Facebook’s parent firm Meta may be sued in Kenya, a court concluded on Thursday, after 43 moderators at its Nairobi center sued the corporation and its local partner, Sama, last month for unjust firing.
While the validity of the moderators’ layoff is being decided, Judge Matthews Nduma ordered an interim injunction prohibiting Meta and Sama from terminating the moderators’ contracts.
Nduma said on Thursday that the court had jurisdiction to decide the case because “the court finds that this court has jurisdiction to determine the matter of alleged unlawful and unfair termination of employment on grounds of redundancy.”
The petition’s moderators, who now number 184, allege they were sacked because they complained about their working conditions or tried to join a union.
Juanita Jones, one of the petition’s moderators, stated, “I do this work because I believe in protecting people.”
According to Jones, “moderation is the frontline defense of the internet,” thus “it is time to value the work like it,” rather than dismissing it as a “dead end” activity.
The moderators claim Facebook’s changeover in contractors prevented them from applying for similar positions at another outsourcing business, Majorel of Luxembourg.
On Thursday, neither Meta nor Sama nor Majorel responded right away to calls for comment.
After a former moderator in the Nairobi hub filed a case against Meta in February, citing bad working conditions, a Kenyan labor court concluded that the company may be sued in the East African nation.
Cases like this may have far-reaching consequences for Meta’s worldwide partnership with content moderators. The American behemoth utilizes tens of thousands of moderators in different parts of the globe to examine the visual material that is uploaded to their service.
