This is a great point, and I’m curious to hear what would be better alternatives. Like obviously there’s something great about having online connections with other people, but how could we do it better without surrendering to some big platform?
I’m actually not proposing shutting down any website that allows uploaded content, just large / public sites that require this sort of moderation. Not every site gets this stuff uploaded to it. The more private the network, the less need for this kind of company-led moderation.
As far as “worth it” goes, some people have to be exposed to it so long as we have law enforcement (but I’m certainly open to alternatives here). I’m not sure the train operator is a fair comparison, because seeing a suicide is an exceptional circumstance in their job, it’s not the norm. The content moderators, however, are sadly expected to be exposed to traumatizing content as part of their job description — it’s essentially the point of their job.
There are plenty of kinds of work we deem as hazardous to people’s health, and thus are either banned or regulated. I’m not sure if there’s a healthy way to expose people in these moderator jobs to the traumatizing content they face. It just doesn’t seem worth the tradeoff to endanger them like this.
I think there’s a difference that depends on scale and privacy. If your network is private (or something more akin to p2p / messaging) this is much less of an issue, especially if you have strong blocking controls. Users moderate themselves.
I think the problems that Facebook, Youtube, etc are seeing stem from the fact that the content is much more public, thus in much more need of moderation.
In my opinion this is an argument in favour of shutting Facebook (and every other large social network) down. This sort of work is damaging and abusive, and nobody should have to endure it just so we can have social networks.
I understand there are some jobs in the world that need to deal with dark stuff (like law enforcement), but social networks just aren’t worth the human cost.
>I think most people grow up missing their actual potential as thinkers because the environment they grow up in does not understand these issues and their tradeoffs....
This is the meta-thing that’s been bugging me: how do we help people realize they’re “missing their actual potential as thinkers”?
The world seems so content to be an oral culture again, how do we convince / change / equip people to be skeptical of these media?
Joe Edelman’s Centre for Livable Media (http://livable.media) seems like a step in the right direction. How else can we convince people?