Facebook Will Pay $52 Million In Settlement With Moderators Who Developed PTSD On the Job (theverge.com) 77
In a landmark acknowledgment of the toll that content moderation takes on its workforce, Facebook has agreed to pay $52 million to current and former moderators to compensate them for mental health issues developed on the job. The Verge reports: In a preliminary settlement filed on Friday in San Mateo Superior Court, the social network agreed to pay damages to American moderators and provide more counseling to them while they work. Each moderator will receive a minimum of $1,000 and will be eligible for additional compensation if they are diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder or related conditions. The settlement covers 11,250 moderators, and lawyers in the case believe that as many as half of them may be eligible for extra pay related to mental health issues associated with their time working for Facebook, including depression and addiction.
Under the terms of the settlement, every moderator will receive $1,000 that can be spent however they like. But the companies intend for the money to be spent partly on medical treatment, covering the costs associated with seeking a diagnosis related to any mental health issues the moderator may be suffering. The amount of money a moderator will receive beyond the initial $1,000 will depend on their diagnosis. Anyone who is diagnosed with a mental health condition is eligible for an additional $1,500, and people who receive multiple concurrent diagnoses -- PTSD and depression, for example -- could be eligible for up to $6,000. In addition to payment for treatment, moderators with a qualifying diagnosis will be eligible to submit evidence of other injuries they suffered for their time at Facebook and could receive up to $50,000 in damages. The exact amount of the payout depends on how many members of the class apply for benefits, and it could shrink significantly if the majority of the class is found to be eligible for benefits. In the settlement, Facebook also agreed to roll out changes to its content moderation tools, such as muting audio by default and changing videos to black and white. These tools will be rolled out to 80 percent of moderators by the end of this year and 100 percent of moderators by 2021.
Additionally, "Moderators who view graphic and disturbing content on a daily basis will also get access to weekly, one-on-one coaching sessions with a licensed mental health professional," the report says. "Workers who are experiencing a mental health crisis will get access to a licensed counselor within 24 hours, and Facebook will also make monthly group therapy sessions available to moderators." Moderators working in California, Arizona, Texas, and Florida from 2015 until now are covered by this settlement.
Under the terms of the settlement, every moderator will receive $1,000 that can be spent however they like. But the companies intend for the money to be spent partly on medical treatment, covering the costs associated with seeking a diagnosis related to any mental health issues the moderator may be suffering. The amount of money a moderator will receive beyond the initial $1,000 will depend on their diagnosis. Anyone who is diagnosed with a mental health condition is eligible for an additional $1,500, and people who receive multiple concurrent diagnoses -- PTSD and depression, for example -- could be eligible for up to $6,000. In addition to payment for treatment, moderators with a qualifying diagnosis will be eligible to submit evidence of other injuries they suffered for their time at Facebook and could receive up to $50,000 in damages. The exact amount of the payout depends on how many members of the class apply for benefits, and it could shrink significantly if the majority of the class is found to be eligible for benefits. In the settlement, Facebook also agreed to roll out changes to its content moderation tools, such as muting audio by default and changing videos to black and white. These tools will be rolled out to 80 percent of moderators by the end of this year and 100 percent of moderators by 2021.
Additionally, "Moderators who view graphic and disturbing content on a daily basis will also get access to weekly, one-on-one coaching sessions with a licensed mental health professional," the report says. "Workers who are experiencing a mental health crisis will get access to a licensed counselor within 24 hours, and Facebook will also make monthly group therapy sessions available to moderators." Moderators working in California, Arizona, Texas, and Florida from 2015 until now are covered by this settlement.
No problem (Score:1)
"seeking a diagnosis related to any mental health issues the moderator may be suffering. "
They work there. They all have mental issues.
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I thought medical records were private. How would a potential employer know if you had a mental diagnosis?
I don't doubt that if a potential employer knew a prospect had mental health issues, they wouldn't want to hire them, but how would they know in the first place?
LOL, They're private except where they're not.
Get diagnosed with PTSD and try to buy a rifle or pistol - Nope. You have mental problems. You could probably still buy all the perchlorate and other chemicals you want.
Usually if you have mental problems it'll also show up in the judiciary records. I had an employee that started to act really crazy. Looked her up. Her hubby beat the crap out of her. So those records and medical related records showed up. Not hard to figure out. It's knowing where to look.
Some t
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Developed PTSD on the job? (Score:1, Troll)
Just my 2 cents
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One more reason not to watch MSM (Mainstream media)! /s
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Are you really comparing employees looking at Facebook posts with military personnel who have been in actually distressing situations, in person? The fuck. Talk about devaluation. This is similar to calling Trump "literally Hitler" or comparing 9/11 to the holocaust. GTFO.
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WTF? (Score:1, Troll)
PTSD from moderating Facebook content??? Softest generation of humans ever...
Re:WTF? (Score:4, Informative)
That's an easy thing to assume until you get a clearer picture of what they go through: https://www.theverge.com/2019/... [theverge.com]
I haven't a doubt in my mind that what they're going through is legitimate, and I'm glad they're getting recompense.
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
PTSD from moderating Facebook content??? Softest generation of humans ever...
You underestimate the depths to which Internet trolls stoop. Images and videos of children being killed or sexually abused; men and women being dismembered alive by drugs lords. We're not talking about a bit of swearing here and there.
Society apparently wants Facebook (etc.) to exist and apparently doesn't want this material to be circulated. That means paying someone to filter it and living with the consequences.
I'm pretty sure that watching ... (Score:2)
... videos of 8 year old girls getting violently group-raped, ritual murder, torture, severe animal abuse and other mental and emotional manure the bottom rung of humans can come up with would have you get PTSD pretty fast too.
Re:WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)
How would you know, you haven't seen what they saw because they removed it for you.
The job of moderating Facebook is pretty awful. Things like gory images are just the tip of the iceberg, a lot of it is mental health related like images of extreme self harm or illness like bulimia.
Even the hard as nails men of the special forces get PTSD, it's a completely normal reaction and nothing to be ashamed of. In fact shaming people for having mental health problem has been tried, e.g. after WW1, with disastrous results. Turns out that generation were a bunch of "snowflakes" as well, aka normal human beings.
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This new generation of "things I saw on the computer screen hurt me" is a joke. Come back and talk to me when you've waded through this shit, smelt it in a 110 degree heat, had to wash it off your hands.
Typical military brainwashed response. Wanna know what really happens? Military, even those not even close to live fire or deaths or gore, often suffer severe depression or PTSD-like symptoms. Thanks to ranters like you, many of them are afraid even to seek treatment. Then they end up like my brother-in-law, offing themself out of fear, guilt, and pain.
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People get PTSD without ever stepping foot on a battlefield or enlisting in the armed forces.
Child abuse, violent assaults and rapes, witnessing loved ones die horribly in an accident, working as an EMT and witnessing gore beyond your worst nightmares... those are just a few things that cause PTSD.
I too have PTSD because of violent events in my past, and I have never been in the military,
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Everybody has their limits, and sometimes people don't even know what their limits are until they are put to the test. This "test" can and often does break people.
Yes, you say that "oh they are just looking act pictures", but these aren't scenes from movies. This is some truly twisted fucked up shit out there that no movie studio could ever come up with, and to know that this is real is enough to send people over the edge.
EMTs see horrible, traumatizing shit every day, and this is why you h
WTF? (Score:2)
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Yes.
Lionel Hutz, attorney at law... (Score:3, Insightful)
These people take a job that specifically requires looking at highly offensive content, and then complain because they have to look at highly offensive content. Seriously? Only in the United States, just sue sue sue sue sue. And most of that $52 million will go to lawyers...
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Typically lawyers get 1/3rd plus expenses
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And boy can they rack up the expenses. A phone call to set up a meeting with a coworker about the case can trigger the 1-hour minimum charge for both lawyers if they can stretch it out above whatever the minimum is (used to be fifteen minutes, don't know what it is now).
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I think a lot of people might not understand the difference between offensive content and disturbing content. I have no doubt facebook underplayed the full nature of the images that were going to be seen when selling this job.
I think we should be happy that at least Facebook is being held responsible for a couple of the people they've fucked up.
Re:Lionel Hutz, attorney at law... (Score:5, Insightful)
What other professions do you apply this to? For example a lot of drone pilots get PTSD, even though they are sat in a comfy air conditioned room thousands of miles away watching something explode on a screen. Why don't they just quit and get a different job?
Or how about vets? Very high suicide rate in that business, but it's just animals, right? They could go do a different job if it's too much for them.
And nurses and doctors. Some of them are having mental health problems thanks to COVID-19. Maybe they should have just quit before things got too hard.
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Maybe they should have just quit before things got too hard.
Hell gapes beneath the upraised sword. Step in and heaven is your reward!
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Re: Lionel Hutz, attorney at law... (Score:1)
In a more ideal world, all warfare would be boots on the ground, rifle in hand, with the presidents at the front of the frontline leading the charge. The sheer up close and personal horror would do a lot to discourage war. Of course, I might as well wish Santa Claus would bring me that robot I wanted in 1985.
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Re: Lionel Hutz, attorney at law... (Score:1)
Back in medieval times, it was common for a king to be phy$ically present on the battlefield, leading the charge.
We need to make it international law for today's rulers of countries to do the same.
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"What other professions do you apply this to? For example a lot of drone pilots get PTSD, even though they are sat in a comfy air conditioned room thousands of miles away watching something explode on a screen. Why don't they just quit and get a different job?"
Knowing that the 'dots' got blown up, and that those 'dots' were human beings is enough to fuck up your mind. It does not matter if it's "the enemy", or an innocent farmer, anybody who does not have psychopathic tendencies is going to be wrack
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I'm wondering if Facebook fully disclosed what these mods could potentially be looking at?
If FB tried to downplay it or failed to describe the level of horror that these mods will come across, then then mods most definitely have a case.against FB.
and the lawyers? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is Slashdot; where are the cynics demanding to know how much the attorneys made on this deal? I've won two class action suits this year and haven't seen a penny while the lawyers made off with millions.
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I've been on the winning side of three now. My spoils:
1 letter informing me of the decision. TL:DR: Yay! You win, but lawyers are expensive. So, revel in your glory, winner! High-five!
2 checks totaling under $0.50 USD. It wasn't worth my time to drive to the bank to cash either one.
I've had lawyers chasing me down over the past year trying to get me to join a fourth against my homeowners insurance company. After reading all of their legalese in the suspiciously large packet they sent me, I declined. They co
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I got over $25, I think it was $36 or something, and I only received annoying phone calls.
And then at the end when there was extra money left in the pot, I got another $6.
What the lawyers get is generally a separate part of the settlement. What is listed in the summary is what the people should really receive.
The reason that you didn't get anything is probably that the class action that you were a member of was intended to correct some rule or policy, rather than to recover losses. Totally different than th
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Hey, you're lucky. I got a $15 coupon good for six months towards a new Western Digital hard drive of under (IIRC) 1 gigabyte, when WD had stopped making anything smaller than 1.5 gigs. Another time I got a one year coupon for $50 towards a standby ticket on American Eagle airline, which didn't fly anywhere that I wanted to go. Of course I had no idea that I was a member of either class action suit until the "award" arrived. In both cases the law firms made tens of millions of dollars.
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So what did you get by suing yourself?
If you said "Nothing much" then you're just a hypocrite.
Because you don't want to line lawyer's pockets, you want to line executive's pockets instead. Unless you sue, or participate in a class action, you're encouraging people to steal from you
The whole reason class actions exist is because individually, the company has done so little damages that it's not worth your time or money. But as a
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I won $150 as compensation for buying some improperly advertised AMD CPUs. It worked out to about $25/CPU - I think most people's apathy words joining the suit helped increase my payout.
Thanks!
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You had the option to join? I was added without my knowledge or approval to a couple, which netted me nothing.
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Yes. I received a letter, it asked how many of a particular set of CPUs i had purchased during the time in question, and then 6 mos later, a check arrived.
Here is a report on the AMD processor settlement: https://www.anandtech.com/show... [anandtech.com]
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I had forgotten, I got several letters insisting that I needed to join the various mesothelioma suits for myriad reasons after my dad died (and my mom was deluged by phone calls). One even said that a non-response would be considered approval to be included (which I've since learned is not legal). Lawyers are truly the worst leeches on society today.
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The amounts that the victims get seem quite low. Maybe enough to pay for some treatment but it's unlikely that treatment is the only cost for them.
Milking the system (Score:3)
> Additionally, "Moderators who view graphic and disturbing content on a daily basis will also get access to weekly, one-on-one coaching sessions with a licensed mental health professional,"
I subject myself to graphic and disturbing content daily FOR FREE. They should hire 4chan users as first level moderators.
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They should hire 4chan users as first level moderators.
Obligatory meme [tenor.com]
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So track them, and if they post it to 4chan it's immediately destroyed as being too disturbing for second level moderators?
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Difference is you can just close the tab when you have had enough. These people had to do it 5 days a week with quotas and performance metrics.
Worse they often had to carefully consider the material to see if it met the ever-changing Facebook rules.
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This is not quite wrong, I think. There are people that legitimately enjoy a lot of the weird stuff on the internet, and would look at it in their spare time. If there were some way to go in and say, "I'm super into gory murder pictures," without being flagged by the FBI and every law enforcement agency in the area, this might actually work fairly well? Then anything that looks like it MIGHT be disturbing or awful goes to someone that can verify that yes, indeed, they liked it, so nobody else in their right
So... (Score:3)
Clearly an epic fail (Score:2)
For Facebook lawyers who should have prepared a sue-proof waiver/employment contract.
Anatomy of a PTSD episode (Score:2)
PTSD involves a single traumatic incident, CPTSD involves multiple ongoing incidents and is probably analogous to what these people are experiencing.
I've been working through psychological abuse that was conducted on me by a sociopath and thought people might be interested in what it is like when the effects of CPTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) manifest. My unfortunate experiences has led me to develop techniques to rid myself of the effects of CPTSD when a source of it becomes noticeable en
Re: Anatomy of a PTSD episode (Score:2)
TL;DR
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He was trying to give you post-traumatic slashdot disorder.
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Re: Anatomy of a PTSD episode (Score:1)
I had to deal with many toxic people, and I came to the conclusion that NOBODY, not even family, is important enough to have to deal with abuse and the PTSD that comes with it.
It took me decades, and it was a slow, painful process for me. I had to cut a lot of people out of my life, and I am still a bit vulnerable, but I am much wiser than say 20 years ago. Everybody gets put under the microscope and silently analyzed to death. If I am sensing a major problem with somebody, I am ready to bail out of that re
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I had to deal with many toxic people, and I came to the conclusion that NOBODY, not even family, is important enough to have to deal with abuse and the PTSD that comes with it.
You are showing signs of a fully functioning human being, I've had to do the same thing. It's a great feeling to get the neo-cortex functioning without the mammalian and reptilian parts of the brain. They take some effort to calm.
It took me decades, and it was a slow, painful process for me. I had to cut a lot of people out of my life, and I am still a bit vulnerable, but I am much wiser than say 20 years ago. Everybody gets put under the microscope and silently analyzed to death. If I am sensing a major problem with somebody, I am ready to bail out of that relationship (friendship, intimate, whatever)
Very wise, I'm doing that right now. I've ejected certain relationships and assessing the viability of others whilst in isolation as it seems like a good time to meditate on peoples actions and the effect they've had in my life.
Sounds like you have developed your own techniques
End of year (Score:2)
These tools will be rolled out to 80 percent of moderators by the end of this year and 100 percent of moderators by 2021.
I'm pretty sure that "by the end of this year" and "by 2021" both refer to the same thing, Dec. 31, 2020.
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Somebody is going to have a shitty New Years Eve.
"Okay Bob, it's 11:59:59. We've gotta get this out to that last 20%!"
The lawyers (Score:2)
Iâ(TM)m certain the only people who will see any benefit here are the lawyers. Like countless other class action suits.
If it was only opt in for damages then it would stop being a lawyergasm.
This planet is not just a jungle... (Score:2)
... it's Hell.
Not only "graphic and disturbing" things happen every minute, not only they are meticulously documented, photographed and videorecordered, but there also armies of humans, of all ages, genders and ethnicities who consider it as their mission to dutifully publicize them in all kinds of social media for free (and also violently protecting their alleged right to do so!).
The issue is not who to blame (the usual "civilized" approach of this "civilization") but what to do about it. I'm not optimisti
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Get the people playing Mortal Kombat 11 and doing fatalities all day long to look at this controversial FB content. That shit is seriously disturbing.
Nature is hell (Score:1)
Lions maul and consume gazelles, and chimps literally rip the arms off of rival chimps, and even those within their clan that have fallen out of favor. This happens everyday.
Humans are animals too, and we have the same bloodlust and bloody tooth and claw behavior as any other predatory species. We have been lied to all of our lives into thinking we are above all of this, but we are not.
WTH?? (Score:1)
Machine learning for this filth (Score:2)
Wait... (Score:2)
it is causing PTSD to the people who 'REMOVED IT" what about he people who posted it?
How about not removing things and avoiding the problem. No body is forced to view anything on Facebook so if it scares you stop looking, if it is illegal let the cops take are of it.