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Comment by swalsh | Hacker News Reader

That's 7500 people whom will be "forced" as much as free employment can constitute force to do nothing but look at questionable often offensive content.

What a funny way our economy has evolved. 100 years ago many of these people might have worked in farms, 50 years ago they might have worked in factories. Today they sit in an office looking at ostensibly offensive material that facebook deems the rest of society should not be exposed to.

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Reminds me of the Buckminster Fuller quote:

>We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors.

So? We have 1000s in the bay are building the next chat bot, cat pic ai engine etc.

Equating these two classes of activity is not even wrong.

I think it will soon enough be possible for machine-learning solutions in quality control of posts and checking of offensive content. We are not there yet, but the inroads are significant.

Well that's a big problem. Once you mechanize it, then there isn't even anyone to appeal to when you are subject to an unjust outcome. I wrote at length on this post above, but do we really want computers deciding who is or is not allowed to take their clothes off?

Fair point. But at least it will be objective. Applied to everyone with the same algorithm. And yes, the algorithm can get improved.

Makes me think of some semi-dystopian world like The Giver.

It's a communication system used by billions, with a ratio of one moderator to hundreds of thousands.

Factory worker or a farmer would never produce anything for so many people.

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