Mark Zuckerberg Refuses to Look at Horrible Facebook Gore

Zuck says he's "not sure that [moderating Facebook] would best serve our community."

No Thanks

During his Wednesday appearance before the House Financial Services Committee, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave a hard pass to the suggestion that he spend a day working as a content moderator for his social media megacorporation, Business Insider reports.

Facebook moderators have a rough job. They're forced to endlessly review the absolute worst of what people try to post on the site — including child porn and graphic videos of violence and murder — and get very little support as they do so. It's not surprising that the CEO of a company doesn't want to do work it pays some 15,000 contractors to do, but Zuckerberg's statements at the hearing show how removed he is from how the sausage gets made.

Maybe Later

When California Representative Katie Porter asked if he would spend a day as a Facebook moderator, a job so traumatizing that some moderators walk away with post-traumatic stress disorder or abuse drugs to cope, Zuck first tried to deflect before saying that no, he would not.

"I'm not sure that it would best serve our community for me to spend that much time," Zuckerberg said.

Priorities!

Zuckerberg probably has bigger problems to handle.

But his insistence that moderating his own platform would be a waste of his time provides the perfect illustration of how Facebook handles issues like enabling the spread of misinformation or potentially upending financial systems with its cryptocurrency.

READ MORE: A congresswoman dared Mark Zuckerberg to spend an hour a day policing the same 'murders, stabbings, suicides, other gruesome, disgusting videos' as Facebook's moderators. He declined. [Business Insider]

More on Facebook mods: Facebook Moderators Are Dying at Their Desks