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As soon asceoYour browser does not support the element. the posts appeared on Facebook, Abrham Mearag feared they would be a “death sentence” for his father. A civil war was raging in Ethiopia and Mr Abrham’s father, a chemistry professor, was of the wrong ethnicity in the wrong place at the wrong time. His name, photo and place of work all appeared on Facebook in October 2021, along with allegations that he was affiliated to rebels fighting the Ethiopian government. Mr Abrham reported the posts to moderators at Meta, Facebook’s parent company, in a desperate attempt to get them taken down. But his pleas were ignored—and on November 3rd 2021 his father was murdered.On January 29th Kenya’s high court will decide whether it has jurisdiction to hear a $2.3bn case brought against Meta by Mr Abrham and two others. The group claim that Facebook’s algorithms amplified hateful speech which directly led to real-world harm, including the death of Mr Abrham’s father. Since the moderators vetting Facebook’s Ethiopian content were based in Kenya, the plaintiffs argue, the company ought to be sued there. The lawsuit is the third to be brought against Meta in Kenya. They all concern the invisible army of moderators used by tech firms to cleanse their platforms of violent or illegal content. Together the cases illuminate the grim reality for low-paid African workers of the global tech boom. And they raise an important question: can big tech be sued in African countries, and thus others?In each case Meta argues that it cannot be held liable in Kenya because it is registered in America. Like other big internet platforms, the firm outsources content moderation to third-party contractors. Around 100,000 people worldwide work for companies such as Sama, the local contractor hired by Meta until 2023 to screen African-language content. Working like this meant tech firms could hire cheap English-speakers in places such as Kenya, and avoid the costs of incorporating there. They also believed doing so would shield them from potential litigation overseas.That no longer seems to be true. In the two other cases brought against Meta in Kenya, former employees accuse Sama and another contractor of, , unlawful termination and forced labour. They also allege that sifting through graphic content without adequate psychiatric support seriously damaged their mental health. “You are forced to watch, you cannot skip,” says Robel Kahsay, one of 186 former Sama workers taking the company to court. Among the horrors which live “rent-free” in Mr Robel’s mind is the image of his cousin’s bloodied corpse in Ethiopia’s civil war, which he encountered on the job. Sama denies failing to provide sufficient mental-health services. It says they were (and remain) available on site from licensed professionals at all times. Meta argues that it should not face charges since it did not hire the workers directly.In 2023, however, a Kenyan judge concluded that Meta was, in fact, their “true employer”. That opened the door to other lawsuits against any of the big tech firms working with third-party contractors in Kenya. In a similar case involving 10,000 content moderators in California, Meta agreed to pay $85m in compensation for failing to protect the litigants from mental-health harm. But this is the first time Meta could be “significantly subjected to a court of law in the global south”, notes Amnesty International, a rights group. The company is appealing to Kenya’s supreme court.Mr Abrham’s lawsuit demands not only compensation but also changes to Facebook’s algorithm to make it less potentially deadly. Though Mr Abrham’s father was murdered in Ethiopia, Meta’s terms of service require any claims to be filed in America. At home, American internet companies are usually protected from liability for content disseminated through their platforms. “It doesn’t matter where the company is registered, the actual action which caused the harm took place in Kenya,” says Mercy Mutemi of the Kenyan law firm representing the plaintiffs in all three cases. But there are few precedents elsewhere. Lawsuits brought against Meta for its alleged role in spreading hate speech during the Rohingya genocide in 2017 have stalled in courts in Britain and America.Faced with potential damage to its reputation in Africa, an important and growing market, Meta might settle. But given today’s politics, it could “ignore a court ruling it doesn’t like,” says Eugenia Siapera of University College Dublin. Donald Trump’s return has boosted America’s tech titans. This month Meta announced that it would stop fact-checking content on Facebook, which could prompt it to rethink how it does moderation in Africa. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s , said recently that he hoped to work with Mr Trump “to push back on governments around the world”.Mr Zuckerberg has an ally in Kenya’s president, William Ruto. Mr Ruto wants to promote Nairobi, its capital, as a tech hub. Meta has already shifted its content-moderation work out of Kenya to an undisclosed location in Africa, so the president has less bargaining power. (A spokesperson for Meta cited “the security of our clients” and ongoing litigation as reasons for the lack of transparency.) Anxious not to lose out on investment and jobs, Mr Ruto has rushed to pass a bill which would make it even harder to sue the biggest tech firms. Kenya’s government faces an impossible choice, says Mark Graham of the Oxford Internet Institute: “bad jobs or no jobs.”
