Friday, March 02, 2012

The dark side of Facebook...

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Some four billion pieces of content are shared every day by 845 million users. And while most are harmless, it has recently come to light that the site is brimming with paedophilia, pornography, racism and violence – all moderated by outsourced, poorly vetted workers in third world countries paid just $1 an hour.

In addition to the questionable morality of a company that is about to create 1,000 millionaires when it floats paying such paltry sums, there are significant privacy concerns for the rest of us. Although this invisible army of moderators receive basic training, they work from home, do not appear to undergo criminal checks, and have worrying access to users’ personal details. In a week in which there has been an outcry over Google’s privacy policies, can we expect a wider backlash over the extent to which we trust companies with our intimate information?

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Derkaoui is not exaggerating. An articulate man, he described images of animal abuse, butchered bodies and videos of fights. Other moderators, mainly young, well-educated people working in Asia, Africa and Central America, have similar stories. “Paedophilia, necrophilia, beheadings, suicides, etc,” said one. “I left [because] I value my sanity.” Another compared it to working in a sewer. “All the ---- of the world flows towards you and you have to clean it up,” he said.

 Who, one wonders, apart from the desperate, the unstable and the unsavoury, would be attracted to doing such an awful job in the first place? Full story...

Related posts:
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  2. Dad of girl, 12, sues Facebook over her suggestive photos...
  3. "Facebook is the most dangerous assault weapon in the world..."
  4. Facebook spies on phone users’ text messages, report says...
  5. Privacy not a major concern for majority of Facebook users...
  6. Facebook "defriending" led to double murder...

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