Last week La Vanguardia published a series of impact reports (1, 2, 3 and 4) on the psychological consequences suffered by social media content moderators who work in a company outside of Meta in Barcelona. The case of the workers of the Catalan capital is the first to reach the courts in Spain, but there are cases that already have a judicial journey in other parts of the world, such as the United States, Ireland and the most paradigmatic: Kenya.
184 former Facebook content moderators based in Nairobi (Kenya) announced, on Monday, the resumption of their legal actions against Meta for the working conditions in which they carried out their work between 2019 and 2023. All of them worked for Sama, a Meta subcontractor responsible for removing violent and hateful posts from Facebook. They were paid about 600 euros per month for filtering content of a highly traumatic nature. They were fired, according to them, when they wanted to unionize to denounce the situations to which they were exposed.
Their dismissals were suspended on June 2 by the Nairobi Employment and Labor Relations Court, pending a ruling on the case. In August, the two parties announced that they were going to begin mediation to reach an amicable out-of-court agreement, but negotiations broke down this week.
The court had also ordered payment of workers' salaries until the case was resolved. The plaintiffs claim that Meta deceived them. "Facebook owner Meta, along with subcontractor Sama, will be charged with contempt of court after ignoring court orders demanding payment of wages," the plaintiffs say in an official statement.
The lawyer for those affected, Mercy Mutemi, added in the letter that the accused “were not sincere.” "They kept telling us that they would contact us on a certain date, but they only responded to us at the end of last week with a minimum amount," he said, adding that if the companies wanted to move forward with talks, they "would be happy to continue". Furthermore, it should be noted that this legal dispute includes a third company, also a subcontracting company, called Majorel.
Meta, Facebook's parent company, uses both artificial intelligence and human moderators to detect and remove graphic content from the platform. However, the moderators described the traumatic nature of their work, which involves reviewing disturbing content during long work hours in exchange for a salary of approximately $630 a month, according to Sama.
The moderators who filed the lawsuit demand that Meta guarantee their right to join a union and discuss their working conditions. They also allege that they were unfairly denied the opportunity to work for Majorel, the contractor tasked with taking on moderation work in Africa after Sama ended its contract with Meta.
However, a recent twist in the case has added more complexity to the situation. Meta announced that he will not be able to continue his planned content moderation work with Majorel in Kenya due to a court order arising from this legal action. Hence the negotiations were paused.
For now, the parties involved are due to appear at a hearing scheduled for October 31, and litigation is expected to continue unless a significant compromise is reached between the parties.
This lawsuit is not the only legal challenge Meta faces in Kenya. The company is already facing legal accusations related to the role of its algorithm in the spread of hate and violence on social media during the conflict in Ethiopia.
