The case of Facebook moderator Daniel Motaung, the opponent of his former employer Sama, a subcontractor of Meta Platforms in Kenya, has taken a serious turn. The social media giant, owner of Facebook, is notably accused of human trafficking, forced labor and union repression.
This Monday, May 9, Daniel Motaung, a former South African employee of the Kenyan company Samasource, filed a new complaint in Nairobi, this time against Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook. Meta had outsourced its Facebook social network content moderation services to Sama for years. And Daniel Motaung, who was moderator, precisely, had denounced the working conditions within Sama.
According to Kenyan media, new evidence has been found implicating Meta's European HQ in Dublin, Ireland. Meta and Sama are said to have decided together on the working conditions of Facebook moderators. And the latter were, according to Daniel Motaung and the other employees of the group he represents – their identities and their number were kept secret by the prosecution – to say the least infernal.
What relaunch the case in civil, in addition to the criminal trial which begins, following a press article entitled " Inside Facebook's African Sweatshops ". An article in which the Time USA media seized on the story of Daniel Motaung and his colleagues. In short, Motaung had been fired after trying to create a union for hundreds of his colleagues. He had felt driven to act after he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), due to the content he is exposed to in the course of his work and the lack of psychiatric follow-up, among other poor conditions at Sama's premises.
🚨 BREAKING 🚨 A lawsuit filed in a Kenyan court today accuses Facebook and Sama of multiple violations of the Kenyan constitution, including human trafficking (!) and union-busting.
My story:https://t.co/SbtumcazdO
— Billy Perrigo (@billyperrigo) May 10, 2022
The nightmare of African Facebook moderators
Daniel Motaung summed up his terrible working conditions: “For about $2,2 an hour, I had to watch hundreds of hours of shocking content, including beheadings and child sexual abuse. I regularly had flashbacks and nightmares. Having to watch videos of innocent people being kidnapped and murdered has left me with great anxiety in public spaces and difficulty finding another job.” Same diagnosis among his colleagues.
"If people in Dublin (employees of Meta, editor's note) cannot watch this kind of content for two hours, that should be the rule everywhere," said Motaung's lawyer, Mercy Mutemi. She also explains to the media that Kenyan law provides that the working conditions of subcontractors must in no case be more difficult than those within the client company. The lawyer also recalls that the freedom of trade union association is guaranteed by the Constitution.
According to The Continent newspaper, "This story could become Facebook's most epic fight in Africa". Indeed, Facebook is not in its first round before the African courts. In several countries, the social network has been implicated in several cases of unfair competition, tax evasion, obstruction of the freedom to work… The case of Daniel Motaung and his colleagues concerns human trafficking. Because in addition to the psychological disorders from which the Kenyan moderators suffer because of the content treated, the inhuman working hours, the union repression and the pay which does not even amount to the Kenyan minimum wage in some cases (400 dollars), will be strong arguments of the complaining party.