Meta Files Appeal to Challenge Court's Ruling on Moderators' Employment Status

Tech giant Meta is gearing up to appeal a recent court ruling that was referring to the organization's content moderators as employees of the firm.

This particular ruling came forward from Kenya’s court which says Meta is the main or initial employer of all content moderators that take into consideration all the posts arising on its apps across the Saharan African region.

The tech giant had similarly put out a new notice regarding an appeal on the matter against this particular ruling that was done in the past week after orders from the court were granted in the month of March of this year.

The news comes to us after the firm’s 184 content moderators opted to take legal action and sue them and the review partner of this area in Africa for unannounced firings and ending of contracts that really took a lot of people by shock and surprise.

Moreover, the moderators also mentioned how one of the firm’s latest moderation collaborations with Majorel in the area had been blacklisted then under guidance sent out by tech giant Meta.

This court ruling was done in the past week and it states Meta is the first and main employer for all the content moderators. On the other hand, it was quick to deem Sama as being just an agent that was working on the basis of outsourcing to overlook the work and activities taking place.

In the same way, the ruling mentioned how all of the duties that moderators were taking on were allocated by Meta and were only carried out through the tech giant’s own technology. It also went as far as claiming that the firm adhered to metrics linked to both accuracy and how well it was performing across the board.

Now, the court even issued a new directory where it says the contracts of such moderators needed to be amended and allowed for an extension as they felt the job was still up for grabs and there was no need for a termination.

Therefore, the applicants holding such a position would work on prevailing in such an interim in the long run.

We also saw Meta be slapped with a new restriction for firing moderators and it would not be allowed to do so, including for those that were waiting for the end verdict of this legal case. It added how no form of justification was allocated when taking part in such behavior which was obviously wrong.

Meta also claims that the court made major errors by allowing for a contract extension as such documents had reached expiry. It also called them out for producing contracts and even rewriting them. It felt adding new terms and obligations across the firm was wrong but they continued to be unaware of the contract’s details and would discussion had arisen among the two parties involved.

All of these discussions have led to the arrival of a new affidavit by Meta’s director who handles the EMEA operations. He reiterated how it was wrong to accuse the tech giant of being the employer for these content moderators when in reality, they belonged to Sama. In the same way, he claims the court clearly failed at hearing the case in its reality and totality as well.

But Meta’s woes did not end there. It is appalled at how the court made the erroneous judgment of regularizing moderators’ immigration stance and even forced it to give them medical attention. This entails complete providence of medical as well as psychological assistance as they felt the moderators were taking on tasks that were a great form of danger to their health and wellbeing.