Meta Appeals Against Kenyan Court's Decision Allowing Company to Be Sued in Country

Formerly known as Samasource, Sama was the largest outsourcing partner of Meta* in Africa, providing moderating services for the American company before the two businesses were accused of forced labor, human trafficking, and other human rights violations.

American transnational business Meta* has appealed against a ruling by a Kenyan labor court whereby the company could be sued in Kenya.

According to the decision, this could happen despite the fact that Meta has no official presence in the East African country.

The court made the ruling after a former content moderator for the company, Daniel Motaung, filed a lawsuit against Meta for poor working conditions.

The appeal by Meta objected to the court's claim that Kenya had jurisdiction over the American company which functioned in the country via Sama, a US-based organization holding operations in Kenya, which ceased to provide services for Meta last month.

On 10 May, Daniel Motaung filed a suit accusing Meta and Sama of union busting, wage theft, racial discrimination, psychological torture, unequal pay for equal work, human trafficking, and other offences.

In an interview with Sputnik, commenting on the case, Barbara Lazarotto, PhD researcher in law and Marie-Sklodowska Curie Actions fellow at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, said that the ruling of the Kenyan labor court established a strong precedent for Meta employees to sue the company in countries where it has no official presence but outsources its activities.

"Hopefully, this will affect Meta's modus operandi in human-run operations for content moderation, which has been a target of criticism owing to poor working conditions and its consequent adverse effects on the mental health of workers," the expert stated.

According to Motaung's earlier statements, it had not been said in the job description that candidates would be content moderators or suffer the disturbing content that triggered trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Before that, an investigation by US media revealed that some employees of the company were paid as little as $1.50 an hour.

*Meta is outlawed as an extremist organization in Russia.