Category: Group B

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Roberts’ article on Commercial Content Moderation makes the point how there is so much content online that it makes it difficult for reviewers to sift through them and uncover inappropriate content. They majorly rely on the content that has been flagged to find inappropriate content; material is posted, flagged and only then is it removed. This means that only content that someone else has flagged and reported are likely to be removed.

What flagged content assumes is that it was flagged by a user. But of course communities of people with the same ideas will converge on ideas and will not think their contents are inappropriate. What do we do about content that is not flagged that is still inappropriate? When we rely on users to flag content we are relying the social norms that dictate what is appropriate versus what isn’t.

The image above is a snippet from the Instagram page of a group of women who call themselves Taz’s Angels. They frequently post images of themselves half naked or doing acts that are inappropriate. But why hasn’t there been tons of people flagging their images and videos as being inappropriate and boarder line pornographic? Society has accepted these women and the content of there pages. Why are pages like these so openly accepted but pornography sites are so taboo?

The people who visit these pages most likely go to specifically see these types of images and will not report them and those who would report them are not in the circles to find such pages. Therefor pages and sites with inappropriate content are majorly visited by people who want to find them and therefor will not likely report its inappropriate content. How do we make new policies and systems that address these issues?

Posted from Course Blogs by Shayla B.

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Reaction GIF:

Example of a reaction GIF: 

 

My counter GIF:

This GIF I made is a counter GIF because it challenges the stereotypical reaction GIF. Most reaction GIF’s match what the GIF is portraying with the text, however, in my GIF, the excited little girl has the text “FML” on it. This is clearly not what is happening in the small snippet of video however, it does challenge what the viewer to really decide what is going on in the GIF instead of accepting it mindlessly.

 

Sports GIF:

Example of a Sports GIF:

 

My counter Sports GIF:

This GIF challenges all other sports GIF in the fact that it doesn’t actually show anything. Most sports GIF’s are either epic fails, or great successes. For example the sports GIF I showed above. It is a very impressive play by one team and it really gets the viewers of the GIF excited and pumped. However, my GIF challenges this idea because I showed the process of a great play, but not actually the great play. The viewers are then either frustrated that the GIF “didn’t work” or they have to imagine what happened because the end isn’t shown.

 

 

Fandom GIF:

Example of Fandom GIF:

My counter of Fandom GIF:

The scene I chose for my counter GIF was the Titanic. Most people in modern society has seen the Titanic and know the movie pretty well, however, to create a counter GIF, I changed the text to a quote not from that movie. The quote is actually from the movie Shawshank Redemption, and I though the quote was clever because it more or less foreshadows the ending Titanic (spoiler alert). This tactic really challenges the viewer’s breadth of cultural knowledge, else if they don’t know the movie the Titanic, then the counter GIF loses its power.

Posted from My blog by Nile

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In this blog post I will be discussing the difference, similarities as well as concerns between moderators throughout history, particularly the CCM, as in this week’s reading, and magazine moderators back when magazine’s were popular.

Both of these jobs had to deal with troubling content, whether that be racist comments, nudity, or offensive language, however in different situations and media platforms. We know CMM’s work with online media such as facebook posts and or instagram posts, but the magazine moderators back when people use to read magazines had to be weary of ads or possibly racists comics that could potentially be published in their magazine.

Although both of these mediators throughout time have similar job content and necessary actions, the modern day moderator, CCM’s work is much harder. In today’s society, everything goes through the internet. Especially with the strong presence of social media and how it is so highly valued in the world we live in. CMM’s must go through hundreds of thousands of photos and videos to keep the their particular platform, clean and used how its suppose to be used. And being a moderator is no easy feat. According to Safiya Umoja Noble and Brendesha M. Tynes, in their book The intersectional Internet: Race, Sex, Class, and culture Online,

“… there are real monetary and other kinds of value that can be assigned to content that is sensationalistic, often on the grounds of being prurient, disturbing, or distasteful… For this reason, CCM workers find themselves in a paradoxical role, n which they must balance the site’s desire to attract user and participation to its platform-the company’s profit motive- with demands for brand protection, the limits of user tolerance for disturbing material, and the site rules and guidelines.”

With CMM’s having such a crucial and important job, a major concern I have about the difficulty of not only their job but keeping a moral compass, would be that they are so use to seeing such terrible content on their platform, that they get numb to this terrible content. I feel often times a CMM could get use the content and let things slide which would only increase the tension online throughout the social media platforms. This is a very important job ,and Spiderman said it best,” With great power comes great responsibility”.

 

Bibliography:

What is content moderation? – video by OpenAccessBPO

The Intersectional Internet: Race, Sex, Class, and Culture Online, edited by Safiya Umoja Noble and Brendesha M. Tynes.

Posted from My blog by Nile

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An obvious but significant question that jumped out at me after reading Sarah Roberts’ “Commercial Content Moderation: Digital Laborers’ Dirty Work,” was what the psychological toll looked like after reviewing racist, homophobic, violent, or misogynistic content? The article said that “working in CCM means putting aside one’s personal belief system and morality,” but as the article showed (with the Max Breen example, p. 152) and as other interviews and articles demonstrate, this is not true. Another article by Sarah Roberts titled, “Behind the Screen: The People and Politics of Commercial Content Moderation” continues the story of Max Breen, and quoted him saying, “I can’t imagine anyone who does [this] job and is able to just walk out at the end of their shift and just be done. You dwell on it, whether you want to or not.”

The article on Wired, “The Laborers Who Keep Dick Pics and Beheadings Out of Your Facebook Feed,” goes into more detail and personal accounts of the psychological weight that this job brings. The problem is that a lot of these outsource workers come from minimal education and experience, so a lot of them are hourly workers rather than full-time workers. If they are not full-time workers, then they do not receive health benefits and cannot receive help for the psychological issues the job instills. A New York Times article, “Policing the Web’s Lurid Precinct,” tells that co-workers rely on each other for emotional support. The article also tells about an industry group established by Congress called the Online Safety and Technology Working Group submitted a request to the national Telecommunications and Information Administration for therapeutic care to content moderators with long exposure to inappropriate content.

While this is a step in the right direction, it is specifically addressing workers who deal with images of child sexual abuse, and as we have learned, there is much more content than that. This report was filed back in 2010, and I couldn’t find any more recent updates than that, which speaks to the slowness of legislation and that this injustice to content moderators is not an urgent issue to the government. But without them, the internet would be significantly more disturbing.

*Title comes from a quote by psychologist Patricia M. Laperal of Behavioral Dynamics, as reported in Brad Stone’s New York Times article cited.

Works Cited

Chen, Adrian. “The Laborers Who Keep Dick Pics and Beheadings Out of Your Facebook Feed.” Wired, Conde Nast. 23 Oct. 2014.

Online Safety and Technology Working Group. “Youth Safety on a Living Internet.” National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), 4 June 2010.

Roberts, Sarah T. “Behind the Screen: The People and Politics of Commercial Content Moderation.” Open Transcripts. 2 May 2016.

Stone, Brad. “Policing the Web’s Lurid Precincts.” The New York Times. 18 July 2010.

Posted from Intro to Digital Studies by Lauren C.

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Commercial content moderation(CCM) workers function much like a janitor. They work for little pay, little acknowledgment, and deal with disgusting things all day long. They are also expected to remain invisible while taking care of something others don’t want to have to deal with. One significant issue is that if the janitor doesn’t know about the mess, they’re unable to clean it up. Content that is potentially a violation of a site’s guidelines are not seen by the CCM worker until a flag has gone up. Within this lies the significant problem that the content becomes normalized.

The CCM worker is expected to completely remove themselves from their own beliefs and even own culture at times. If a person is not exposed to the racist patterns found in American culture, how can they be expected to screen for content that could be offensive to an African-American individual? Racist material being used as humor is undoubtedly present in the digital age, with GIFs and Vine being prime examples. CCM workers don’t even have the power to remove blackface because it alone is not considered hate speech.

The post above shows a social media post that was most definitely racist and offensive but was only taken down by the company at their choosing, not by CCM workers. The lines are very blurred when it comes to regulating images dealing with race, calling out abuse, sexism, and more. The job of a CCM worker is clearly no small achievement and their hidden labor contributes significantly to the sites we use everyday. By investigating CCM, race can be better understood as it functions in a digital space.

Posted from Blog by Ashley W.

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Before reading “Commercial Content Moderation” by Sarah Roberts, I had never heard of CCM services before. While the article claims that “CCM is not an industry unto itself” (Roberts 147, find the article here), I wanted to do a little extra research on the firms that protect websites from harmful content.

One of the first websites I came across after looking for firms that moderate website content was for a company called Crisp. In its mission statement, Crisp claims they “protect global brands and social platforms from the risks posed by social media” (Full website here). Crisp also states that they deal with about 3 billion pieces of content every month. Onespace (Website here) is another example of a company with a very similar mission statement, and these are just a few of the many firms that provide similar services.

In fact, after doing this research and also finding an example of pricing (Onespace charges $1500/mo for a starter package), it appears that Commercial Content Moderation is indeed an industry. While it is obviously reliant upon demand generated by web content providers who need the protection, there are a number of firms competing to create the best product at the most advantageous price point. These, to me, seem to demonstrate the makings of an industry.

As Roberts hints at, and as this wired.com (Website here) article expands on, the industry is a complex one that relies heavily on overseas work. According to wired.com, there are over 100,000 people (twice the headcount of Google) who work every day to try to scrub the Internet clean from offensive or illegal content. While CCM may not be as well known and may be reliant on demand from other industries, I believe it is certainly an industry in and of itself.

Clever graphic of CCM workers “scrubbing the internet clean”, source here.

Posted from Digital Studies 101 Blog by Patrick G.