

Facebook pays 150 employees ~$50K to keep the site clean - breck
http://www.newsweek.com/id/195621

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chime
> The 26-year-old Stanford grad is one of some 150 people the young company
> employs to keep the site clean—out of a total head count of 850.

I wonder if a Stanford degree was a necessity for such a job.

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kurtosis
Hey as long as he's not breaking a law, it's a free country he can do whatever
he pleases. I think I understand the origin of this sentiment - $tanford has
people beating down it's doors to get in and 10 ambitious amazing kids were
rejected so that this guy, who ends up doing a job anyone could do, could go.
I for one hope he ignores all of this social pressure to do what other people
want him to do with his life. It sounds like there's an attitude of _noblesse
oblige_ towards smart people with prestigious degrees here. Give the guy (and
everyone else) a break.

~~~
endtime
I'm with you on this...there's a perception that everyone at Stanford should
work for Google or start a company, and I'm pretty sure Stanford grads do
those things disproportionately, but I've met plenty of people at Stanford who
wouldn't get hired by Google and aren't interested in a startup. You only hear
about the Stanford grads who do cool stuff, and you hear about Stanford people
doing that more than you hear about other people doing it...but don't let that
lead you into thinking that _everyone_ at Stanford does cool stuff.

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tlb
I think it's important for them to hire people from the same demographic as
their most valued users. Policing content is very culturally loaded, so you
can't just automate it or outsource it to a low-wage country and get the same
results. They mention knowing the difference between pot smoke and tobacco
smoke, but I'm sure you also have to recognize every celebrity photo and "the
shocker", and 1000 other culturally relative things.

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quellhorst
$7.5 million to police the site? Sounds like they need some mechanical turks
instead.

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Sidnicious
I dig the clearly-visible 2600 shirt up front. Nicely done.

~~~
octane
Quite honestly I think that guy is a grade A loser.

~~~
tdavis
So by wearing a hacker t-shirt he is a "grade A" loser, but by reading and
posting on Hacker News you are not? Your line seems arbitrary.

~~~
Retric
I don't think he is a loser because of a t-shirt, but working for facebook in
the anti porn division seems like an epic fail for someone that likes to hack
hw or sw. Yet, the perception of what you do often changes when you dig a
little deaper.

I work for the army. I work for the army anizing violent crime. I work for the
army building tools to help people analize violent crime. I work for the army
building tools to help people analize violent crimes commited by people in the
army.

I am a consultant...

~~~
Sidnicious
Why is that a fail? Porn doesn't go on Facebook, and it could be quite cool to
build some epic nudity detection system. It's not an evil job!

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smanek
That would be an interesting AI problem - "Does this picture contain a female
areola?" ;-)

Although, it does kind of raise the sexism question - why is a topless male OK
but not a topless female? Didn't NYC recently lose a lawsuit for that same
sort of discrimination? I understand that facebook is a private entity and
held to a different set of standards, but even so ...

~~~
curoi
As the article states, Facebook is trying to bill itself as the social
networking application _for everyone_. Like other pursuits dependent upon the
majority, pandering to the lowest common denominator is a required strategy.
Since the at-large societal norm in the United States is that female nipples
are inappropriate, so must Facebook align.

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tokenadult
"'If [Facebook] got polluted as just a place for wild and crazy kids, that
would destroy the ability to achieve the ultimate vision, which is to create a
service for literally everyone,' Kirkpatrick says--and then its potential for
profits would disappear, too."

So this is what Facebook views as the real threat to its future viability.
Interesting.

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jmtame
The dude is wearing a 2600 blue box shirt, and he's on porn patrol?

~~~
anigbrowl
Definitive proof that just having the t-shirt doesn't mean you're cool. I
don't know whether to be depressed or amused that a degree from Stanford is
good for becoming an internet mall cop.

~~~
markm
When our apps were running 50K+ visits a day 99% of my time was spent policing
our users. And I wasn't even on salary :(

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sketerpot
This is actually pretty interesting: how do you keep a site clean enough that
the porn doesn't drive people away, without alienating your users?

Personally, I like the way Google's image search does it: the furry vore porn
still there (hoo boy is it ever there), but it's hidden unless you turn the
filter off. And it's easy to turn the filter on and off. Unfortunately this
sort of thing has a lot of overhead, which Google only gets away from by using
some very clever image recognition algorithms.

Another way is that you could establish a sub-site especially for porn. That
works for reddit (NSFW reddit is a porn index and nobody tries to deny this
anymore), but it would kind of break the UI of sites like Facebook.

Does anybody have a better way to more-or-less please everybody?

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patcito
> Google only gets away from by using some very clever image recognition
> algorithms.

Not sure about that, they check the site the picture is hosted on.

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rudyfink
What an intentionally terrible photograph.

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loincloth
i dunno, it gave me a chuckle. and then a good laugh. and then a hearty
cackling. it's a gift that keeps on giving.

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zain
"Since the site tracks the geographic locations of log-ons..."

Wow, that's scary. Did you know that Facebook has a database of every location
you've logged in from?

~~~
mahmud
I just wrote about that earlier. Paypal locked me out after I logged in from 3
different countries in less than 48 hours (I wonder how they handle their
Benelux users.)

~~~
miracle
I'm a benelux user and I only log in in one country ;)

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tlrobinson
Hmm, $50K seems like quite a lot for a dead simple job that could be done by
just about anyone.

