It's a long read, but very much worth it. It goes into detail about the types of material these people have to spend all day watching and reviewing, and talks in length about some of the unhealthy coping mechanisms these teams develop for themselves. Lots of drug use, sex in the office, and suicidal ideation.
While the article focuses mainly on Facebook moderators, I used to share an office with YouTube's content moderation team around the time this article came out, and a lot of the article rings true for YouTube, as well. I imagine it's similar across all the big platforms.
Yes, definitely - being the caregiver for a child is often unpaid but still very much a job. Many volunteer positions are important jobs which are unpaid.
a significant portion of my job is to moderate and provide first line direction of all the social media pages for a huge company that commissions my company. We dont do any marketing or real engagement just moderation and essentially telling people to reach out to customer service per big company’s poorly provided directions. I don’t particularly care much for big company’s product but ive seen some really nasty people with attitudes towards my and my coworkers as if we physically made and handed them a defective product. We do sympathize and understand a certain level of anger but there are some people who are just outright cunts. It doesent help that big company does big company things and barely has customer support so more of the anger is directed towards us social media people
User experience designers. We are too often the lone voice for the user in teams of very smart people who think that being smart is the same as being right, working for business-minded people who are measured by production rather than quality.
We are the oracles for feature failure, and we are rarely listened to. We try to do the best we can, while refused opportunities to research, and are often brought in last minute to improve things that have already caused expensive usability and maintenance nightmares, and are blamed for being “expensive” and “out of scope” when we try to mitigate the damage.
And if an app sucks, we are the first to be blamed. But if you are a genius at your job, no one notices that you did it.
There are several jobs that are frequently mentioned in discussions like this that are actually thanked all of them time.
Nurses, teachers, fire, EMTs and police are always mentioned. They are hard jobs and mostly under paid. However they are constantly thanked, businesses give discounts and commercials and politicians thank them endlessly.
Grocery store workers, butchers, plumbers, electricians, custodians, truck drivers and most “menial jobs” are completely thankless. Think of the last time you saw a 10% off for nurses and if you’ve ever seen 10% off for overnight stockers.
My wife is a school based therapist. The parents routinely cancel without notice. The kids have behavioral problems and trauma that makes interacting difficult and stressful. Not to mention that she has to read through the kid’s trauma history that requires them seeing her in the first place. Not a lot of thank yous for that kind of work.
Raising children, feeding families, and cleaning up a household are staggeringly underappreciated labor tasks that are paid very little (or nothing at all when it’s just family obligations).
Step parent. While not entirely thankless (depending on the kids involved) it’s tremendously underappreciated.
So much expectation that you do things for kids that aren’t yours.
Don’t get me wrong - it can still be rewarding in many ways, and my stepkids and I love each other like blood. We have a fantastic relationship.
But it gets under my skin every time I think about how little their own father has done for them, and I’ve had to pick up the (financial) burden, yet that prick will be the one who gets to walk my stepdaughter down the aisle.
I’m sure that’s true in plenty of families, but sadly not ours. My stepkids’ dad is a entitled and materialistic, and he’s married someone just like him. They even try and “teach” the kids that you don’t have to thank wait staff at restaurants, because they’re paid to do the job.
It’s funny - my wife and I were each originally married to the same type of selfish arsehole, then found each other after our respective marriages broke up. Our exes, however, didn’t wait that long. Kinda says everything…
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