“Meta faces Ghana lawsuits over impact of extreme content on moderators”, 27 April 2025

Meta is facing a second set of lawsuits in Africa over the psychological distress experienced by content moderators employed to take down disturbing social media content including depictions of murders, extreme violence and child sexual abuse.

Lawyers are gearing up for court action against a company contracted by Meta, … , after meeting moderators at a facility in Ghana that is understood to employ about 150 people.

Moderators … claim they have suffered from depression, anxiety, insomnia and substance abuse as a direct consequence of the work they do checking extreme content.

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It comes after more than 140 Facebook content moderators in Kenya were diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder caused by exposure to graphic social media content.

… Majorel, the company at the centre of the allegations in Ghana, is owned by the French multinational Teleperformance.

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Facebook … employ armies of content moderators, often based in the poorest parts of the world, to remove posts that breach their community standards and to train AI systems to do the same.

Moderators are required to review distressing and often brutal pictures and videos to establish whether they should be removed from Meta’s platforms. …

The moderators claim mental health care offered by the firm was unhelpful, was not delivered by medical doctors, and that personal disclosures made by staff about the effects of their work were circulated among managers.

Teleperformance disputed this, …

The legal case is being prepared by a UK-based nonprofit, Foxglove. It would be the second case brought by content moderators in Africa,...

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It is working with a Ghanaian firm, Agency Seven Seven, on preparing two possible lawsuits. One would allege psychological harms and could involve a group of moderators, and the other unfair dismissal, involving the moderator from east Africa whose contract was terminated after he attempted suicide.

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… basic wages for content moderators in Accra were below living costs, incentivising them to work overtime, for which pay is understood to be even lower than normal rates. Moderators faced deductions from their pay for failing to meet performance targets, she added.

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A Teleperformance spokesperson said content moderators enjoyed “strong pay and benefits, including monthly pay that is roughly 10 times the country’s minimum wage for domestic moderators, and 16 times the minimum wage for those who have relocated from other countries, …

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Meta said the companies it worked with were “contractually obliged to pay their employees who review content on Facebook and Instagram above the industry standard in the markets they operate”.

The tech company said it took “the support of content reviewers seriously”, …