New Delhi: How harmful to mental health is the content on Facebook and other social media platforms? Just like how cigarettes come with a statutory health warning, should the same be done with social media content? Renowned IT services firm Cognizant Technology Solutions is now facing lawsuits from its former employees. At least 14 former staffers have separately sued the company in a court in Florida in the US. They have accused the Nasdaq-listed company of wilfully concealing mental health harm from content moderation work that they did for Facebook.
This is the first time that Cognizant is facing lawsuits over its Facebook contract, and it comes more than 3 years after Cognizant ended that content moderation contract it had with the social media giant. And it is being compared with how tobacco firms failed to disclose the health-related problems of cigarettes in the past.
All about the content moderation contract
Content moderators review user-generated content in real-time to make sure it meets the company’s standards and community guidelines. This work involves scrolling through objectionable posts and removing them manually. The contract which began in late 2017 was worth almost $250 million in annual revenues for Cognizant. The IT giant had employed over 650 employees for content moderation work. However, trouble began when those deployed for the work started complaining about the psychological harm caused to them by the work they were doing. Cognizant ended the contract with Facebook in 2020.
Now some of these moderators are suing Cognizant, saying that the company did not brief them about the extreme nature, high volume and severity of the content that they would be reviewing. The petitioners say they are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), since their work involved watching and manually removing vile content, including murders, rapes and abusive language.
The petitioners also allege that Cognizant knew about the risk of psychological harm the work of content moderation of this nature posed, but failed to inform them about it. They are suing Cognizant for failing to provide them a safe work environment. Printy Law firm based out of Tampa, Florida is representing all 14 petitioners who have sought a jury trial and damages worth over $75,000 each.
Meta’s compensation offers hope
The question is will they get justice and the money that they’re asking for? Well there is a precedent that has been set. In September 2018, Selena Scola, who worked for a Florida-based staffing firm was doing content moderation work for Facebook. And she had filed a class action lawsuit against Facebook. Two years later in 2020, Facebook or Meta agreed to pay $52 million dollars to compensate over 14,000 people who worked as content moderators hired by third-party contractors, including those hired by Cognizant. That’s a clear sign that Facebook or Meta knows how mentally harmful the content on its platform can be. So is it time for a statutory warning to users like you and me?
IT giant Cognizant is reportedly being sued by former contractors for alleged harm caused by social media content moderation. The Nasdaq-listed company secured a content moderation contract from Facebook parent Meta and is being sued by 14 formoer contractors for allegedly concealing the harmful natutre of the work. Biz News Business News – Personal Finance News, Share Market News, BSE/NSE News, Stock Exchange News Today
