EU News Digest Latest News & Updates
Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer and founder of Facebook Inc., listens during a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, April 10, 2018.
Facebook pays the moderators responsible for filtering the site’s most disturbing content just a fraction of the company’s median salary, according to a new explosive report by The Verge.
U.S.-based content moderators — often contractors at a third party — earn $15 an hour, or $28,000 a year, according to the report. Managers at the content moderation sites earn $16 an hour. Facebook employees earned an average of $240,000 in 2017.
The report sheds new light on the emotional and physical toll of being Facebook’s main line of defense against abusive content. The company is quick to tout its growing workforce and security effort, but the working conditions described read as unsustainable at best. The content the moderators have to look at include killings, porn and conspiracy theories, The Verge report says.
Current and former content moderators, under pseudonyms to discuss information protected by non disclosure agreements, told The Verge employees are strictly capped at two, 15-minute breaks and one, 30-minute lunch during the day. They also told The Verge they felt disconnected from full-time, salaried Facebook employees.
Breaks are often spent fighting for time in too-small bathrooms, doing drugs or having sex to relax, the Verge reports. When employees tried to skirt the break limitations, by using the bathroom during designated “wellness time,” for example, they were told to stop.
Representatives for Facebook and Cognizant, the third-party vendor named in the report, did not immediately respond to comment.
Read the full report at The Verge.
