A group of 43 Facebook moderators sacked in January have said they are pursuing a lawsuit in Kenya against the social network’s parent company Meta for, among other things, “unlawful dismissal,” according to a statement posted Monday.
As a sign of the challenges the internet industry is facing, Meta, which also includes Instagram and WhatsApp, has decided to downsize its employment by about 25% in less than six months.
“In January, 260 content moderators working at Facebook’s moderation center in Nairobi, Kenya, were informed that they would be let go by Sama, the outsourcing company that has run the office since 2019. Overnight, these moderators doing critical work for East and Southern Africa have lost their jobs,” the statement said.
“43 moderators at Facebook’s moderation center in Nairobi are filing a lawsuit against the social media company and its contractors for firing the entire workforce – and for blacklisting all the fired workers,” the statement continued.
A Kenyan NGO and two Ethiopian residents filed a complaint against Meta in Kenya in December 2022, accusing the platform of failing to combat online hatred sufficiently and asking the establishment of a 1.6 billion dollar fund to pay victims.
Facebook, which changed its name to Meta at the end of 2021, has been experiencing a dip in online advertising since last year after boasting outrageous growth since its founding.
