More than 140 Facebook content moderators working in facilities in Kenya have been diagnosed with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) due to exposure to harmful social media content, such as murders, suicides, child sexual abuse, and terrorism.
Their job involved deciding whether posts (videos) on Facebook met safety guidelines, which exposed them to distressing content (suicides, child sexual abuse, etc.).
The images and videos caused some moderators to faint, vomit, scream, and run out of their offices, according to their testimonies.
The diagnoses were made as part of a lawsuit filed against Meta and the company that managed content moderation using employees from Africa.
At least 40 of the moderators in the case abused alcohol, drugs, including cannabis, cocaine, and amphetamines, as well as medications such as sleeping pills. Some reported the breakdown of their marriages, a loss of desire for sexual intimacy, and a disconnection from their families.
Some, whose job was to remove videos posted by terrorist and militant groups, feared they were being watched and that, if they returned to their home countries, they would be hunted down and killed.
Moderators from Kenya and other African countries were assigned from 2019 to 2023 to review posts from Africa and in their native languages, but they were paid eight times less than their colleagues in the U.S., according to documents from the lawsuit.
