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The global trade union movement marked International Workers’ Memorial Day (IWMD) on April 28, focusing on technology and workplace health and safety. UNI Global Union convened content moderators from around the world in Nairobi, Kenya. The meeting aimed to create a shared strategy for making content moderation work safe and sustainable.
Content moderators, who play a crucial role in shielding social media users from harmful material, often face traumatic experiences due to exposure to disturbing content. Sonia Kgomo, an organizer with African Tech Workers Rising and a former Facebook content moderator from Kenya, described the challenges of the job. "For two years, I spent up to ten hours a day staring at child abuse, human mutilation, racist attacks and the darkest parts of the internet so you did not have to. You could not stop if you saw something traumatic. You could not stop for your mental health. You could not stop to go to the bathroom. You just could not stop. We were told the client, in our case Facebook, required us to keep going."
Kgomo emphasized the demanding nature of the work, exacerbated by close performance tracking by the outsourcing firm Sama. "Moderators’ performance was closely tracked, often given just seconds to evaluate each piece of troubling content," she noted.
