Ghana lawyers gear up for Meta lawsuits

Lawyers in Ghana are gearing up for court action involving Meta after meeting content moderators at a facility in Ghana that is understood to employ about 150 people. The Guardian says Meta is facing is a second set of lawsuits in Africa over the psychological distress experienced by content moderators employed to take down disturbing social media posts. Moderators in Accra claim they have suffered from depression, anxiety, insomnia and substance abuse as a direct consequence of the work they do and this case comes after more than 140 Facebook content moderators in Kenya were diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder caused by exposure to graphic social media content. Ghana’s moderators claim mental health care offered by the firm was unhelpful, was not delivered by medical doctors, and that personal disclosures they made were circulated among managers. The legal case is being prepared by a UK-based non-profit, Foxglove. The organisation’s co-executive director, Martha Dark, said the conditions in Ghana were ‘the worst conditions I have seen in six years of working with social media content moderators around the world. In Ghana, Meta is displaying nothing short of a complete disregard for the humanity of its key safety workers upon whom all its profits rely: content moderators.’ Majorel, the company contracted to Meta and at the centre of the allegations in Ghana, is owned by French multinational Teleperformance. A spokesperson for Teleperformance said it employed licensed mental health professionals to help moderators and claimed monthly pay was roughly 10 times the country’s minimum wage for domestic moderators. The base wage starts at about 1 300 Ghanaian cedis a month – just over £64.

Full report on The Guardian site