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Complaint against Meta and Sama: "They come here and say they will save us only to exploit and throw us away"
Photo: BAZ RATNER / REUTERS
A lawsuit in Kenya could offer new insights into an important part of Facebook's engine room: the work of so-called content moderators.
They check thousands of times a day whether posts are deleted due to rule violations or remain online and play an important role in everyday life on Facebook and Instagram.
However, Facebook and its parent company Meta are reluctant to provide information about the working conditions of the moderators.
Former presenter Daniel Motaung, who worked for a Meta contractor in Kenya, filed a lawsuit in a Kenyan court on Tuesday over what he considers to be unconstitutional working conditions.
The lawsuit, directed against Meta and its contractor Sama, describes the work of Facebook moderators as intolerable: irregular pay, inadequate psychological support, sabotage of attempts to unionize, violations of privacy and human dignity.
The employees were recruited with misleading job offers in other countries and flown to Kenya under false promises that this was tantamount to human trafficking.
For $2.20 an hour, plaintiff Daniel Motaung told Time magazine he was forced to watch videos of beheadings and child sexual abuse until 2019.
What to expect was not explained to him beforehand.
In the meantime, he has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder: "I live a horror film".
Dangerous work environment
Shortly after Motaung tried to form a union to secure better working conditions for himself and his colleagues in Nairobi, he was fired.
According to Sama, the reason was that Motaung bullied and coerced colleagues.
"It's not okay that we're being exploited for the benefit of giant corporations," he told Time.
“They come here and say they will save us only to exploit and throw us away.
I want to end this.«
Motaung is now trying, among other things, to force financial compensation, equal treatment for external moderators with those employed directly by Meta, and an independent investigation into the Sama office, which is responsible for Facebook moderation in large parts of eastern and southern Africa.
According to his lawyers, Meta and Sama have created a dangerous work environment where employees do not have the same rights as in other countries.
The lawsuit could "have effects," said Odanga Madung of the Mozilla Foundation.
»Facebook will have to disclose a lot about how they manage their moderation.«
Meta declined to be named in the lawsuit
It would not be the first time.
Last year, for example, Facebook in California agreed with more than 10,000 external moderators to pay a total of $85 million in compensation for the damage caused by the continued exposure to violent images and other disturbing content.
Meta told Reuters news agency, "We take our responsibility for our content moderators seriously and require our partners to provide industry-leading pay and support." because Motaung was employed by Sama, not Meta.
Sama has so far denied all allegations.
pbe/Reuters