Facebook content moderators in Kenya sue Meta for unfair dismissal

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
20 Mar 2023 22:30

This lawsuit follows Meta's announcement last week of its plans to cut down on 10,000 jobs and remove 5,000 open positions.

Kenyan lawyer Mercy Mutemi in Nairobi speaking to the press after filing a lawsuit against Meta (AFP)

After two months of legal procedures, the 43 Facebook content moderators in Kenya who were fired back in January are suing the company's parent Meta for unfair dismissal, as per a statement released on Monday.

"In January, 260 content moderators working at Facebook's moderation hub in Nairobi, Kenya, were told that they would be made redundant by Sama, the outsourcing firm that has run the office since 2019," the statement said, adding, "Overnight, these moderators doing critical safety work for East and South Africa lost their jobs."

Meta has been aiming at cutting down jobs by the next six months, especially in the tech sector. In a second round of layoffs, Meta announced last week its plans to cut down on 10,000 jobs and remove 5,000 open positions.

In a blog post, co-founder of the Facebook parent company and CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that the plans are meant to move lower-priority projects out of the way and reduce the rates of people hired. This came as part of the company's "year of efficiency."

"In the biggest legal challenge yet to Meta's African operations, 43 moderators at Facebook's Nairobi moderation hub are suing the social media firm and its outsourcers for sacking the entire workforce -- and for blacklisting all the laid-off workers."

Meta tries to block the suit

The case goes back to December when a $2 billion fund for the victims of Facebook hate crimes was brought against Facebook, in Kenya's High Court, following its contribution to the spread of violence and hatred during the civil war in Ethiopia.

Abraham Meareg, the son of an Ethiopian scholar who was killed after being harassed in Facebook posts, is one of those bringing the case against Meta. The case was put forward in Kenya given that in Nairobi, Kenya's capital, Meta maintains a hub for content moderation.

A Meta representative responded to these allegations and noted that hate speech and incitement to violence are against Facebook's regulations. The representative was cited saying that "our safety-and-integrity work in Ethiopia is guided by feedback from local civil society organizations and international institutions," the representative said.

In February, Meta attempted to stop the filing of a lawsuit against it on the basis of workplace exploitation and work conditions, but a court in Kenya blocked it.

A former content moderator at the contractor company Sama, responsible for reviewing Facebook posts, filed the lawsuit on account of Kenyan workers subjected to forced labor, unequal pay, and no right to unionize. Meta responded by saying that the local employment and labor relations court have no jurisdiction over the case since Meta neither trades in nor is based in the country.