{"id":19074,"date":"2013-04-24T10:00:28","date_gmt":"2013-04-24T15:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcitement.com\/?p=19074"},"modified":"2013-07-24T10:32:46","modified_gmt":"2013-07-24T15:32:46","slug":"does-the-internet-offend-you-youre-not-the-only-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/culture\/politics\/does-the-internet-offend-you-youre-not-the-only-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Does The Internet Offend You? Then, You’re Not Alone"},"content":{"rendered":"

UPDATE: Article has been updated to accurately represent the genders of those involved, as pointed out by Joy Lynskey, the owner of TIOM, in the comments section.<\/strong><\/p>\n

An anonymous Facebook moderator has had enough and decided to speak up against what he sees as narcissistic cries for attention and faux offense. In a post<\/a> on The Internet Offends Me<\/em> blog (TIOM), the author Joy Lynskey, paints a vivid picture of the nasty duties Facebook moderators go through.<\/p>\n

Imagine going to work every day and at the start of your day, with your first cup of coffee, you sit down to glance at beheadings, children in the process of being raped, human bodies in various stages of decomposition, the living and dead results of domestic violence, hanging bodies of 10 year old boys accused of being gay, real-life snuff films and bloody dog fighting rings and their subsequent results. Can you think up a human horror? I\u2019ve probably seen it or a picture or video of something very similar. It\u2019s fair to say that some of the people who work around me do not fare so well. Often they end up suffering from the endless barrage of horror they witness 8 to 12 hours per day. Did I share that *most* of these people make around a dollar per hour to do this job? That\u2019s the truth. Not me though. I am an American who demands rights and all, so I make approximately $29 dollars per hour more than them. Technically, I don\u2019t even have to do anymore than make sure they are clicking the buttons in the correct order. I don\u2019t have to look at the images, but most of the time my focus on remaining unbiased in the face of, makes me do so anyway.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That graphic description of what appears to be the daily routine of a Facebook moderator manager hit the web on April 9. A few days later, The Internet Offends Me Facebook page<\/a> was created. Over 10,000 people and other pages have liked TIOM’s Facebook page in the hopes of acting as a central hub for those who feel they’ve been falsely reported. TIOM’s Facebook page encourages others to share specific issues they’ve had and provide links to pages that have come under scrutiny. Not all reported pages or pictures listed on TIOM’s Facebook page come from political or religious organizations though, as one such supporter of TIOM is the This Milk Matters: Lactation Support Group<\/a>, which has been reported numerous times for inappropriate imagery.<\/p>\n

Much of TIOM’s furor finds root in responding to another Facebook page, but this one set itself up to police images and pages. Rapebook<\/a> (RB), with its purposeful cringe-inducing name, made it a goal to regularly post links it found objectionable in an effort to encourage its thousands of fans to also report those links to the higher ups in the system for removal. Trista Hendren, a mother of two from Portland, Oregon, created RB to act as a self-appointed censor for Facebook. This can actually be seen as a lofty goal with merit when applied toward one of its original goals of preventing blatant misogyny and rampant talk of acts of violence, especially against women and children, on the social network. Hendren explains more about the creation of and reason for Rapebook in this report from ABC News.<\/p>\n