Aside from losing the two co-founders of Instagram from its executive officers, Facebook is also dealing with a new lawsuit brought on by one of its thousands of contract content moderators. According to the New York Times, Selena Scola is arguing that the Silicon Valley giant “failed to protect her and other contractors as they viewed distressing videos and photographs of rapes, suicides, beheadings and other killings.” Her complaint was filed in the San Mateo County Superior Court on Friday.
In the complaint, Scola claims that her PTSD is set off “when she touches a computer mouse, enters a cold building, watches violence on television, hears loud noises or is startled.” The lawsuit also points to the seemingly impossible, if not outright gargantuan, task that Facebook has set for its 7,500 contract content moderators from around the world. For despite their numbers, Scola notes that they must “sift through 10 million potentially rule-breaking posts per week.”
Facebook’s director of corporate communications, Bertie Thomson, said in a statement that they “recognize that this work can often be difficult”:
“That is why we take the support of our content moderators incredibly seriously, starting with their training, the benefits they receive, and ensuring that every person reviewing Facebook content is offered psychological support and wellness resources.”
Users familiar with the social media platform didn’t need John Oliver to tell them that the website is a “toilet,” though his explanation regarding its rather distressing uses (and abuses) globally are nonetheless… distressing. With the 2018 midterms just around the corner, however, people who are extremely online are even more aware than usual when it comes to Facebook’s garbage practices in terms of what content is, and isn’t allowed to flourish. Y’all remember Alex Jones, yes?
(Via New York Times)