Former TikTok content moderator sues the company for allegedly failing to protect her mental health, report says. The former moderator of the company says that she faced a barrage of disturbing footage on the platform.
Former TikTok Content Moderator Sues the Company
A lawsuit has been filed against TikTok by a former content moderator. The lawsuit alleges that the parent company ByteDance provides safeguarding measures that are inadequate in protecting the mental health of moderators against a near-constant onslaught of traumatic footage on the platform.
Contents of the Lawsuit
In a proposed legal claim documented in the California Central District Court, Candie Frazier says she went through 12 hours daily directing recordings transferred to TikTok for an outsider contracting firm named Telus International.
In that time, Frazier says she saw “a huge number of demonstrations of outrageous and realistic savagery,” including mass shootings, youngster assault, creature mutilation, barbarianism, posse murder, and annihilation.
Frazier says that to manage the gigantic volume of content transferred to TikTok day by day, she and her kindred arbitrators needed to watch somewhere in the range of three and ten recordings all the while, with new recordings stacked in at minimum at regular intervals.
Mediators are simply permitted to enjoy one brief reprieve in the initial four hours of their shift, and afterward extra brief breaks like clockwork a while later. The claim says ByteDance screens execution intently and “heavily punishes any time taken away from watching graphic videos.”
The claim expresses that TikTok and its accomplices have neglected to satisfy industry-perceived guidelines expected to relieve the damages of content control. These incorporate contribution mediators more successive breaks, mental help, and specialized shields like obscuring or decreasing the goal of recordings under audit.
The Effects of Frazier’s Work on Her Mental Health
And as a result of her work, Frazier has expressed that she has suffered “severe psychological trauma including depression and symptoms associated with anxiety and PTSD.” The lawsuit also includes that Frazier has “trouble sleeping and when she does sleep, she has horrific nightmares. She often lays awake at night trying to go to sleep, replaying videos that she has seen in her mind. She has severe and debilitating panic attacks.”
Other Big Tech Companies With Similar Issues
The declaration in Frazier’s claim fits reports of content mediators working (typically in a roundabout way) for other enormous tech organizations like Facebook, YouTube, and Google.
In the course of recent years, the horrendous working conditions confronting these arbitrators — a workforce that is totally urgent in keeping up with the productivity of a portion of the world’s greatest organizations — has become progressively investigated. Reports like Frazier’s, however, recommend that notwithstanding the additional consideration, working conditions for arbitrators are still amazingly tested.
The Legal Firm Responsible For the Lawsuit
The lawsuit filed by Frazier was filed by joseph Saveri law firm located in California. The office also previously filed a similar lawsuit in 2018 against moderators reviewing g content on Facebook. That case however resulted in Facebook paying up a $52 million settlement to its content moderators.