2023-10-13 10:53:06
He started working at Torre Glòries in January 2019. Through a job offer that had reached a colleague. Two years later, in May 2021, Jerome – fictitious name – took leave due to post-traumatic stress. He is one of the content moderators of Facebook, hired by the company CCC Barcelona Digital Services, which said enough – there are 400 in total, according to The vanguard– due to the hardness of the content they have to analyse. From rapes to suicides, sexual assaults on babies, acts of terrorism or zoophilia. A month ago the Social Security gave him absolute permanent disability. He can’t work because of the consequences of what he had to visualize and analyze for Facebook (Meta) every day.
“I was a zombie. I couldn’t sleep, my emotions were out of control. Now I can’t concentrate,” sums up Jerome. In six months he lost more than 50 kilos and began to need anxiolytics to live with the stress of the job. After 28 months on the job, he exploded when it was his turn to analyze pedophilia pages. Especially for a case of a German girl whose limbs were mutilated and her teeth extracted. When he ran into that content he noticed how his breathing quickened, he was short of air. He went to CAP and was discharged. A therapist made a report describing what Jerome was suffering from: post-traumatic stress, anxiety, anxiety attacks, depression, physical and mental exhaustion, chronic insomnia, night terrors… “I can’t get the German girl out of my head” , summarizes two and a half years later.
Every day more
When they interviewed him to hire him, he claims that they did not give him any psychological aptitude test. Of course, they raised a question that made sense as the months passed: «What’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen in your life?» For fifteen days he did a learning process, but there was practically no disturbing content. Each message that had to be analyzed, whether it was a video, a text, a direct message or a photograph, had to be labeled in different categories, and eliminated, validated or reported – scaled, as they call it – because end, for example, to the relevant police authorities. Each tagging is known by the ticket name. The first few months he did 350 a day. After a while, 600 on average, but he managed to do more than 1,100 in a single day. Each time, however, they demanded more. Also in relation to quality. Moderators must be 98% correct when tagging content. A data that is obtained because each ticket is verified by more than one moderator and a superior – a quality analyst – who looks at cases where there is no unanimity of criteria.
After 28 months of watching terrible images he was discharged and now has absolute permanent disability
As Jerome increased productivity, the level of toxicity grew. “I was afraid to go to work,” he says. Also, he couldn’t tell anyone because he had a non-disclosure agreement. When the CAP doctor visited him, he referred him to the Public Health Agency and it was recommended that a set of legal measures be initiated. This is how Jerome came into the hands of the Coronas Advocats firm. They decided to undertake a series of demands for employment. Firstly, that the leave was not due to common illness, as was initially typified, but as a work accident. A decision they won and was appealed by the company, which also opposes the absolute permanent disability of the worker, as they want him to return to work. Jerome has sued the company for a violation of fundamental rights and for the injuries to his physical and mental integrity that he suffered. In addition, the Labor Inspectorate imposed a penalty on the company for lack of safety measures. The workers had a welfare service – known by the name in English, wellness– which did not serve to prevent risky situations, but was aimed at mitigating the effects of the shift day and the stress inherent in a job that entailed working on weekends and nights. They had a games room, with table tennis and billiards, which they could use, according to Jerome, a maximum of 45 minutes a week.
The court has recognized that his case is not one of leave due to a common illness, but due to an occupational accident
“The task of content moderation has been carried out without any preventive activity for psychosocial risk, and by people who were not required to have specific preparation or training. As a result of this we find that a very high percentage of the workforce has mentally ill,” explains the lawyer handling the case, Joan Josep Gimeno, who has asked for a joint sentence against Facebook (Meta), because they believe that they gave the work orders to the moderators.
Almost two and a half years after saying enough, Jerome is still attacked by flashes of the contents he had to view from the sixth floor of the Glòries Tower. The sound is the worst. “When I hear the cry of a baby in the street, images of abuse come to my mind,” he confesses.
#trauma #moderating #pedophilia #suicide #videos #Facebook