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Re:The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators by teddyh on Wednesday July 22, 2020 @02:38PM (#23920169)
> maybe there are more sane, emotionally healthy people watching snuff films for fun than I instinctively expect.

Probably not, since there are no documented instances of any snuff films ever found.

Re:The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators by justanotheranon on Wednesday July 22, 2020 @05:11PM (#23921628)
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/07/11/the-revelations-of-wik...

Thanks to Wikileaks publishing the Dutroux Dossier in 2008, we know hundreds of snuff films were recovered from the notorious pedo-rapist Marc Dutroux.

Just because the police keep those films as sealed evidence that are never published does NOT mean snuff films are an Urban Legend. I can see why the police always keep snuff films secret. Imagine what would happen if snuff films were uploaded all over the Internet? There would be mobs of angry villagers armed with torches and pitchforks descending on jails and prisons to lynch pedos. It would make harassment from QANONs look like school yard bullying.

Re:The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators by teddyh on Wednesday July 22, 2020 @07:04PM (#23922510)
Snuff films are, fortunately, still only a subject of urban legends, since those films you mention do not meet the definition. Were those films made in order to entertain other people than the person who made them? Were the films ever distributed to any of those people? Was anyone ever actually killed in any of these movies? If the answer to any one of those three questions is “no”, then the movies, horrible as they may be, were not “snuff” films, as commonly defined. From what I can see in your reference, the first two of those things are decidedly not true, and the reference is unclear regarding the third.

(The films were, according to your reference, made only for blackmail purposes, and therefore certainly not made for enjoyment of any viewer, nor were they ever distributed to other people for their enjoyment. The reference does claim that people were killed in a specific place which was also filmed, but does not, what I can see, explicitly state that any murders were actually filmed, other than incorrectly calling all the films “snuff” films.)

Re:The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators by shadowprofile77 on Thursday July 30, 2020 @07:37AM (#23996944)
I think that some of you should take a look at news websites about the drug and kidnapping cartels down in Latin America... They regularly post their own snuff films online and I can guarantee you that they're not only very real but also extraordinarily brutal. No urban legend about it.
Re:The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators by exolymph on Wednesday July 22, 2020 @03:20PM (#23920566)
A snuff film is a video in which someone actually IRL dies. There are about a zillion of them.
Re:The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators by teddyh on Wednesday July 22, 2020 @03:28PM (#23920635)
A snuff film is defined by most as at least having been made for the purpose of entertainment of others. Some include the proviso that it has to have been made for profit, and yet others demand that it has at least been sold. But regardless, not even the first level of these criteria have ever been fulfulled.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/a-pinch-of-snuff/

Re:The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators by EE84M3i on Wednesday July 22, 2020 @08:48PM (#23923096)
That article was last updated 2006 and does not take into account ISIS or Mexican drug cartel videos, which arguably meet your first definition and many would consider snuff.
Re:The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators by teddyh on Thursday July 23, 2020 @04:27AM (#23925322)
One could hardly make the argument that those videos were made to entertain anybody for their enjoyment. Terrorists make videos to terrorize, i.e. scare, people, not for people to enjoy.
Re:The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators by EE84M3i on Thursday July 23, 2020 @11:48AM (#23928589)
Making the argument that is at least partially made for the entertainment of other terrorists doesn't strike me as outlandish. Personally I wouldn't make that argument though.

Regardless my point was just that in my experience many would consider them 'snuff' even if it doesn't meet the exact technical definition.

Re:The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators by teddyh on Thursday July 23, 2020 @02:51PM (#23930864)
> my point was just that in my experience many would consider them 'snuff' even if it doesn't meet the exact technical definition.

And those people would simply be wrong.

I mean, let’s back up a bit. Why is it important whether or not “snuff” films exist? Because many people want to believe the common urban legends about it – i.e. that there exists an (be it ever so small) underground production and market for it, even though, by all accounts, this does not exist, and has never existed. Believing such urban legends helps people feel justifiably horrified and helps validate their cynicism; basically the same reason why many people believe many other urban legends. However, no movies fitting that particular model have ever been found to exist.

If anyone wants to to be picky about the definition and claim that some movie or other fits the definition of “snuff”, or is “considered” to fit even though it doesn’t(!), this is only because they want to be able to say “see, snuff films exist!”, and thereby validate their preexisting belief in the urban legend. But this is a motte-and-bailey fallacy; it tries to defend the urban legend (which is hard) by trying to defend a technical definition of a word to be slightly wider than it really is (which is comparitively easier). Luckily, even though it is easier to defend, this latter position is still demonstrably wrong.

Re:The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators by Traubenfuchs on Thursday July 23, 2020 @03:32AM (#23925032)
I take it you haven't seen the "ISIS burns people in a cage, dance dance revolution edit/remix" video.
Re:The trauma of Facebook’s content moderators by teddyh on Thursday July 23, 2020 @04:25AM (#23925311)
Those people weren’t killed for the purpose of entertainment. The initial videos were made by terrorists, to terrorize, not to entertain. Remixes aren’t “snuff” films, otherwise any compilation video on /r/watchpeopledie would qualify.