Channel: Firefox

Category: Science & Technology

Description: Behind the scenes, in the U.S. and abroad, there is a vast human workforce of content moderators reviewing material that appears on or disappears from social media sites. At the same time, misinformation and disinformation are spreading via these platforms, with consequences for elections and democratic processes around the world. Casey Newton’s reporting in The Verge has exposed the working conditions of content moderators contracted by Facebook. Clara Tsao works on evaluating the effectiveness of online tools that have been developed to counter terrorist propaganda/disinformation, with the goal of evaluating the impact of tools mapped to terms of service and content enforcement policy. In this talk, Clara and Casey will discuss how social media companies make the most consequential decisions about what their users see and don’t see, and how they can consider the human toll it takes on those who do it.