Cc header: Sam Michel
Dutch Facebook users are notorious for the amount and intensity of the hate messages they hurl onto the medium. Moderators experience a gigantic stream of messages containing hate, racism and wishing for diseases such as cancer.
De Volkskrant reports this based on conversations with a Dutch moderator who worked at Facebook last year and leaked emails, internal documents and supporting statements from a Facebook colleague.Every day, the Dutch team of moderators – consisting of 5 to 8 people – receives around 8,000 reports of discriminatory, racist and hateful messages, among other things. A number that is much lower in Southern European countries, for example. Around Sinterklaas, elections and demonstrations by the PVV, thousands of hate messages are added every day, which have to be moderated from Berlin. Former moderator Erik tells in
de Volkskrant :The hatred, that’s what hits him right away. ‘That shocked me.’ The intense hatred against asylum seekers, Moroccan Dutch, black people. Erik: ‘And everything in the Netherlands is cancer. Cancer boy, cancer nigger, cancer whore.’ In Flanders, the ‘makaks’ are blamed, in the Netherlands, the ‘Moroccans’. Each area has its own ‘nuisance’: violent photos and videos of gangs in Latin America, pornography and violence against women in the Middle East. The Portuguese and Greek moderators are relatively quiet. They use less Facebook and swear less. Their moderators may still turn on Netflix. Not the Dutch: the Netherlands is the land of hate, says Erik.Frustratingly, Erik is not allowed to intervene when he sees people like Sylvana Simons being showered with hate:
© Cc image: Surian Soosay
Cc Image: Surian SoosayErik sees one message after another about Simons. “Go back to your monkey country,” “I’ll throw your black cunt in the ditch,” or “Die, whore.” All allowed. In August last year, Sylvana Simons herself revealed a private message that she received via Facebook from one Egbert. ‘DYE!! Backward Cancer Black! Please fuck off and leave our country alone! Nauseous sand eater! We white people should have enslaved your black people! Then you were still good and you listened!’ Facebook allows it. Eric can’t get used to it. Everything he finds despicable as a human being, he must accept as a content moderator. Hate, racism, swearing. Simons will eventually gain “protected status” after Facebook faces criticism of the policy. However, Erik still has a hard time with the amount of rubbish he is confronted with on a daily basis – and which he is not trained to deal with at all. Like many of his colleagues, he resorts to narcotics such as alcohol and Valium. A Danish colleague quits after a few months and is admitted with post-traumatic stress disorder. Finally Erik resigns after 8 months. He is too much for him to wade through hate every day for 8.90 euros an hour. He is still in therapy a year later.Facebook itself states in a response to de Volkskrant that it takes very good care of the staff in Berlin and that it has expanded psychological assistance: “We will soon complete a psychological risk analysis to see where more support is needed.”
Original Article Here:
https://www.bnnvara.nl/joop/artikelen/facebook-moderator-nederland-is-land-haat