Personal Perspectives of the Articles on Social Media and Labor Policies

Essay Instructions:

600 words, be specific and in-depth

Length: 600 – 700 words, double-spaced. Preparation: • Review: Engineering Ethics: Concepts and Cases, pp. 36-41 (“The Respect for Persons Approach”). • Read: Elizabeth Dwoskin, Jeanne Whalen, and Regine Cabato, “Content Moderators at YouTube, Facebook and Twitter See the Worst of the Web—and Suffer Silently,” Washington Post, July 25, 2019. (Accessible through Bird Library databases.) Topic: In your paper, please address the following: 1. The social media companies discussed in the article contract out much of their content moderation to companies like Cognizant and Accenture, who employ the people who do the content moderation for the social media platforms. Obviously, the social media firms exert significant influence over the workplace policies of the contractors. Some critics maintain that some of these labor policies are unethical—for reasons our text associates with “the Respect for Persons Approach” to morality. From the point of view the RP approach, which contractor labor policies can be criticized as unethical? Why? That is, for what reasons—applying the RP approach—could those policies be judged as unethical? 2. If the social media companies were to accept these criticisms, then what changes should they insist the contractors make to their labor policies? (This may require the social media companies to pay the contractors more, to facilitate those changes.) Please proofread and run spell- and grammar-checks on your paper before submission. Remember to add a bibliography or source list, and use in-text citations where needed.

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Personal Perspective of the Article
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Personal Perspective of the Article
Technology creates a host of new jobs as it evolves. However, these new jobs come with myriad ethical issues, which, if left unaddressed, might cloud all the good that those in the technology industry have achieved. The article by Dwoskin et al. (2019) discusses the ethical dilemmas technology companies face through the content moderator role. One of the ethical dilemmas evident in the article is the mental health of content moderators. Dwoskin et al. (2019) note that content moderators experience psychological trauma because of the nature of their work. They work under a lot of pressure to meet targets and are exposed to violent or toxic content for long periods. Content moderators work for contractors rather than directly for tech companies. The question/dilemma is: who is responsible for the well-being of these workers? The tech companies indicate that they are taking measures to protect the mental health of content moderators, but is it enough?
I believe, in this case, there are two ways to ensure that human beings do not suffer psychologically from content moderation jobs. One, there needs to be a regulatory framework that governs the measures taken by contractors and tech companies to ensure the well-being of the workers, especially in developing countries. A regulatory framework will at least hold these contractors/ tech firms accountable for the mental health of content moderators. It will also ensure some degree of accountability because the firms will be required to provide regular counseling and create ethical work conditions. Harris et al. (2019) indicate that part of responsibility and accountability in engineering requires holding organizations responsible for making the necessary reforms and protecting the public. The public includes content moderators who suffer while performing ...

Updated on January 26, 2024

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Personal Perspectives of the Articles on Social Media and Labor Policies

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