Negation Aspiration vol. 140

THE TRAUMA FLOOR

The secret lives of Facebook moderators in America

KEY FINDINGS

• Moderators in Phoenix will make just $28,800 per year — while the average Facebook employee has a total compensation of $240,000.
• In stark contrast to the perks lavished on Facebook employees, team leaders micro-manage content moderators’ every bathroom break. Two Muslim employees were ordered to stop praying during their nine minutes per day of allotted “wellness time.”
• Employees can be fired after making just a handful of errors a week, and those who remain live in fear of former colleagues returning to seek vengeance. One man we spoke with started bringing a gun to work to protect himself.
• Employees have been found having sex inside stairwells and a room reserved for lactating mothers, in what one employee describes as “trauma bonding.”
• Moderators cope with seeing traumatic images and videos by telling dark jokes about committing suicide, then smoking weed during breaks to numb their emotions. Moderators are routinely high at work.
• Employees are developing PTSD-like symptoms after they leave the company, but are no longer eligible for any support from Facebook or Cognizant.
• Employees have begun to embrace the fringe viewpoints of the videos and memes that they are supposed to moderate. The Phoenix site is home to a flat Earther and a Holocaust denier. A former employee tells us he no longer believes 9/11 was a terrorist attack.

Awwww Yeah vol. 102

Nassau lawmakers propose bill making 'revenge porn' illegal

The Nassau bill, which has yet to be put on the legislative calendar, would need support from the GOP majority to pass from committee to the full 19-member legislature. 

U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 166

Many of the photos depict explicit images of violent deaths that have yet to be identified by the Pentagon. Among the soldiers, the collection was treated like a war memento. It was passed from man to man on thumb drives and hard drives, the gruesome images of corpses and war atrocities filed alongside clips of TV shows, UFC fights and films such as Iron Man 2. One soldier kept a complete set, which he made available to anyone who asked.

In a break with protocol, the soldiers also took photographs of themselves celebrating their kill. In the photos, Morlock grins and gives a thumbs-up sign as he poses with Mudin’s body. Note that the boy’s right pinky finger appears to have been severed. Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs reportedly used a pair of razor-sharp medic’s shears to cut off the finger, which he presented to Holmes as a trophy for killing his first Afghan.

The Kill Team 

Photos

More war crime images the Pentagon
doesn’t want you to see

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On Murder as Fine Art: Lars Von Trier’s The House That Jack Built

Negation Aspiration vol. 139

Vatican abuse summit: Cardinal says files were destroyed

U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 165

"Please send me your violence that I may unleash it onto their heads," Hasson wrote in a letter that prosecutors say was found in his email drafts. "Guide my hate to make a lasting impression on this world."

"I never saw a reason for mass protest or wearing uniforms marching around provoking people with swastikas etc.," Hasson said. "I was and am a man of action you cannot change minds protesting like that. However you can make change with a little focused violence."

Self-proclaimed white 

nationalist planned mass 

terror attack 'to kill almost 

every last person on earth,’

 authorities say

Awwww Yeah vol. 101

R Kelly “close to facing criminal charges” over sex tape featuring 14-year-old girl