Kenyan Judge Temporarily Blocks Mass Layoff of Facebook Moderators
NAIROBI—A Kenyan judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked the mass redundancy of some 260 Facebook content moderators working for an outsourcing company contracted by the social media site’s parent company Meta, court documents show.
Judge Matthews Nduma issued an interim injunction against Meta and the Kenya-based outsourcing firm Sama, preventing them from terminating the content moderators’ contracts at the end of March, pending a judgement on the legality of their redundancy.
Last week 43 moderators at Facebook’s Nairobi moderation hub filed a lawsuit against the social media company and Sama for unlawful redundancy.
The 43 applicants say they lost their jobs with Sama for organizing a union. They also say they were blacklisted from applying for the same roles at another outsourcing firm, Luxembourg-based Majorel, after Facebook switched contractors….