#CASEY NEWTON VERGE PROFESSIONAL#

Paramedics arrived 13 minutes after the first call, one worker told me, and when they did, Utley had already begun to turn blue. The Cognizant site in Tampa is set back from the main road in an office park, and between the dim nighttime lighting and discreet exterior signage, the ambulance appears to have had trouble finding the building. Two of them began to perform CPR, but no defibrillator was available in the building. Co-workers noticed that he was in distress when he began sliding out of his chair. On the night of March 9th, 2018, Utley slumped over at his desk. And he was always worried about getting fired.” I spent some time talking with him about things he was having issues seeing. “The stress they put on him - it’s unworldly,” one of Utley’s managers told me. The stress of the job weighed on Utley, according to his former co-workers, who, like all Facebook contractors at the Tampa site, must sign a 14-page nondisclosure agreement. It said it would consider making more moderators full-time employees in the future, and hopes to someday provide counseling for moderators after they leave.

Facebook says it will conduct an audit of its partner sites and make other changes to promote the well-being of its contractors.

The Phoenix site has been dealing with an infestation of bed bugs for the past three months.

Verbal and physical fights at the office are common.

Workers have also found pubic hair and fingernails at their desks, along with other bodily waste.

Facilities at the Tampa site are often filthy, with workers reporting that the office’s only bathroom has repeatedly been found smeared with feces and menstrual blood.

They are now before the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Tampa workers have filed two sexual harassment cases against coworkers since April.

Senior management initially discouraged employees from discussing the incident, for fear it would hurt productivity.

A Facebook content moderator working for Cognizant in Tampa had a heart attack at his desk and died last year.

For the first time, three former Facebook moderators in North America are breaking their nondisclosure agreements and going on the record to discuss working conditions on the site.

It has never consistently enforced Facebook’s policies with 98 percent accuracy, as stipulated in Cognizant’s contract.

#CASEY NEWTON VERGE PROFESSIONAL#

Facebook’s content moderation site in Tampa, FL, which is operated by the professional services firm Cognizant, is its lowest-performing site in North America.

In fact, with a score that has been hovering around 92, it is Facebook’s worst-performing site in North America. The Tampa site has routinely failed to meet the 98 percent “accuracy” target set by Facebook. The 800 or so workers there face relentless pressure from their bosses to better enforce the social network’s community standards, which receive near-daily updates that leave its contractor workforce in a perpetual state of uncertainty. Utley worked the overnight shift at a Facebook content moderation site in Tampa, FL, operated by a professional services vendor named Cognizant. After he got out of the military, he worked as a moderator for Facebook, where he purged the social network of the worst stuff that its users post on a daily basis: the hate speech, the murders, the child pornography. He married, had a family, and devoted himself utterly to his two little girls. Content warning: This story contains descriptions of violent acts against people and animals, accounts of sexual harassment and post-traumatic stress disorder, and other potentially disturbing content.įirst, he served in the Coast Guard, where he rose to the rank of lieutenant commander.

Casey newton verge