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Re:Facebook moderators in America by bendotero on Monday February 25, 2019 @12:22PM (#19247331)
That's sick. What you just described is someone who is unhealthy, not a person who needs a full time job to further indulge in something deviant.
Re:Facebook moderators in America by dallashoxton on Monday February 25, 2019 @04:49PM (#19249790)
What about people who work in slaughterhouses? Or a coroner or a mortician? Are they inherently "unhealthy" people because they have the personal temperament to handle a job that involves a lot of close contact with death? All nasty but necessary jobs with probably a lot more PTSD risk/scale than occasionally watching some gore and having to identify if someone's use of a racial slur violated community guidelines or not.
Re:Facebook moderators in America by hnaccy on Monday February 25, 2019 @12:30PM (#19247417)
Even if we concede that they have some dysfunction why is it an issue they do this sort of work?

It's like having someone with poor sense of smell take out the garbage.

Re:Facebook moderators in America by untog on Monday February 25, 2019 @12:32PM (#19247438)
> It's like having someone with poor sense of smell take out the garbage.

No, it's like having someone a poor sense of smell detect which things smell and which things don't.

Not to mention, having them do this work is taking advantage of a dysfunction rather than helping to address it. In fact it would be likely to make the dysfunction worse.

Re:Facebook moderators in America by hnaccy on Monday February 25, 2019 @12:51PM (#19247639)
>No, it's like having someone a poor sense of smell detect which things smell and which things don't.

I'd guess most can identify murder and gore films even if they don't mind them. They're pretty obvious.

I don't understand why taking advantage of this "dysfunction" is a bad thing.

Re:Facebook moderators in America by bendotero on Monday February 25, 2019 @02:23PM (#19248533)
So watching the destruction of human life and/or incredible suffering of other people is not problematic to you? If someone has a dysfunction is it not cruel to take advantage of the dysfunction, whatever benefit might be derived by others? Seems like the very definition of dehumanizing rather than caring whether or not your fellow man is thriving.
Re:Facebook moderators in America by hnaccy on Monday February 25, 2019 @03:45PM (#19249294)
I'm not saying force these people to work, simply that they're people who lean more to the callous side of the emotional spectrum and they're better suited for this kind of work.

What you see as dysfunction, their apathy when viewing bad content, is their normal state of being.

Re:Facebook moderators in America by anigbrowl on Monday February 25, 2019 @04:28PM (#19249619)
Rather than argue I'd like to suggest two questions for consideration?

Why do you think some folk are drawn to habitually view such content?

What other things do you think satisfy that impulse?

Re:Facebook moderators in America by darkpuma on Monday February 25, 2019 @06:32PM (#19250538)
> "Why do you think some folk are drawn to habitually view such content?"

It's paradoxically unusual but at the same time incredibly relatable. Everybody dies, so there will be broad spectrum curiosity for the subject, inhibited only by natural squeamishness.

Years ago when highschools still had shop classes, the teacher showed my class a binder full of color photographs of what a lathe accident looks like. The lesson was that lathes aren't toys. I'd never seen anything like those pictures before. They were disgusting, and fascinating. Probably psychologically damaging, but not as damaging as getting caught in a lathe. Did I mention the pictures were fascinating? For most people, seeing that sort of thing is rare. Some people are drawn to novelty, particularly when they can relate to it. Very little in life is as relatable as death; death is even more universally relatable than eating.

Is the suppression of squeamishness a form of mental illness, or a form of psychological damage? I think it definitely can be. But I'm far from convinced it necessarily is.

Re:Facebook moderators in America by anigbrowl on Monday February 25, 2019 @09:17PM (#19251468)
Almost everyone has a degree of morbid curiosity, or there wouldn't be a market for horror movies and true crime media. But my question was specifically about why that would develop into a habitual preference for specifically gruesome ends. I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess /watchpeopledie hasn't recently been taken over by video of people in comas flatlining.
Re:Facebook moderators in America by darkpuma on Tuesday February 26, 2019 @08:57AM (#19254293)
> But my question was specifically about why that would develop into a habitual preference for specifically gruesome ends.

Because their squeamishness is suppressed to an extent that is unusual among the general public, and what remains is the now uninhibited fascination.

Re:Facebook moderators in America by dallashoxton on Monday February 25, 2019 @04:59PM (#19249877)
>Why do you think some folk are drawn to habitually view such content?

Curiosity, memento mori maybe.