The Nairobi Court of Appeal confirmed on Friday, September 20, the jurisdiction of the Kenyan courts to hear two cases brought by former content moderators for Facebook against the giant Meta and two subcontractors to denounce their working conditions and dismissals.
This decision, consulted by AFP, opens the way to the continuation in this East African country of a legal battle launched more than two years ago and aimed in particular at having the Californian social network group, also owner of Instagram and Whatsapp, recognized as the principal.
A first complaint was filed in May 2022 by Daniel Motaung, a South African content moderator who worked in Nairobi for the company Sama, Meta’s subcontractor responsible for removing violent and hateful posts from Facebook between 2019 and 2023.
He denounces “undignified” working conditions, deceptive hiring methods, irregular and insufficient remuneration as well as the absence of psychological support. He also claims to have been dismissed after trying to form a union.
Another complaint filed in March 2023 brings together 185 moderators who claim to have been unduly dismissed in early 2023 by Sama, which ended its content moderation activity and was replaced by Majorel, also targeted by the complaint.
They are also seeking compensation for their “insufficient” salaries in light of the “risk to which they were exposed” and the “damage caused to their mental health.”
Meta can appeal to Supreme Court
In both cases, Meta’s lawyers argued that the group could not be tried in Kenya, where it has no business itself and is not a direct employer.
The Court of Appeal found “consistent” with a June 2023 decision by the Nairobi Employment and Industrial Relations Court (ELRC), which had rejected this argument by holding that Meta was “the owner of the digital work and the digital workspace.”
The American group, which can still appeal to the Supreme Court, did not immediately respond.
“This is an important decision. The fact that Meta is being prosecuted in Kenya is a warning to all big tech companies that they need to pay attention to human rights abuses throughout their value chains,” the content moderators’ lawyer, Mercy Mutemi, said in a statement.
The Court of Appeal, however, overturned another ELRC decision ordering the suspension of dismissals and payment of wages until the case was resolved.
Meta’s subcontracting system called into question
These cases brought before the Kenyan courts aim to denounce a subcontracting system which allows Meta, according to its detractors, to escape its responsibility.
Meta outsources content moderation on Facebook to companies that operate in more than 20 locations around the world and process more than two million items daily, according to data provided by the group to AFP in June 2023.
The Meta group, which does not wish to comment on the details of the cases, assured AFP that it requires its subcontractors to provide psychological assistance, available 24/7.
These cases are the most significant on the subject of content moderation since a class action launched in 2018 in the United States.
In May 2020, Facebook agreed to pay $52 million to moderators as compensation for the effects of their work on their mental health.
In Nairobi, an attempt at mediation for an out-of-court settlement failed. Moderators ended the discussions in October 2023, saying Meta and Sama were “wasting time and being insincere.”
Meta is the target of another case in the Kenyan capital, in which a Kenyan NGO and two Ethiopian citizens accuse the platform of inaction in the face of online hate speech in Africa, which they say led to the murder of a university professor in Ethiopia.
AFP is a Meta partner, providing fact-checking services in Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa.
With AFP
By The editorial staffEditorial Committee – Casablanca
