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by dmalvarado 2151 days ago
Perhaps. I would argue that there is some difference between seeing someone fall off a cliff and watching someone being tortured to death.
4 comments

Then they should run sidebar ads on the gore sites. The point is that there appears to be a subset of the population that is not traumatized by this stuff. We may as well give them an opportunity to put that difference to use.

Edit: and saying things like "well clearly these people are already traumatized if they're seeking this out, it's not good for them, we shouldn't give these jobs to them" seems laughably paternalistic when the alternative is to traumatize more people by making them look at it instead.

There is a subset of people who seek this stuff out, yes. Whether or not it is traumatic for them does not strictly follow from that.

People come to their choices with all manner of existing problems and conflicts, and they don't always do things in their own best interest.

There are people that really like chocolate and some people that really hate chocolate.

Human are so diverse.

Is is really hard to believe that there are people that are not negatively affected by this ?

But are they same as the people actively seeking it?
Likewise, both could exist.
How do we know they're not traumatized by it?

That they seek it out doesn't mean they're not messed up.

^this. I am not arguing one way or another, because I don't see strong evidence making me lean predominantly one way. But imo, it is at least just as possible that they are seeking out that kind of content voluntarily because they are already traumatized in the first place, so this is a coping mechanism.

Maybe it helps dealing with that trauma. Maybe it makes the trauma worse. Maybe there was no trauma to begin with, and the person was seeking out that content simply due to morbid curiosity, but then it evolved into something else. Maybe there was no trauma to begin with and no trauma appeared after the exposure. Who knows.

But just because there are communities on reddit with people seeking that kind of material and not going on crazy violent sprees doesn't mean that it doesn't negatively affect them. It could be the case, but we should probably look into that first before jumping to "obvious solution" claims.

tl;dr: we gotta do more research and weigh pros and cons before simply declaring "we have an obvious solution, let's just hire all those gore content enthusiasts to moderate violent content, because they already do it on their own and don't seem to be going crazy in obvious ways due to it".

>Then they should run sidebar ads on the gore sites.

That would do wonders for the Facebook brand.

Have a subcontracting company do the moderation and have them run the sidebar ads.
Which is still linked to the brand - "Facebook pays $10 M to company that runs ads on gore and rape sites"

Look at how much trouble they got in when it was revealed they were using Onavo (even before acquisition).

Meh, if that’s the worst PR they can get they’d be massively ahead of where they are now. Especially considering how massively the press narrative has turned against them overall.
But that's my point - Facebook has a massive brand problem right now, and this would just be throwing more gas into the fire.
Are moderators really meant to watch the whole video in cases like that? It seems to me like they could stop once the content of the video became apparent. Even just a fraction of a second of that sort of content could be scaring, but I think probably less scaring than watching several minutes of it...

My basis for thinking this is I've seen videos like that before and clicked away quickly. It's disturbing, but I think I'm okay.

There were pockets where the video of the Jordanian pilot being burned to death by ISIS was popular. Same with the raw video of the New Zealand shooting.

Obviously not everyone, but they are there.

Most importantly, there's a big difference between seeing someone being tortured to death and frequently seeing people being tortured to death every weekday.