A former Meta employee in Kenya has alleged that the Facebook owner made the company’s employees work unreasonably long shifts for very little pay.
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A labor court in Kenya has said in one of its decisions that employees of Metta, the company that owns Facebook, can file a lawsuit against their employer if they face unfair conditions. The court pronounced this decision on the legal petition of a former employee of Meta.
Meta’s position against the application was that Facebook’s operations in Kenya do not fall under the jurisdiction of the courts and therefore the application filed against the company should be dismissed.
But delivering his judgment, Judge Jacob Gekiri said, “Since the petition raises certain issues which are yet to be determined, it is not in the interest of this country to exclude the two respondents (names) in this case.” So it won’t be right.”
Why did the ex-Meta employee file the application?
Daniel Motong, who worked as a moderator for Facebook in Kenya, accused his former company of making employees work in inappropriate conditions and taking advantage of the situation. He said that while working for Meta, he was exposed to material that depicted rape, torture and beheadings, which threatened his mental health and that of many of his colleagues. .
Motong claimed that Metta did not provide any assistance to employees regarding these issues, instead forcing its employees to work unreasonably long shifts for low wages. Motong was employed at Facebook’s African hub in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, which is run by a company called Samsource Limited. The court will consider the next step on March 8 after Judge Jacob Gekiri’s decision on their application.
Another lawsuit on Meta
In addition to the case, Metta is also facing legal action related to the promotion of hateful content on Facebook during the conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigrai region.
A lawsuit was filed against Meta in December last year by two Ethiopian researchers and a human rights organization in Kenya. According to court documents, Metta not only failed to moderate violent posts related to the dispute, but also promoted dangerous posts about it.
The petitioners say that one such post was published before the killing of the father of one of them. They also allege that Meta, the company that owns Facebook, handles content related to crises in Africa more laxly than other crises in the world.
