Foxglove
1,000 signatures reached
To: Mark Zuckerberg
Facebook: Stop exploiting your workers
Dear Mark Zuckerberg,
Facebook is one of the biggest, richest and most powerful companies in the world. It shouldn’t be profiting from exploitation of its workers.
Yet Facebook’s content moderators, the vital workers responsible for protecting us from dangerous content online, are understaffed, poorly-paid and routinely face dangerous working conditions.
I stand in solidarity with all Facebook moderators, and call on you to:
- Declare you will respect moderators’ rights to organise, by posting a statement in every content moderation office about moderators’ right to form a union;
- Pay workers better — content moderation is hazardous work and requires pay that recognises that danger;
- Protect content moderators by giving them access to real medical and psychological care — not wellness coaches;
- End the harmful outsourcing that is driving abuses — content moderators need the same rights as Facebook staff.
Why is this important?
It is the job of Facebook content moderators to try and make the platform safe. This means reviewing every post that is either reported by a user or flagged by Facebook’s automated tools from its 3 billion users. For context, around 130,000 images are uploaded to Facebook every minute.
The work can be harrowing, with content moderators having to look at some of the worst material on the internet. This includes murder, gruesome violence, hate speech and the sexual exploitation of children. Outsourced content moderators don’t receive proper mental health support and many develop PTSD as a result of their experience.
This year, TIME magazine (https://time.com/6147458/facebook-africa-content-moderation-employee-treatment/) revealed chilling abuse at Facebook's content moderation centre in Nairobi, Kenya.
Workers reported exploitation and unlawful union-busting at the Nairobi office, run by Sama — the US company who Facebook use as its main provider of outsourced content moderation in Africa.
For this harrowing and dangerous work, TIME revealed workers are paid as little as $2.20 per hour. Sign this petition today in solidarity with them and all Facebook content moderators around the world.
