Forty-three ex-employees of content moderation firm Sama are suing Meta, a former client of Sama.
The suit alleges that the social media giant instructed their new content moderation partner, Majorel, to blacklist those former employees.
These ex-employees are also suing their former employer, Sama, claiming they were given the boot in an unlawful manner.
According to TrendsKe, the moderators claim that Sama failed to issue proper redundancy notices and didn’t follow the required 30-day termination notice.
They also allege that their terminal dues were tied to signing non-disclosure documents.
However, Sama denies all of these allegations and insists they followed Kenyan law.
They say they communicated their decision to discontinue content moderation in a town hall meeting and followed up with an email and notification letter.
The company claims they even conducted a survey to make the process and compensation as clear as possible.
Sama is therefore denying the accusation just like it denied the allegations in a 2022 lawsuit by a former content moderator, Daniel Motaung.
Danied had accused the Kenya-based company of forced labour, human trafficking, unfair labour relations, and union busting.
The company has also been accused of running a “content moderation sweatshop” for artificial intelligence start-up, OpenAI.
TrendsKe reports that this current suit is the third Meta is facing in Kenya, after another case was filed in December by Ethiopians over claims that the social media giant had failed to employ enough safety measures on Facebook, which, in turn, fueled the conflicts that have led to deaths, including the father of one of the petitioners, and 500,000 Ethiopians during the Tigray War that ended late last year.
