TheVergeDotCom

Absolutely. If these moderators were sitting shoulder to shoulder with their peers in Menlo Park, it's unimaginable to me that their bathrooms would be filthy or their desks littered with fingernails. If they were crying at their desks, colleagues would comfort them. And the jobs would pay better, attracting higher-quality candidates who would likely do a better job enforcing the policies. — Casey

I have, including top executives. Generally speaking, I'd say the company has welcomed the scrutiny here. (One thing I like about covering Facebook is that, more than other tech giants, they tend to be responsive to public pressure.) And there's a sizeable group of employees working on these issues who believe that working conditions will improve for moderators over time as they roll out new features and develop additional support programs. The only static I tend to get from employees is from those who think I'm singling Facebook out — other big platforms, including YouTube and Twitter, use the same vendors and may have similarly bad working conditions. So I do want to turn my focus there as well. — Casey

I actually really like the Reddit model! Reddit sets a "floor" for moderation that no subreddit can fall below — so, no one can post terrorist content. But then each subreddit can also raise the "ceiling" — so individual subreddits can create new rules that make sense for their communities. And then volunteer moderators work to keep the conversation civil and productive. The model seems much more scalable and sustainable to me than what we see on Facebook or YouTube. — Casey

I still use social networks regularly and don't feel too many ill effects — save for when I've read too much Twitter for the day and absorb all that global anxiety. For me, Facebook is a phone book and an events manage, and it works fine for that purpose. On Instagram, I tend to follow only people I know in real life, and it's generally pleasant to look at for a few minutes a day. As an aside, one reason I think it took so long to uncover the darker side of social networks it that many people never see it. Certainly I've never come across videos of murder or mayhem on Facebook or Instagram — thanks, I now realize, to the invisible work of contractors. — Casey

I think it's a tie between a video of a girl laughing while her friend is raped in the background and another girl screaming while she's being cut up. The latter video was found to be a hoax, but a moderator I spoke with didn't realize that at the time. — Casey