In 2025, the world’s largest social media firm, Meta, has taken a defiant new tone on the query of whether or not and to what extent it accepts duty for the real-world hurt that its platforms allow.
This has been broadly understood as a gambit to curry favour with President Donald Trump’s administration, and Meta CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg all however stated so in a January 7 video saying the tip of third-party fact-checking.
“We’re going to work with President Trump to push again on governments around the globe, going after American corporations and pushing to censor extra,” Zuckerberg stated, giving his product choices a definite geopolitical flavour.
To justify the corporate’s choices to get rid of fact-checking and reduce content material moderation on its platforms, Zuckerberg and Meta have appealed to the USA’ constitutional safety of the precise to freedom of expression. Thankfully, for these of us dwelling within the nations Meta has vowed to “push again on”, we’ve constitutions, too.
In Kenya, for instance, the place I signify a bunch of former Meta content material moderators in a class-action lawsuit in opposition to the corporate, the post-independence structure differs from these within the US and Western Europe with its express prioritisation of elementary human rights and freedoms. The constitutions of a fantastic many countries with colonial histories share this in frequent, a response to how these rights had been violated when their peoples had been first pressed into the worldwide economic system.
We at the moment are starting to see how these constitutions could be delivered to bear within the world know-how trade. In a landmark choice final September, the Kenyan Courtroom of Attraction dominated that content material moderators might deliver their human rights violations case in opposition to Meta within the nation’s labour courts.
Few within the West could have understood the significance of this ruling. Meta, for its half, absolutely does, which is why it fought in opposition to it tooth and nail in courtroom and continues to make use of each diplomatic device at its disposal to withstand the content material moderators’ calls for for redress. Meta has proven curiosity in interesting this choice to the Supreme Courtroom.
Meta and different main US corporations keep a convoluted company structure to keep away from publicity to taxes and regulation within the dozens of nations the place they do enterprise. They generally declare to not function in nations the place they depend hundreds of thousands of customers and make use of a whole bunch to refine their merchandise. Till now, these claims have not often been challenged in courtroom.
The case content material moderators have introduced in courtroom is that they had been employed by a enterprise course of outsourcing (BPO) firm known as Sama, and put to work completely as content material moderators on Fb, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger through the interval from 2019 to 2023, when a lot of the moderation for African content material on these platforms was carried out in Nairobi. Meta disavows these employees and insists they had been employed solely by Sama, a problem presently being litigated earlier than the courts in Kenya.
These employees know that Meta’s obvious reversal on content material moderation is something however. As introduced of their grievances to the courtroom, the corporate has by no means taken the problem significantly. Not significantly sufficient to cease the civil and ethnic conflicts, political violence, and mob assaults in opposition to marginalised communities that thrive on its platforms. Not significantly sufficient to pay honest wages to the individuals tasked with ensuring it doesn’t. The hurt travels each methods: Poisonous content material inflames real-world horrors, and people horrors engender extra poisonous content material which saturates the platforms.
Content material moderators are digital cannon fodder for Meta in a struggle in opposition to dangerous content material that the corporate was by no means actually dedicated to combating. The case introduced by the Nairobi content material moderators explains how they accepted jobs they thought would contain name centre and translation work. As an alternative, they ended up in Meta’s content material moderation hub in Nairobi, the place they spent their days subjected to an countless torrent of streamed violence and abuse.
Lots of them had been pressured to view atrocities dedicated of their house nations in an effort to defend Meta’s customers from the harms of seeing these pictures and pictures. They absorbed that trauma so others of their communities didn’t must, and lots of discovered this to be a noble calling.
However this work took its toll on their psychological well being. Greater than 140 former content material moderators have been recognized with PTSD, despair, or anxiousness arising from their time on the job. A separate case addresses how efforts to unionise to advocate for higher psychological healthcare had been thwarted. What adopted was en masse layoffs and relocation of Fb content material moderation elsewhere.
This left behind a whole bunch of trauma-impacted individuals and a path of human rights violations. Meta argues that it by no means employed the Fb content material moderators and bore no duty to them. This litigation is ongoing, and the moderators now depend on the courts to unravel the complexities of their employment dynamics.
Whereas combating the case in courtroom, in March 2024, the corporate despatched a delegation led by its then-president of worldwide affairs, Nick Clegg – a former British deputy prime minister – to satisfy with Kenyan President William Ruto and legislators to debate, amongst different subjects, the corporate’s imaginative and prescient of partnership with the federal government in bringing the “generative AI revolution” to the continent. At a townhall occasion in December, Ruto assured Sama, Meta’s former content material moderation companion: “Now we’ve modified the regulation, so nobody can ever take you to courtroom once more on any matter,” referring to a invoice handed in Kenya’s parliament that shields Large Tech corporations from future instances similar to ours.
All this pushback occurred effectively earlier than Trump was re-elected, and these efforts seem like makes an attempt to evade accountability for the corporate’s labour practices and the results of its merchandise. However one thing outstanding occurred, which opens a door for others around the globe who labour on behalf of the tech trade however whom the trade itself disavows: The courtroom dominated that our case can proceed to trial.
The truth that the case has superior regardless of vigorous authorized and political challenges is a testomony to the revolutionary nature of post-colonial constitutions, which prioritise human rights above all else.
As our case in Kenya continues, I hope it could actually supply inspiration for tech employees in different post-colonial nations that they can also pursue accountability within the nations the place they’ve been harmed. The proper to freedom of expression is a crucial human proper, however we are going to proceed to remind Large Tech that equally essential are the precise to dignity and freedom from exploitation.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.