Have you ever had a job where you have to look at pictures of mutilated children all day long?
I don't think many people are immune to PTSD, but I suppose sociopaths need jobs too. But I'm not sure you want to hire a department of sociopaths.
I don't think many people are immune to PTSD, but I suppose sociopaths need jobs too. But I'm not sure you want to hire a department of sociopaths.
My point is, some people simply aren’t traumatized by photos/videos, either via talent or training, and because of this they can process it enough to categorize it and keep their emotional/social/intellectual distance. That doesn’t make them sociopaths and it certainly doesn’t make them bad people.
A bleeding anus is just a thing that happens to people. It's a bit gross but I don't know why anyone should be traumatized by it.
The kind of content that these moderators have to deal with goes well beyond the mere abject.
Fixing a sewer is gross. Extermination is gross, not traumatic, unless you have extreme empathy for small rodents and insects. Doctors deal with very few remotely bleeding anuses on the order of one a week/month maybe versus one a minute. None of these should be called real sickos, but none would be expected to develop PTSD either.
A significantly bigger portion of the population would be traumatized and develop PTSD by the level of exposure of content moderation. While not nearly all are sociopaths, they 100% will be represented higher even without factoring in selection bias. Hiring a department of them would not be inconceivable, putting the validity of that aside.
You also make the jump from sociopath to bad person, which many I'm sure would have some qualms with as a categorical.
PTSD is real but lots of people still go to war and not everyone comes back a basketcase. Most don't, in fact.
No, I've never had a job watching pictures of mutilated children all day. But like a lot of naturally curious people, I've searched out and watched bloody videos of beheadings and car accidents and whatnot. It wasn't pleasant, but it wasn't really traumatic either. If I didn't already have a much more lucrative career, I don't think I'd suffer too much as a Facebook censor.
Does that make me a sociopath? My wife and son don't think so, nor do my close friends. I'm not sure if I should feel a little offended here.
On the other hand, I may still have PTSD from those days of cold calling as a junior software engineer 25 years ago. I hate phones. Maybe people are just wired differently.
Why not, if they do the work well?
And anyway, they'd be working from home, these days.