There's a lot of creepy, repulsive, morally abhorrent stuff on the Internet, and that means there are also a lot of people whose job it is to watch it, review it and get it taken down. One guy who reportedly had that job at Google -- and whose identity was not revealed -- describes the "scarring" experience in an interview with Buzzfeed FWD. The former Googler says that the job was made all the worse when the company denied him a full-time position, leaving him to scramble for a new job at the end of his year there.
The ex-Google employee says that he spent his days exploring the ugly underbelly of humanity on all of Google's products, like its search engine, Google Images, the picture-organizer Picasa and the social networking site Orkut (that has its largest fan base in India and Brazil). There were beheadings, he says, and suicides. Grotesque fetishes, mutilations and bestiality. And lots of child porn.
Child porn, in particular, has to be removed within 24 hours of the service provider becoming aware of it and also must be reported to federal authorities. He says that there were perhaps 15,000 of those images a day.
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After nine months of it, he thought he was coping fine, "but it was putting me in a really dark place," he says. Google had someone from a federal agency sit down with him, and she asked him to react to a series of photographs. "That's f***ed up!" he exclaimed in response to an ordinary photo that depicted a normal father and his kid. He decided he needed therapy, but Google would only cover one session.
The former Google employee says that he was a contractor, and so was not entitled to the benefits of a full-time employee, or any emotional support, despite the nature of his daily grind. Google contractors can also only stay on for a year, and at nine months, he was told that he wasn't going to be hired full-time. He claims that this has happened to several of Google's employees entrusted with the most blood-curdling work at the company.
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This ex-Googler's story punctures Google's rainbow-hued image as one of the most magnanimous employers known to mankind: a company that feeds its employees three free meals a day, offers new mothers more than four months of paid leave, and has a complimentary laundry service on site.
Employee satisfaction at Google, in fact, jumped by over a third this past year, according to CareerBliss -- more than at any other U.S. company. This may be partly due to a generous new death benefit -- paying 50 percent of the deceased employee's salary to the spouse for a decade.
Google's unofficial slogan may be "Don't be evil," but when it comes to dealing with the evil others do, it seems it isn't always saintly
comments
Why do we need these sites? They hurt people for life...and worse. Google for searching is great, but Facebook and Twitter are the perfect example of what the world has come to. Why do they exist? What good are they? How much damage do they do to ordinary people? It's part of the 'global' (I call it conspiracy), in connecting us to crap we don't need. How many people do you know that have been really hurt by one or all of these? I know a few.
6 minutes ago
W. J. Rice
Ha ha I did the same thing on Orkut for 9 months in Mountview. There were 13 of us hired as contractors to clean up the mess Brazilian users made of it. There was some terrible imagery on there.
22 minutes ago
frank1946
The more things change the more they stay the same !
Google simply exhhibits the same old bag of evils in Mankind, with no benefits ?
No Virtue at Google.
28 minutes ago
+1
fverbena
This contracted employee should have been given therapy all the while!!! I am sooooo tired of seeing nasty porn and violent things on the internet!!! Animal cruelty is up and child rape is up all because of the INTERNET!!! This stuff must be taken down or never allowed on the World Wide Web!!!
The Interenet would be great if it was for educational purposes instead it's screwing up the minds of millions!!!
I hope this contract employee gets the help he needs for however long he needs it. I deal with nasty images of violance towards animals everyday and my depression and nightmares have night got easier. STOP THE NASTY STUFF ON THE INTERNET and stop articles that are open ended where people start to attack each other. Report the news...don't report/voice it with your feelings about it!!! When did that end in the media?
Oh and another thing....I'm a woman and I don't want to see women breast feeding or your pregnant bellies!!! Jeeze ladies have some class!!!
Leon Stark
Google's internal motto is supposed to be, "DO NO EVIL". What they did to this person is evil, sending him (or her) into the dark-side without a lifeline, without help, without an outlet for his frustrations. This should be a rotating position, something ALL Google employees, from the top on down, from the Chiefs to the newbies. And make certain there are therapists for all their employees, for as long as they need them. The kinds of sites and images these employees would be exposed to could be the triggers for a variant on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder..
If expecting someone exposed to this kind of material without help, without a "community" of colleagues in the same position to work out their problems with the material, that is the "EVIL" they should not be doing when they say "DO NO EVIL".
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