A labour court in Kenya ruled on Monday that Meta , the parent company of Facebook, can be sued in the East African country after a former content moderator filed a lawsuit against it alleging poor working conditions.
"Since the petition has raised certain actual issues that are yet to be determined, it would be inopportune for the country to strike out the two respondents from the matter," Judge Jacob Gakeri said in his ruling on Monday.Former content moderator Daniel Motaung, who says he developed PTSD because of his work, filed the case.
Meta is also facing another lawsuit in Kenya. In December, two Ethiopian researchers and a Kenyan rights group filed aaccusing Meta of letting violent and hateful posts from Ethiopia flourish on Facebook, inflaming the Ethiopian civil war. Meta said hate speech and incitement to violence were against the rules of Facebook and Instagram, another of its platforms, and that it was investing heavily to remove this type of content.
Meta's local outsourcing company Sama said last month it would no longer provide content moderation services for the company. Sama has previously rejected claims that its employees were paid unfairly, that the recruitment process was opaque, or that its mental health benefits were inadequate.