Ex-Facebook worker claims disturbing content led to PTSD
1Reported today on The Guardian Technology
For the full article visit: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/dec/04/ex-facebook-worker-claims-disturbing-content-led-to-ptsd
Ex-Facebook worker claims disturbing content led to PTSD
Former moderator suing social network in Ireland over health impact of scouring website
A former Facebook moderator is suing the company, alleging that his work scouring the site of violent and obscene content caused his post-traumatic stress disorder.
Chris Gray, who now works as a tour guide, is seeking damages from both Facebook Ireland and CPL, the contracting firm that directly employed him. The case, filed on Wednesday in the Irish high court in Dublin, is thought to be the first time a former moderator has taken the social network to court.
According to court documents, Gray's work required him to review "approximately a thousand tickets per night", initially focused on pornography, and later "on content that had been reported as being threatening, hateful, bullying, or otherwise dangerous".
Two years on, a number of specific pieces of content remain "particularly marked" in his memory, the legal writ says, including "a video in which a woman wearing an abaya is seen being stoned to death", "a video in which persons, who appear to be migrants in Libya, are tortured with molten metal", and "video footage of dogs being cooked alive".
Aggravating the trauma, Gray's lawyers argue, was the fact that the nature of the work required him to "obsess" over particular videos. Facebook and CPL "valued accuracy … above all else", and tracked whether individual calls were made correctly or not. But the system did not allow moderators "to hold or skip a ticket pending a decision from above", requiring them instead to focus deeply on particular pieces of content, often featuring violent or upsetting material.
The complaint details one video, for instance, "which collaged various