YouTube moderators must sign agreement acknowledging they might get PTSD

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/01/24/youtube-moderators-must-sign-a.html

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DS9-sigh-sisko

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Hey YouTubeGoogle how about you actually offer counselling to them and offer it permanently. Cause while the job has to be done there is no way anyone is going to walk out of that job not scarred in some way.

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Great way to retain employees, WTF…

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But that costs MONEY, and how will they pay their execs millions of dollars that they so richly deserve if they treat their employees like people! /s

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It doesn’t seem to be saying that you’re giving up rights to healthcare or something if you suffer PTSD from your job, it’s just a warning that as a moderator on an internet size website you are going to see some absolutely fucked up shit. It even reminds you that the company offers counseling if you have a problem. Every moderator job should come with this warning.

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Wrong. The agreement tries to protect potential moderators by letting them know that there’s some really sick shit in the world, and some assholes try to post it online. They should take the responsibility only after very serious consideration, because the personal consequences are real. And they really should stop now and decline the offer, because it’s not worth it.

There are truly evil people in this world who do shit that normal people literally cannot comprehend or imagine. No warning screens or shock stories can adequately convey the possible horrors that await them. Not encountering that nightmare in the first place is the only real cure for many (most?) normal people.

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Try bartending, it’ll give you the collywobbles day one.

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Nobody knows how hard it is until they start slinging drugs.

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What should they do differently here?

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YouTube has MODERATORS?!
What the hell would it look like without them?

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Key details from the article. The contractor (of course) to do the moderating is Accenture, who also does moderation for Twitter and Facebook. The clause appeared in employee agreements suddenly after an expose on PTSD among employees of Accenture, and while the company says it’s voluntary to sign, employees say they are being threatened with firing if they don’t sign.

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PTSD is only half the problem. The other is that if you are subjected to enough of the worst the Internet has to offer you start to believe in it. Qanon etc starts to seem perfectly normal.

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Roger That!

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And the law of unintended consequences rears its head. A company that runs a group of YT livestream channels that I mod for occasionally moved all their chats to a Discord instance, shut off all the YT chats, and fired all the YT mods as of yesterday. That problem solved!

Oh wait… except that the channels are all being massively reported for all kinds of “violations” and by tomorrow they’ll all be gone.

Good work.

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Oh. Well! They signed an agreement… It MUST be OK.

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