), Gittens sued a number of individuals about statements accusing him of theft in his apartment building. One of the defendants, Ghaffari had made statements to the police, requesting an investigation. Though the judge held t
Is this satire? (Score:1)
It reads like satire.
Digital serfs (Score:1)
"Accuracy" is is a euphemism (Score:3, Interesting)
Fun fact: that "Accuracy" score, refers to how often their decisions agree with a manager's, or a Facebook representative's. It has nothing to do with any objective standard.
Happy employees are good employees (Score:4, Interesting)
What, unhappy employees in a shitty work environment don't perform as well? What a surprise! Go back to Management 101.
Although I am curious whether the business saves enough money that it more than offsets the costs of under performance. Or maybe the management are just incompetent bastards?
Re: (Score:2)
> Oh, I forgot. IT workers can do better when they negotiate individually
The fundamental reason why unions are unlikely to ever really work with professions like programming is because programmers really, really passionately hate bureaucracy, micromanagement, and anything that puts a strong emphasis on "crossing 'T's and dotting 'I's"... all of which tend to be inextricably bound to union work rules.
At the very least, any attempt to unionize programmers by an organization like the AFL-CIO will go down in
Re: (Score:1)
As Software Developer in Tampa, Was Terrible Place (Score:1)
I don't want to name the company (with my name exposed) but I worked on contract for a company in Tampa, as a software developer, that also had really poor conditions. We were cramped in tight booths for long hours with people coughing and getting sick constantly.. and very hot and humid in there.
Contract work really is just a way to hire people with no rights. It's just hard to find work that is not on contract and, whatever the conditions, of course you just tolerate it. In most places, the office spac
in usa contractors don't beocme regular employees? (Score:2)
why would any company of any type have any employees if they can just do this? curious.
maybe socialistic laws are the answer. at least to using contractors as de facto employees. for example, if the contract stipulates anything about where the work needs to be performed and on who's hardware and so on, just make it so that then it's an employee since the company is emposing employer like limits on the employed person?
is it also used to get around minimum wage laws?
OK, kids -- time for a reality check (Score:2)
Raise your hand -- who has ever in their life signed an NDA as a condition of employment that expressly prohibited disclosure of working conditions at all, much less unsafe ones?
Exactly. So maybe the NDAs came up later and the reporters misunderstood. But how could there be an NDA post employment, since there's no longer any consideration received by the employee in exchange? Oh, right -- that sort of NDA you sign in exchange for money.
My guess is that these former employees were... erm, exceptionally vo
Re: (Score:2)
Cognizant is an Indian H1B visa shop, I know. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
So out of all the people working there, and presumably at other companies that Cognizant did the same too, none of them sued for constructive dismissal? Sounds like a bonanza for lawyers, I'd expect them to be actively contacting people at those companies looking for their payday.
Did no-one shop them to the immigration services or FBI for H1B abuse either?
Re: (Score:2)
They'd move Indian H1B 4-5 individuals into one crooked apartment complex
You did not draw this illustration very well for those who are unfamiliar with this practice.
They move 4-5 individuals into a single occupancy apartment. They have lots of apartments and each one is overstuffed with unsanitary living conditions and zero privacy. I have seen entire 9 story apartment buildings (in groups of 4) filled entirely with this type of living situation. This is not something most Americans are familiar with seeing, so I decided to give a more full description to help them understand.
Re: (Score:2)
Not sure about where you are (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Cognizant and TCS (and any firm subcontracting from them) has a high probability of qualifying as an "electronic sweatshop". People I know who have worked for them have suffered the following indignities:
More than one contractor specializing in IBM Maximo, SAP, Oracle, or DB2 has been hired as a project manager based on their excellence and competency, and then had that competency and excellence ignored. The tasks they should have been doing were simply diverted to India and assigned to people who didn't kn
Re: (Score:1)
Or, just require that H1B employees demonstrably have a net take-home pay and benefits that are at least equal to what a non-H1B would have as take-home pay (and by "take-home pay", I mean, "after everyone besides the literal H1B worker has taken their cut".
I've worked for companies at both ends of the spectrum. Worldcom/MCI was at the good end... H1B employees made as much money as everyone else, and were equal team members (at least, on my team). A certain very large financial institution who shall remain
safety? (Score:4, Insightful)
As far as I know you can't sign away certain things, even with an NDA.
If it's true that bodily wastes are being kept in work areas FOR ANY REASON that is a somewhat obvious threat to worker health.
I think OSHA would be quite interested in the situation, and if the employer attempted to use an NDA to hush up any pertinent violations I can foresee consequences landing on them for covering it up.
Once again, the problem is toxic anonymity (Score:3)
When Facebook's moderators find an animal cruelty or other illegal video, why doesn't management take it to the relevant law enforcement as quickly as if it were child porn? Tell users publicly that if they upload such stuff, Facebook will in effect doxx them to authorities, sharing every bit of personal information they might have on those involved. Such a policy will drive away the bad guys, who are already paranoid about "data collection" anyway, making the platform safer for the rest of us. In my estimation, good riddance.
Online anonymity shouldn't be a right. It should be a luxury for those who can handle it in a civilized manner,
Don't read the article - oh wait, nevermind (Score:5, Interesting)
But no, complain that the economy is so great that no one would have to do a job like that. Finding a job is so fucking easy, they're falling out of the goddamned trees.
Re: Don't read the article - oh wait, nevermind (Score:2)
Obviously the drastic things are brought to the forefront. I do believe as one of the articles mentioned a bunch of stuff is busybody BS flagging stuff they simply dont agree with. But for gawd sakes people, be a human and imagine what it must be like to suddenly have a video of someone being killed or something horrible being done to a kid come through your screen. And the burden and looming reality knowing tha
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
You might be surprised (Score:2)
You might be surprised at how many places have rather poor sanitation / cleanliness issues.
Even giant Fortune 500 companies don't like to " waste " money on cleaning crews to keep their offices healthy for their workforce.
The buildings where the executives sit ? Spotless.
The buildings where everyone else works ? OSHA would have a field day.
Defib won't help. (Score:1)
Modern day slavery (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
The real problem, that you've got a massive censorship drive going on , somehow goes unnoticed.
That's your takeaway? Christ almighty...
Re: (Score:1)
I don't expect you to get it.
I've lost count of the amount of articles like this. What is the message of such an article? That we need to spend more on 'the moderation department'. I don't want to spend more. Spending more per moderator, that I would support. But somehow that won't happen.
Re: (Score:2)
Anonymous guy sees no problem in private companies doing voluntarily whatever anyone , including the state, wants, as long as the feds don't do it themselves, and stamps anyone who sees a problem with that as conspiracy theorist.
Re: (Score:2)