Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/05/02/google-tells-u-s-house-it-spe.html
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What are the odds one of the reviewers was radicalized while doing this work? Asking for a friend…
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So they have a 4100 person workforce and yet have spent hundreds of millions on content review. Does that make them the best paid content reviewers in the world? (considering a career change)
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Alphabet, parent company of Google and YouTube, told a U.S. House panel that it spends hundreds of millions of dollars on reviewing content each year, and claims to have identified at least one million “suspected terrorist videos” on YouTube in the first quarter of 2019.
I don’t think they’re being disingenuous here. Apparently, their job is to review and identify… and nothing else. Forget about actually zapping the videos.
“Workforce” may mean “underpaid peons”. The real money goes to the execs.
That’s kind of like bragging that your facility’s internal food inspectors caught at least a million rats last quarter. I mean yeah, it’s good that they caught the rats, but that doesn’t mean I’d still want to eat there.
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I sincerely hope Representative Rose does not take that weak-ass non answer as an answer. (Great questions Rep. Rose, btw) and I sure as hell hope that Representative Rose uses his power to compel these companies to give actual answer answers to these great and simple questions.
But ya know, it’s complicated, dude.
So…Well let’s see how long this takes me to make a wild ass guess.
Hmm… Well what does ‘substantial’ mean?
Not half, right? I mean if it were really half, and half would be substantial, if it were really half I’m sure they would be bragging about that shit up and down the block so let’s say of that one company, half of 4100 is 2,050. So somewhere between 2050 and 1. But that’s a big range so let’s see if we can narrow it a bit more.
Surely more than 10%, right? Surely this weaselly ass knuckle-head would not have the balls to use a word like ‘substantial’ to a congressman of the United States of America to mean 10%, amirite?
So I’ve got a number between 410 and 2050. That’s a bit better but I want to be kind. Let’s give these little dick, incel, sillicon valley ass hats the benefit of the doubt, shall we? Let’s say one third. Let’s say they actually attempted something that resembled honesty (it’s big stretch, I know–but bare with me) and let’s say that by the word substantial they meant that 1/3 of their 4100 man workforce (and my guess is that yes, it’s nearly all men) or 1,367 people work on content review.
We already know these lowest level workers are wildly exploited but again, we will at least assume they put as much heart and soul into paying their workers as a McDonald’s franchisee owner would for the guy who flips your burger so we’ll take 10 bucks. If they pay these 1,367 intrepid heroes 10 bucks an hour and let them work just 40 hours a week and even give them 2 weeks of paid vacation that would be about 20k. And let’s just say 40k when you add in the cost of all those generous benefits. So 1,367 workers x 40k bucks is 55 million.
55 million dollars a year.
I seriously doubt a single one of them spends that much.
But they should have to prove it.
They should have to prove they at least spend 50 million dollars a year on nothing but content review. But I don’t believe them and I’m quite sure they don’t have the courage to prove it. Even to a congressman.
Well Representative Rose, I guess it’s up to you. Let us know, will ya?
And did the House panel ask Google to bring in those videos on a pile of hard drives so they could do random spot checks to see if Google is bullshitting?
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