{"id":6569,"date":"2023-08-23T18:18:26","date_gmt":"2023-08-23T13:18:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/?p=6569"},"modified":"2023-08-23T18:18:28","modified_gmt":"2023-08-23T13:18:28","slug":"kenyan-court-says-meta-and-sacked-moderators-to-pursue-settlement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/news\/kenyan-court-says-meta-and-sacked-moderators-to-pursue-settlement\/","title":{"rendered":"Kenyan court says Meta and sacked moderators to pursue settlement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Facebook’s parent company Meta has agreed to pursue an out-of-court settlement with 184 content moderators who filed a lawsuit claiming unfair dismissal, according to legal documents seen by AFP on Wednesday.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The layoffs announced in January followed the end of a contract between Meta and Sama, a company hired to moderate Facebook content in east and southern Africa since 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Kenyan court in June suspended the mass sacking and barred Facebook’s new subcontractor, Luxembourg-headquartered Majorel, from blacklisting the moderators from applying for the same roles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The parties shall pursue an out of court settlement of this petition through mediation,” the consent agreement said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kenya’s former chief justice Willy Mutunga and an official from the labour ministry will mediate the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The proceedings of the mediation shall be confidential except the final agreement reached… and adopted as an order of the court,” the  agreement said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A source close to the petitioners said the agreement would take effect on Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The content moderators are seeking compensation for “damage caused to their mental health and general wellbeing as a result of the constant exposure to toxic content”, according to court documents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Silicon Valley behemoth and the moderators have 21 days to reach a settlement. If they fail to do so, the case will be heard by the employment and labour relations court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meta did not immediately respond to request for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meta — which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp — has faced scrutiny over the working conditions of content moderators who say they spend hours focused on hateful, disturbing posts with little regard for their well-being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company is facing two other legal cases in Kenya.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2022, a former South African employee of Sama, Daniel Motaung, filed a complaint in Kenya against Sama and Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He alleged, among other things, poor working conditions and a lack of mental health support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The labour relations court in Nairobi declared in February it had the jurisdiction to try Motaung’s case. Meta has appealed the decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The social media giant is also facing another complaint in Kenya, where a local NGO and two Ethiopian citizens have accused Meta of failing to act against online hate speech in Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The complainants alleged that this inaction resulted in the murder of a university professor in Ethiopia, and called for the creation of a $1.6-billion fund to compensate victims of hate and violence incited on Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AFP is involved in a partnership with Meta providing fact-checking services in Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Facebook’s parent company Meta has agreed to pursue an out-of-court settlement with 184 content moderators who filed a lawsuit claiming unfair dismissal, according to legal documents seen by AFP on Wednesday. The layoffs announced in January followed the end of a contract between Meta and Sama, a company hired to moderate Facebook content in east […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":6570,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,2,5,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-law","category-news","category-sciencetech","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6569"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}