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Comment by justifier | Hacker News Reader

south park had a bit where they dealt with this sort of workspace ptsd

butters was in charge of filtering cartman's comments so cartman would only see material that would be unable to offend him

cartman seemed to flourish with his new perceived support and popularity and butters deteriorated

i thought it compelling to look at how they chose to do butters

'this material is offensive! you should deal with it instead of me'

cartman was characteristically unconcerned about butter's well being as long as the supportive comments kept coming in

i understand the satire loses some weight when you acknowledge that those that hire these moderators are mostly companies with a vested interest in keeping their users blissfully unaware

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Interesting illustration of the issue. As the article shows, users are not merely passive consumers, but an active component in the moderation process because users are first to encounter the offensive material. Sure, users don't want to see that stuff, but believable that it's the companies more than users striving to remain blissful unaware of the horrific crap that moderators have to deal with. As you point out, the issue is the effect on the moderator, if it's as bad and widespread as portrayed it may rise to the level of a public health problem.

yeah the difference is one of volume

10,000 individual users being inadvertently exposed to 1 piece of upsetting material could potentially mean 1 moderator then has to review 10,000 pieces of upsetting material

also, the deluge

mailroom syndrome, it just keeps coming

honestly, computer vision is the only way to do this sort of moderation with any semblance of success and unfortunately i feel all of this human debris is just considered collateral damage until we get it functioning

it's amazing how dead on-the-nail the southpark team do serious, humour ridden topical commentary on serious social and political issues.

I think they'll go down as two of the greatest commentators of our generation.

Here the episode: http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s19e05-safe-space

yup, thanks for pointing out it was season 19 episode 5, safe space

i failed to because i refuse to link to that hulu run abomination

bah, south park, the show where the creators themselves put their work on the internet to be viewed freely and for free

what a unique expression of the creators' personal beliefs

a stance that had a profound impact on me, and my peers

when hulu bought the rights i felt my skin grow cold, but i held out reservations in the hope that someone at hulu was just a fan and wanted to improve south park studio's backend whilst respecting the implicit wishes of the creators that their work is free and readily consumable by anyone regardless of manufactured scarcity or paywalls

now this shit is the new normal:

    "Safe Space"
    This episode is currently not available at South Park Studios

and

   There was an error playing this protected content. (Error code: 3365)

i lament the loss of a future's exposure to the challenging ideas innate to the show

hulu has zero respect for the series or its creators opinions on how open it has always been, and should be

fuck you hulu

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