Internet Facebook continues to own say commitment to the well-being of the thousands of ” content moderators’, employees through subcontracting the dirty work to refurbish and the social networking site to filter the thousands of gruwelbeelden. That said the techreus after an embarrassing report in technologiemagazine The Verge about traumatic experiences of temporary agency workers from the US do the dirty work for Zuckerberg and co do.

The Facebook moderators to filter every day thousands of gruwelbeelden such as pornography, abuse, torture, accidents, and murder so that users who don’t get to see. It is extremely demanding work that is still to complex for the algorithms of Facebook. The vast majority of the more than 15,000 people who are responsible, temporary work via subcontracting. That operate from developing countries such as India and the Philippines, but also in the United States.

Although they are vital for the social networking site, their working conditions, according to witnesses, far from ideal. The contrast with the ideal image that we have of a techjob in Silicon Valley, the mecca for technology companies in California, is incredibly large. The Verge spoke with dozens of former employees of the company Cognizant in Phoenix in the state of Arizona. In short was the life a psychological hell.

They explain that the bestbetaalde “content moderators” in the subcontractor, on average, 15 dollars (or 13 euro) per hour will be paid and that the circumstances are more like a call center than a company with a market capitalisation of 500 billion dollars. An average Facebookmedewerker earn 240.000 dollar (210.000 euro), a moderator at Cognizant 28.800 dollars (25,000 euros) per year.

a Maximum of 30 seconds per item

The employees at the company, but the short, strictly-delineated breaks, which leads to long queues in tiny toilets. Their working speed and accuracy are very closely held, and they are under pressure to not more than 30 seconds per item to spend; they must therefore quickly decide whether a post with the guidelines not to exceed. Also, employees are for security reasons forbidden to phones, pieces of paper or even kauwgomverpakkingen to the office to bring. Also personal belongings are not allowed into the workplace.

Anxiety attacks

The worst thing is that a lot of employees after their departure from the company posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) because of the large amount of violent and sexual imagery, and that they must not rely on psychological support of Facebook or Cognizant. The ex-employees testify that they also more and more dark jokes about suicide or tried to ‘high’ by masses of weed to smoke, to keep their feelings to suppress.

another witness talks about the fact that the strict secrecy created a feeling of isolation and anxiety. “If you are contractually not allowed to talk to friends or family about your job, then you feel closer to your colleagues, you feel as if it were bound by trauma. Sometimes this resulted in sexual relationships in the workplace.

As a cloth for the bleeding and let the employer ‘wellnesspauzes’, but that might only nine minutes. Some employees report that they are which breaks even not allowed to use it to go to the restroom.

In a reaction to the shocking article said Facebook is that it tries to ensure that in the contracts with subcontracting “good facilities, well-being for workers and psychological support”, and that the assistance of external companies is vital given the speed of the message flow. “These companies specialize in moderation, and can be a large number of employees to manage,” says vice president of Facebook Justin Osofsky. He also said that employees should be encouraged to avoid any issues in the HR team or calling a ‘hotline’ that the company is in the life called. It is still the question of whether these measures are enough.

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