Trauma Counselors Were Pressured To Divulge Confidential Information About Facebook Moderators, Internal Letter Claims (theintercept.com) 45
Sam Biddle, reporting for The Intercept: Nearly 1,500 miles from the Menlo Park headquarters of Facebook, at a company outpost in Austin, Texas, moderators toil around the clock to screen and scrub some the most gruesome, hateful, and heinous posts that make their way onto the social network and its photo-sharing subsidiary, Instagram. They are required to view as many as 800 pieces of disturbing content in a single shift, and routinely turn to on-site counselors to help cope with the procession of stomach-turning images, videos, and text. But some members of this invisible army have complained, in a statement widely circulated within Facebook, that the outsourcing giant that officially employs them, Accenture, has repeatedly attempted to violate the confidentiality of these therapy sessions.
The moderators work from within a special section for outsourced staffers at Facebook Austin. The Texas outpost is designed to mimic the look and feel of the company's famously opulent Silicon Valley digs, but Accenture workers say they're reminded daily of their secondary status and denied perks, prestige, and basic respect. This second-class tier at Facebook, a sort of international shadow workforce, has been well documented in the media, from Manila to Arizona, and it's not clear whether the company has done anything to address it beyond issuing defensive PR statements. Moderators in Austin say their job is a brutalizing slog and that Facebook remains largely indifferent to their struggles. Access to on-site counseling is one of the few bright points for this workforce.
But now even this grim perk has been undermined by corporate prying, according to a letter drafted by a group of about a dozen Austin moderators who work across Facebook and Instagram. The letter alleges that, starting in early July, Accenture managers attempted to pressure multiple on-site counselors to share information relating to topics discussed in employee trauma sessions. This information was understood by both counselors and Accenture employees to be confidential, said several Accenture sources interviewed by The Intercept. It is not clear what specific information related to the sessions was sought by the managers.
The moderators work from within a special section for outsourced staffers at Facebook Austin. The Texas outpost is designed to mimic the look and feel of the company's famously opulent Silicon Valley digs, but Accenture workers say they're reminded daily of their secondary status and denied perks, prestige, and basic respect. This second-class tier at Facebook, a sort of international shadow workforce, has been well documented in the media, from Manila to Arizona, and it's not clear whether the company has done anything to address it beyond issuing defensive PR statements. Moderators in Austin say their job is a brutalizing slog and that Facebook remains largely indifferent to their struggles. Access to on-site counseling is one of the few bright points for this workforce.
But now even this grim perk has been undermined by corporate prying, according to a letter drafted by a group of about a dozen Austin moderators who work across Facebook and Instagram. The letter alleges that, starting in early July, Accenture managers attempted to pressure multiple on-site counselors to share information relating to topics discussed in employee trauma sessions. This information was understood by both counselors and Accenture employees to be confidential, said several Accenture sources interviewed by The Intercept. It is not clear what specific information related to the sessions was sought by the managers.
I'd like to take this opportunity (Score:5, Funny)
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That was YOU? Monster!
Corporations can't be trusted (Score:5, Insightful)
Never trust any offer of corporate "help". It is not genuine, they are not there to actually help you, and they will screw you over as soon as that's profitable. Treat corporations with constant vigilance and mistrust. Eternal vigilance and all that.
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Now if we could only stop giving them more power than God, but that would force us to understand the truth that capitalism isn't the everything some make it out to be.
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That actually works for quite a few groups of people... just saying
Re:Corporations can't be trusted (Score:5, Insightful)
Beat me to it, everything in a company exists to serve upper management. Any info you make available to a company as an employee WILL be immediately misused to the greatest extent imaginable and any help is there to help them first and maybe you as a side effect if you're lucky.
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Re:Corporations can't be trusted (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's right there in the name: "Human Resources". You are a resource to be used, and if necessary, strip-mined.
Re: Corporations can't be trusted (Score:3)
"We're from Corporate and we're here to help."
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Breach of confidentiality (Score:1)
This could be criminal (Score:4, Interesting)
Counselors could lose their license for breaking confidentiality.
Pressuring someone to violate occupational-licensing laws might be a criminal offense, depending on how the laws are written.
Anyone here an expert on occupational licensing laws in Texas?
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You mean Accenture
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No, i'm pretty sure amazon just bought them too.
(Or on the exceedingly slim chance I'm wrong.. when he does finally hear that there's still a company they haven't acquired yet, bezos will grab his checkbook and rectify the situation.)
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Fwiw looks like it's been a partnership/co-branding thing for a while (warning: barfbucket required due to gratuitous MBA lingo):
https://aws.amazon.com/accentu... [amazon.com]
To know for sure if there was any equity/cash investment the respective 10-Q/Ks would have it.
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So what about HIPAA? (Score:4, Informative)
If, as I suspect, the therapists are contractors, then if they transmit billing information for their work they'd fall under HIPAA. In fact even if the therapists are company employees, there's a high probability that they "covered enttities". The APA advises its members to assume that they're covered by HIPAA, because there's almost always a way to make one of the definitions of covered entitty apply [cornell.edu].
And who was surprised, exactly? (Score:3)
Regrettably, this is not nearly as surprising is it should be. The counselors are just trying to do their job, which is to help people in dire need. The employees are just trying to do their job, and then trying to deal with the insane trauma caused by images that nobody should have to be exposed to -- let alone hundreds of times a day. And of course, the managers are just trying to do their (perceived?) job... and make sure that anyone who is likely to go postal because of all that crap is promptly dealt with.
The truly sad thing here, is that the managers have got it all wrong. They should just forget about all of the employees actually seeking counseling, and focus their attention on the employees who never go talk to the counselors. As the old saying goes, "It's always the quite ones..."
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Aren't almost all images under photo dna or soemething, and thus auto-scrubbed by computer? How can there be thousands of new vile images a day?
Re: And who was surprised, exactly? (Score:2)
Open in The GIMP, tweak a few color settings and wipe the exif data. VoilÃ!
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Re:And who was surprised, exactly? (Score:4, Interesting)
Regrettably, this is not nearly as surprising is it should be. The counselors are just trying to do their job, which is to help people in dire need.
Is that their job, or is their job to evaluate the long term effects of the corporate moderation program?
I don't think it is surprising that the company is seeking information about the effects that the moderation is having on the employees, given that the company hired the counselors to do exactly that. These are not unrelated health professionals treating employees based on an employee health plan, they were on-site company-provided resources. The company isn't going to the local health clinic demanding that the staff psychologist there turn over data on any Accenture employees who might be getting treatment.
If the company's goal were to simply provide counseling to the employees who want to seek it out, then covering counseling under the corporate health insurance would be the right way to do it. Decouple the medial parts from the work parts completely and let the employees choose who they want to help them, and it's cheaper in the long run, too.
IANL, but it would seem reasonable that if you talk to a company resource about your job at the company, it isn't confidential. At a minimum, the kinds of things you talk about are well within the scope of any reporting, even if specific details are not. E.g., "employees say showing images in this kind of context is more disturbing than in a different context", vs. "Joe Smith pukes every time he sees this kind of image."
and then trying to deal with the insane trauma caused by images that nobody should have to be exposed to
Keep in mind, these are not your coworkers who are confronted by goatse images on your monitor by accident as you surf the web. These are people who choose to do this work. You're right -- nobody should have to be exposed to them.
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It's okay to ask for generalized information about the state of the whole group's mental health and seek advice on how it could be improved. It's not okay to ask for any details of individuals.
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It's not okay to ask for any details of individuals.
"Accenture managers attempted to pressure multiple on-site counselors to share information relating to topics discussed in employee trauma sessions." Information relating to topics is not specific data on any individual, it is information about the topics discussed.
You're missing the critical difference. The counselors are employed BY THE COMPANY to gather information about the moderation program and the people doing it. The employees do not get to choose who they talk to, the company does. The employee
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"IANL, but it would seem reasonable that if you talk to a company resource about your job at the company, it isn't confidential."
Exactly this is my understanding as well. Not that it is reasonable but that it is legal. A lot of high dollar and high stress environments employ a shrink or counsellor with instructions to notify them about various red flags not only about mental stability but anything that might hurt the company, struggle of conscience that might lead to whistleblowing, potential of defecting t
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Never trust HR or the EAP with anything (Score:5, Insightful)
I know there a lot of younger people/new grads in tech (the ./ audience). I also know that the "pure" tech companies appear to be incredibly concerned with employee well-being. But, it has to be said, no one should ever complain to HR. HR is not your friend; they are there to protect the company, not you. And especially, never disclose any personal information that can be used against you. These are things new grads might not understand until about 2 or 3 jobs into their career, so that's some free advice. :-)
I've only seen HR complaints end in something other than disaster in unionized workplaces where there's at least a little pushback against management. That's what "at will employment" is all about. Any place I've ever worked, HR identifies the complainers to their managers who then single the complainer out for special treatment. The goal is to manage them out...start enforcing stupid rules that no one else has enforced, give them impossible workloads or crappy assignments, and start the process of giving bad reviews.
If someone is bothering you, deal with it yourself and make a plan to leave on your own terms. Any complaints will get you fired. The minute you start saying "harassment" or "hostile work environment," HR will consider you radioactive and find a way to get rid of you. In the case of Facebook and content moderators, I'm assuming they want these therapy sessions to try to figure out who's going to crack up and shoot up the office one day. It's funny because I just got done reading a story about this and those moderators are treated like garbage and exposed to the worst content every single day.
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Is such a misleading term in this case. All he needs to be is more liked by your manager, or other people in general, because he spends most of his day hanging around the water cooler chatting to people and being a people person. Instead of adding value to the company by actually getting work done. Never underestimate the power of social engineering. You might be more valuable because you churn out more work and get the job done, working long hours etc. He plays golf with upper
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Small businesses don't have to deal with as many people so the procedures often aren't as clear-cut. They tend to have more freedo
It's painfully obvious what they're after (Score:5, Insightful)
At will. (Score:2)
Read the article in it's entirety. Seems the only message companies like Accenture understand is that no one is willing to work for them. Can't abuse what's not there. Followed by either change, or going out of business.
You want disturbing? (Score:2)
If they think Facebook is disturbing, they ought to spend a little while reading the comments on Slashdot.
Wait, what? (Score:2)
You're working for Facebook and you expect confidentiality and privacy?
How long have you been on this planet?
Odd complaint (Score:2)
Typically you don't have any confidentiality from your employer when using a company paid counselor. Any you do have is voluntary on their part.
Actually that is also generally true of any medical practitioner paid by a third party.
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