Facebook Sued by Former Content Moderator Over Forced Unsafe Job Conditions in Kenya

A person who says he’s “destroyed” after working as a content material moderator for Fb has filed a lawsuit accusing the corporate of human trafficking Africans to work in an exploitative and unsafe facility in Kenya.

The case towards Meta Platforms, the Menlo Park, Calif. firm that owns Fb, and Sama, a San Francisco subcontractor, was lodged Tuesday with a courtroom within the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

Daniel Motaung’s petition “calls upon Kenya’s courts to order Fb and its outsourcing firms to finish exploitation in its Nairobi moderation hub, the place content material moderators work in harmful situations,” mentioned an announcement by Foxglove, a London-based authorized nonprofit that helps Fb content material moderators.

The primary video Motaung watched as a Fb moderator was a video of somebody being beheaded, he informed reporters throughout a name Tuesday. He stayed on the job for roughly six months, after relocating from South Africa to Nairobi in 2019 for the work. Motaung says he was dismissed after making an attempt to spearhead efforts to unionise on the facility.

Motaung mentioned his job was traumatising and he now has a concern of dying.

“I had potential,” Motaung mentioned. “Once I went to Kenya, I went to Kenya as a result of I wished to alter my life. I wished to alter the lifetime of my household. I got here out a special particular person, an individual who has been destroyed.”

Motaung says in his submitting that when he arrived in Kenya for that work, he was informed to signal a non-disclosure settlement and his pay was lower than promised, with one month-to-month paycheck that was KES 40,000, or roughly $350 (roughly Rs. 27,000).

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The lawsuit notes that Sama targets individuals from poor households throughout Kenya, South Africa, Ethiopia, Somalia, Uganda and different international locations within the area with “deceptive job advertisements” that fail to reveal that they are going to be working as Fb content material moderators or viewing disturbing content material that expose them to psychological well being woes.

Candidates are recruited “via deceit,” mentioned Mercy Mutemi, who filed the petition in courtroom Tuesday morning. “We discovered lots of Africans had been pressured into drive labour conditions and human trafficking. If you go away your nation for a job that you just did not apply for, that quantities to human trafficking.”

Content material moderators should not given sufficient medical protection to hunt psychological well being remedy, the submitting alleges.

The lawsuit additionally seeks orders for Fb and Sama to respect moderators’ proper to unionise.

Meta’s workplace in Nairobi mentioned it takes severely its duty to individuals who assessment content material for the corporate and requires its “companions to supply industry-leading pay, advantages and assist,” in keeping with an announcement issued by the corporate’s spokeswoman.

”We additionally encourage content material reviewers to lift points once they turn into conscious of them and often conduct unbiased audits to make sure our companions are assembly the excessive requirements we anticipate of them,” the assertion mentioned.

In 2020, Fb agreed to pay $52 million (roughly Rs. 401 crore) to US content material moderators who filed a category motion lawsuit after they had been repeatedly uncovered to beheadings, baby and sexual abuse, animal cruelty, terrorism and different disturbing content material.

Sama, which describes itself as an moral AI firm, didn’t instantly present remark.

Sama’s Nairobi location is the most important content material moderation facility in Africa, with roughly 240 workers engaged on the hassle, in keeping with the submitting.

“We’re not animals,” Motaung mentioned within the assertion. “We’re individuals — and we should be handled as such.”