As part of the online safety team, two employees were assigned to it to determine which content should be taken down or reported to the law enforcement. Such disgusting contents they were forced to watch caused them to develop the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD and the contents looked rather traumatic as if they had out-going nightmares of whatever they saw.
One thing Microsoft missed out was that the two employees were not briefed about the psychological impact of doing such jobs and denied any support. Instead, Microsoft came up with a Wellness Program in which should the employees be affected by such disturbing contents, they could have a break during work-time but that is not going to help since there's no support over psychological issues those two employees had as part of the company's Digital Crime Unit. Even the other team members of the online safety team were not provided the comprehensive mental health program. Such suggestions for the Wellness Program were not quite good enough that one of the two employees, Blauert, was scolded for playing too much video games during work-time. Even if those two employees were transffered to a new position, they still suffered the PTSD over time and I guess that after they were forced to watch the disturbing contents, it marked the beginning of the serious trouble and especially that they had to remain in that position for 1.5 years before they were allowed to transfer positions.
In the recent time like December last year, the two employees eventually filed a lawsuit against Microsoft over the PTSD and it looked like none of them returned to work as the psychological damage was too great that it would take a long time of recovery. Blauert, on the other hand, wished to return to work at Microsoft but I guess that he wasn't allowed to use the computer-type electronics until he had fully recovered enough to be fit for work again.
It was a painful damage caused to those two employees of the online safety team who worked at Microsoft and I guess that life and future threatening events for instance are what we should keep a lookout for. Various examples may include the contents of war, disaster, fear, guilt over whatever you've done, horror, helplessness or even maybe something violent like someone's being assaulted for instance. The suffering starts within a few months or maybe years later like what already happened to those two employees.
The entirety of this blog post may look off-topic but I do have another concern about the controversial local event that took place last week of this year. It will be talked about in the following blog post because I have a feeling that it may have damaged the reputation of one of the local ISPs, M1. I might be lucky that I'm a Singtel user and that I avoided the event without even knowing when it started but obviously, that event was notorious for having a bunch of adult performances. Do I want to end up like those two Microsoft employees by attending that bullshit event?
We don't allow such mature contents like those that traumatized those two employees in whatever events, workshops, briefings, or even the educational assignments.
