Facebook should respect the rights of all people in its supply chain

Content moderation takes a heavy toll on workers because they must watch and review incredibly violent content. [iStockphoto]

Five weeks ago, I wrote about the plight of content moderators working for Sama, a California based company subcontracted by Facebook (Meta), to do content moderation for Africa in Kenya. The story was broken in a Time magazine investigation titled 'Inside Facebook’s African Sweatshop'. It alleged poor working conditions, poor pay and allegations of union-busting on content moderators whose work tackles hate speech, incitement, violence, harassment and other problematic content on Facebook.

Content moderation takes a heavy toll on workers because they must watch and review incredibly violent content such as pictures and videos of sexual abuse, self-harm, murders, suicides, assaults, child abuse, and scenes from armed conflicts.