Facebook responds to devastating story about content moderators

Facebook's army of content moderators — contract workers paid as little as $28,000 a year — spend their days sifting through some of the social network's most extreme content, work that can have a lasting impact on their mental health and wellbeing. But the companies employing these workers are often ill-equipped to deal with the needs of their employees.

That's the conclusion of a devastating new report in The Verge that details the sometimes harrowing working conditions at an Arizona facility that employs hundreds of Facebook moderators. Among the unsettling details:

• Initial training that's so intense some "fail out of the program before they can start"

• Employees who "cope with the stress of the job... with sex, drugs, and offensive jokes"

• Insufficient onsite counseling services

• One employee, who feared retribution from disgruntled coworkers, who secretly took a gun to work "to protect himself"

• Employees who begin to believe the conspiracy theories they're supposed to be moderating

• A constant fear of being fired "for making just a few errors a week" Read more...

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