Why Internet content reviewers burn out
David Graham, president of Telecommunications On Demand, the company near Orlando where [Internet content reviewer Ricky Bess] works, compared the reviewers to “combat veterans, completely desensitized to all kinds of imagery.” The company’s roughly 50 workers view a combined average of 20 million photos a week.
– “Policing the Web’s Lurid Precincts,” The New York Times: July 19, 2010
20 million images divided by 50 workers = 400,000 images screened per worker per 5-day week, or
80,000 images screened per worker per eight-hour day, or
10,000 images screened per per hour, or
167 images screened per worker per minute, or
2.78 images screened per worker per second.
Dear Mr. Graham: Do you really want to keep your reviewers from walking around the office like Christopher Walken in “The Deer Hunter”? Hire more reviewers.
(Due diligence: These insane calculations only hold up if you believe the numbers Graham fed the Times, which I don’t. Doesn’t anybody over there have a calculator?)
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I believe the era of factchecking is sadly behind us. There might be a bigger piece in all this. At the very least you could contact the Times Ombudsman. Although he probably gets 20 million emails a week. Ha ha.
It’s a factchecking thing, yes, but it also speaks to a general credulity that I find weird and sloppy. Nobody all the way up the chain at the NYT said “Wait a minute — 20 *million*”?
In response to another comment. See in context »“20 million images divided by 50 workers = 400,000 images screened per worker per 5-day week”
If you watch 2 hours of film, tv, or dvd, you are viewing over 400,000 images.