Comments on: Moderators as Full-Time Employees? What a Visionary Idea You've Invented

Moderators as Full-Time Employees? What a Visionary Idea You've Invented

WCityMike — Tue, 09 Jun 2020 13:42:16 -0800

The new hotness in tech: NYU Center for Business and Human Rights says social media giants should have their moderators be full-time employees (PDF).

Gee, what visionary entity might have thought long-ago that the moderators guiding the content of a link-sharing site/community need to be part of that company's future? Ctrl-F, M-E-T-A [content not found].

By: LobsterMitten

LobsterMitten — Tue, 09 Jun 2020 13:46:36 -0800

Moderators for those giant sites have a very different job from ours, in terms of scale, and in many ways a much harder job in terms of the kinds of content they're confronted with. They should definitely be treated better and everything that throws light on that is good. It would be a huge change for the better if the tech giants started actually properly paying and supporting their moderators.

By: WCityMike

WCityMike — Tue, 09 Jun 2020 16:06:29 -0800

I completely agree – to be clear, my post was mostly a somewhat tongue-in-cheek compliment to Metafilter for already having had a good vision/outlook of the immense job moderators deal with. My understanding is that many of the content moderators at the social media giants have full-fledged PTSD from dealing with the misbehavior; the scale of a Mefi moderator expanded to worldwide and then placed under multiple oppressive layers of corporatism.

By: lucidium

lucidium — Wed, 10 Jun 2020 02:57:08 -0800

Imagine if they let us post images.

By: Too-Ticky

Too-Ticky — Wed, 10 Jun 2020 09:20:19 -0800

to be clear, my post was mostly a somewhat tongue-in-cheek compliment to Metafilter for already having had a good vision/outlook of the immense job moderators deal with.

Thank you for explaining that, I had no idea that was what you meant.

By: needs more cowbell

needs more cowbell — Wed, 10 Jun 2020 10:53:48 -0800

Are mods here paid as independent contractors or as employees? I assumed it was employees now.

By: cortex

cortex — Wed, 10 Jun 2020 12:50:57 -0800

It's a mix, that's shifted over time as site revenue's come down and we've moved from having most folks working full-time and going through a payroll firm to more part-time and international employees.

By: Jahaza

Jahaza — Wed, 10 Jun 2020 23:02:43 -0800

Imagine if we let moderators post images!

By: GenjiandProust

GenjiandProust — Sat, 13 Jun 2020 09:33:02 -0800

Imagine if they let us post images.

I do imagine this, and then I shudder and turn back to what I was doing before that terrible image popped into my mind.