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The Trauma Floor: The secret lives of Facebook moderators in America theverge.com/2019/2/25/1822… by @caseynewton
Moderators in Phoenix will make just $28,800 per year — while the average Facebook employee has a total compensation of $240,000.
In stark contrast to the perks lavished on Facebook employees, team leaders micro-manage content moderators’ every bathroom break. Two Muslim employees were ordered to stop praying during their nine minutes per day of allotted “wellness time.”
Employees can be fired after making just a handful of errors a week, and those who remain live in fear of former colleagues returning to seek vengeance. One man we spoke with started bringing a gun to work to protect himself.
Employees have been found having sex inside stairwells and a room reserved for lactating mothers, in what one employee describes as “trauma bonding.”
Moderators cope with seeing traumatic images and videos by telling dark jokes about committing suicide, then smoking weed during breaks to numb their emotions. Moderators are routinely high at work.
Employees are developing PTSD-like symptoms after they leave the company, but are no longer eligible for any support from Facebook or Cognizant.
Employees have begun to embrace the fringe viewpoints of the videos and memes that they are supposed to moderate. The Phoenix site is home to a flat Earther and a Holocaust denier. A former employee tells us he no longer believes 9/11 was a terrorist attack.
.@CaseyNewton will be sharing additional reporting in The Interface, his daily newsletter about Facebook and democracy, all week getrevue.co/profile/caseyn…
Are you a moderator dealing with these same problems? We'd love to hear about it. Here's how to get in touch: theverge.com/a/tip-us-secur…
