Moderators hired from across Africa, including Morocco, Kenya, Ghana, Ethiopia, Uganda, Somalia, and South Africa, say they review the most toxic content and earn as little as $1.50 an hour. Tech giants are accused of not hiring enough workers proficient in African languages and outsourcing work to firms located in countries with lax labor laws. Meta’s independent Oversight Board in late 2021 recommended a review of how Facebook and Instagram have been used to spread content that heightens the risk of violence in Ethiopia. Meta has said it does not put a time limit on reviewing content. Former workers allege that they had to watch and evaluate a new video every 55 seconds. One person described watching a video of a person being burned alive in a cage. The petitioners allege that Facebook’s algorithm amplified genocidal posts in Ethiopia, which led to the murder of a university professor and half a million other deaths during the Tigray War. “At that time, for 117 million people in Ethiopia with 87 languages, there were about 25 content moderators speaking three of those languages,” Crider said. “Content moderation everywhere is a difficult, stressful, and potentially psycho-toxic job,” said Cori Crider, a director at Foxglove, a London-based nonprofit legal firm that is supporting former African moderators with their cases.Īrmed conflict across parts of Africa has fueled particularly horrific content, such as during Ethiopia’s two-year civil war. In April, the Kenyan High Court ruled that a $1.6 billion lawsuit can go ahead against Meta by Kenya’s Katiba Institute and two Ethiopian individuals suing the tech giant for failing to adequately moderate online hate speech in Africa. No union was formed,” though it did acknowledge that “a collection of workers came together to threaten to strike.” Sama said it had mandated that content moderators take an hour and a half of wellness and meal breaks per day and provided onsite counseling sessions, available 24/7. Allegations of union busting are not correct. In an emailed statement, Sama representatives said that “Sama disputes the claims made in this case. He alleges that he was unlawfully dismissed after attempting to unionize for better pay and working conditions. Motaung alleges that content moderators in Kenya were subjected to undignified working conditions and were not provided with mental health care after being exposed on the job to graphically violent content. In February, Nairobi’s labor court ruled that it had authority to hear a case filed by Daniel Motaung, a former Sama employee from South Africa working on Facebook content moderation in Kenya. In all, Meta has argued that it cannot be sued in Kenya because it is not registered there. It is the latest in a series of significant blows to Facebook’s parent company, which is facing three court cases overall in Kenya-the first cases brought by workers to be filed outside the United States. “We fundamentally disagree with this interim ruling and we have appealed it,” a Meta spokesperson told Foreign Policy by email. “There is nothing in the arrangements to absolve the first and second respondents as the primary and principal employers of the content moderators,” the 142-page ruling read. On June 2, the court said the moderators did Meta’s work, used its technology and platform, adhered to its metrics, and therefore Sama was “merely an agent … or manager.” Meta argued that it does not employ Sama’s sacked staff. Sama, a U.S.-based outsourcing company, quit content moderation services in January following a lawsuit alleging worker exploitation and union-busting. The case has potentially global implications for tech workers, including sacked employees in Twitter’s only African office who are pursuing legal action. The lawsuit alleges that Meta and its third-party contractor Sama fired workers illegally in January after failing to issue them with appropriate redundancy notices as required by Kenyan law. The legal troubles of Meta, Facebook’s parent corporation, in Africa look set to continue after a Kenyan court ruled that Meta can be sued for unfair dismissal and blocked the sacking of 184 African tech workers hired as Facebook moderators. Court Cases Across Africa Could Shake Up Big Tech
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