Facebook finally acknowledges its content moderator’s mental health deterioration, Google Play Music will get merged with YouTube Music later this year, two key executives leave Google Pixel phone development.
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It’s no secret that content moderators must sift through a lot of nonsense to keep illegal content from reaching their audience. From Google to Facebook, these frequently disturbing contents are grinding down the mods’ mental health, and their complaints have been largely ignored in the past years. Now, in a landmark payout, Facebook has agreed to pay $52 million to its active and retired moderators for mental health issues developed due to their jobs. Each of the 11,250 affected employees would receive no less than $1,000, with additional compensation granted on a per-case basis.
Google Play Music, which apparently has over 15 million subscribers, will be merged with YouTube Music later this year. Google has been fleshing out YouTube music for two years, and given YouTube’s popularity and its overlapping functions with Google Play Music, this move does make good sense. Google is already rolling out tools to help users transfer their playlists and songs over to YouTube music. Pricing options remain the same; YouTube Music offers a free tier supported by ads. Unlocking the full version will cost CA$11.99 a month.
Google’s Pixel division lost two important figures in recent months. Engineer Marc Levoy and General Manager Mario Queiroz, left the company early this year. Their departure is apparently related to statements made by Rick Osterloh, Google’s hardware lead, over Google’s direction of the Pixel phone’s development, specifically its battery power. That shortcoming may partially explain the Google Pixel 4 series low sales. Google only managed to ship around 2 million Pixel 4s in the first two quarters, whereas the Pixel 3s shipped around 3.5 million. For the sake of comparison, IDC estimates that Apple sold 73.8 million iPhones in the last quarter of 2019 alone.
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