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A Kenyan court has ruled that Meta is the main employer of content moderators suing the social media giant and its content review partner in Africa, Sama, for wrongful dismissal. The 184 moderators, in the lawsuit filed in March this year, also alleged that Majorel, Meta’s new content review partner on the continent, blacklisted them at Meta’s behest.
Judge Byram Ongaya of Kenya’s Employment and Labor Relations Court on Friday watered down the social media giant’s plan to withdraw from the case by saying the moderators were doing Meta’s job, using the technology for the job and adhering to performance and accuracy stats . The court said Sama was “just an agent…or manager”. Sama disputed this saying “Meta is a client of Sama’s and Sama is not legally authorized to act on Meta’s behalf.”
Meta did not respond to a request for comment.
The latest development is a blow to Meta, which has tried to distance itself from the petition by saying it is not the moderators’ employer.
“The evidence is that the obligation to provide the digital work of content moderation belongs to the first and second respondents who provided the digital or virtual workspace for the applicants. The first and second respondents exercise control by imposing operational requirements and performance standards. The first and second respondents subsequently reimbursed the fee through the agent [Sama]”, said the court.
“The third respondent [Sama] acted as an agent of the owner’s work of content moderation the first and second respondents [Meta Platforms Inc and Meta Platforms Ireland Limited]there is nothing in the arrangements to dismiss the first and second respondents as the primary and main employers of the content moderators.
In addition, the court ordered that moderators’ contracts be renewed and prohibited Meta and Sama from firing them, pending the decision of the case. The court issued the directions, saying there was no appropriate justification for the layoffs, and that it had “found that the content moderation job is available. In the meantime, the applicants continue to work on the current or better conditions.”
Moderators, hired from across the continent, including from Ethiopia, Uganda, Somalia and South Africa, scour social media posts on Meta’s platforms to remove content that perpetuates hate, misinformation and violence.
The moderators claim that Sama illegally fired them after they failed to issue notices of dismissal as required by Kenyan law. Among other things, the lawsuit also alleges that the moderators were not given 30 days’ notice and that their dues are tied to signing non-disclosure documents.
Sama told TechCrunch in the past that it complied with Kenyan law and communicated the decision to end content moderation at a town hall and via email and notice letters.
Sama, whose clients include OpenAI, discontinued Meta’s contract and content review services and issued resignation notices to 260 moderators to focus on labeling work (computer vision data annotation).
Meta and Sama face two other lawsuits in Kenya; Daniel Motaung, a South African, sued the company for labor and human trafficking, unfair labor relations, breaking up unions and failing to provide “adequate” mental health and psychosocial support. Motaung claims he was fired for organizing a strike in 2019 and trying to unite Sama workers.
Ethiopians sued again in December last year over claims the social media giant had not taken enough security measures on Facebook, which in turn fueled conflicts that resulted in deaths, including the father of one of the petitioners, and 500,000 Ethiopians during the Tigray War.
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