In May 2018 Facebook landed in Barcelona. In the midst of a reputation crisis due to the scandal Cambridge Analyticsthe giant of the social networks announced that it had chosen the iconic Glòries Tower in the Catalan capital to locate a content moderation center, a celebrated move that would employ 500 people.
However, it was not the dream that some expected. The job is to see murders, violations, suicides, animal abuse and all types of extreme content that are constantly published on the platform, detect if they violate the company’s policies and mark them for deletion. “If they had told me at the beginning what it consisted of, I would have said directly that I was not interested,” a person who participated in the selection process then explained to EL PERIÓDICO.
She dodged the bullet, but others who accepted and have paid a high price for it. This Friday, ‘La Vanguardia’ announced that an undetermined number of these employees have presented the first complaint in Spain against the group Telsusthe company subcontracted by Goal to perform that task. The complaint is for three crimes: against the rights of workers, against their moral integrity and for injuries due to serious negligence.
Some 400 of the reviewers, up to 20% of the staff in Barcelona, are on leave due to psychological trauma caused by the images they have had to supervise. Up to 6.5 billion posts with extreme content are reported every week.
Stress and suicide attempts
Their lawyers have reported that constant exposure to videos of brutal content has led their clients to suffer from insomnia, post-traumatic stress and even suicide attempts. suicide. Many have chosen to take leave due to disability.
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The criminal complaint filed on Friday still has a long way to go. A court must decide in the coming weeks whether or not to admit it for processing. Last year, the Labor Inspection of the Generalitat already sanctioned Telus for a infringement serious by not properly evaluating the psychosocial risks that this employment could cause to a worker. However, the company has appealed sanction.
In 2020, a court ruling from the Superior Court of San Mateo, California, ruled that Meta must pay $52 million in compensation to a total of 11,250 affected content moderators.