For the second time this year, a Kenyan judge has rejected attempts by tech giant Meta to not…
For the second time this year, a Kenyan judge has rejected attempts by tech giant Meta to not answer to Kenyan justice over alleged unlawful layoffs of staff.
The first refusal came in February when a Kenyan labour court decided that Meta could be prosecuted for allegedly having terrible working conditions after one former moderator at the Nairobi hub filed a claim against it.
After 43 moderators at the Nairobi headquarters of Facebook’s parent company Meta last month filed a case against the corporation and its local partner Sama for unjust termination, a Kenyan High Court judge today determined that Meta could be sued in Kenya.
“The court finds that this court has jurisdiction to determine the matter of alleged unlawful and unfair termination of employment on grounds of redundancy,” Nduma said on Thursday.
Reuters reports that the moderators, who are now 184 in number, in a petition, said they were fired in retaliation for complaints about working conditions and attempts to form a union.
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What you should know
This case began last year when Meta was sued for $2 billion in Kenya’s High Court for allegedly encouraging hate speech, inciting ethnic conflict, and failing to moderate content in Eastern and Southern Africa. Meta and Sama, the sub-contractor, have faced many legal issues with their content moderation policies, the workplace culture, and the negligence of employees’ mental health.
And then in January this year, executives told all 260 moderators at Facebook’s moderation hub in Sama Nairobi that they were being made redundant and would lose their jobs. But later on, it surfaced that the positions were not, in fact, redundant but that Facebook was merely switching suppliers to another outsourcer, Majorel.
Meanwhile, this came after the firm shut down its content moderation division to focus on labelling work (computer vision data annotation). The Labour Court, however, prevented Sama from firing more than 200 moderators at its hub in Kenya.
Recruiters also allegedly told the existing moderators that they were effectively blacklisted from applying for the new roles at the Luxembourg-based Majorel after Facebook switched contractors – a move the moderators say amounts to an unlawful blacklist of moderators and is punishment for organising.
In response, Facebook made a similar argument to one it had previously made in another pending moderator case – brought by union leader Daniel Motaung – saying it lacked a registered office in Kenya, did not trade in Kenya, and therefore could not be subject to Kenyan jurisdiction at all.
Today’s ruling rejects Facebook’s argument.
It ruled that Facebook could not take any further action to fire these Sama moderators or switch the provider to Majorel, and it ordered that the whole trial contesting the layoff be listed as a priority.
Content moderation shouldn’t be used to try and make huge profits for Facebook – they should be treated like law enforcement. You don’t hire police to try and make money – you hire them to stop crimes. It’s the same with content moderation.”
It is unclear how the social media platform intends to riggle itself out of the current lawsuit other than to go ahead with the trial and get a favourable or unfavourable judgment. Either way, it continues to suffer huge damage to its operation in Africa and the accumulated cost of having Sama as a subcontractor. Sama’s contract was supposed to expire on March 31st
On the other hand, Majorel is protesting against the court orders as it is prohibiting it from providing content review services to Meta, claiming that they endanger both its business continuity and the livelihoods of the 200 moderators it hired after establishing a hub in Kenya late last year.