Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg if he would be willing to do some of the work that his contractors do.
It happened during the five-hour hearing on Oct. 23 conducted by the House Financial Services Committee, regarding mainly Facebook’s proposal to create an electronic currency named Libra.
Porter questioned Zuckerberg about the working conditions of some of the employees, in particular, the content moderators.
She started the questioning by mentioning that Facebook is “known as a great place to work” but Facebook doesn’t use its employees for the “hardest jobs in the company.”
A report from The Verge described the substandard working conditions of the contractors that have to deal with the extremely gruesome content that Facebook users upload constantly.
“You’ve got about 15,000 contractors watching murders, stabbings, suicides, other gruesome, disgusting videos, for content moderation, correct?” Porter asked.
“Yes, I believe that that’s correct,” Zuckerberg answered.
Porter continued asking, “According to one report I have, and this is straight out of an episode of ‘Black Mirror,’ these workers get nine minutes of supervised wellness time per day, that means nine minutes to cry in the stairwell while somebody watches them.”
She continued, “Would you be willing to commit to spending one hour a day for the next year watching these videos and acting as a content monitor, and only accessing the same benefits available to your workers?”
Zuckerberg started answering, “We work hard to make sure that we give good benefits to all the folks who are doing this.”
The Congresswoman, addressing her time limitations asked him for a yes or a no answer.
“Mr. Zuckerberg … I would appreciate a yes or a no, would you be willing to act as a content monitor? To have that life experience?”
Zuckerberg started to answer: “I’m not sure that it would best serve our community for me to spend that much time,” before being cut off by Porter.
“Then you’re saying you’re not willing to do it,” Porter concluded.
The congresswoman later posted a video of the exchange between her and the CEO.
Mark Zuckerberg Talks About Libra During the Hearing
During the hearing, Zuckerberg said the Libra project “is not an attempt to create a sovereign currency. Like existing online payment systems, it’s a way for people to transfer money.”
Zuckerberg promised in the hearing, titled “An examination of Facebook and its impact on the financial services and housing sectors,” that the cryptocurrency project should quell regulatory concerns.
“Of course, as a big company, we’re not going to do something that’s unregulated or decentralized, we are going to work with the government that gets to the same standard on anti-money laundering and CFT (counter-terrorism financing) that all of the other world-class payment systems have,” he said during questioning.
Epoch Times reporter Bowen Xiao contributed to this report
