Complaint against Meta: Former Barcelona moderators report consequences from having to watch violent images

BarcelonaA group of 29 former Facebook and Instagram content moderators from Barcelona have filed a complaint against Meta and the company CCC Barcelona Digital Services for the psychological disorders they suffered after having to review hundreds of violent images daily, including murder, rape, and child pornography. In the complaint, which ARA has been able to consult, they accuse CCC Barcelona Digital Services, a company subcontracted by Meta, of a continuing offense against workers' rights, another of serious injuries due to gross negligence, and a third offense against moral integrity.

The plaintiffs' objective, represented by lawyer Francesc Feliu, is for the complaint to be added to the investigation already open by Barcelona's Investigating Court No. 29 following another complaint, since the same offenses are being filed against the company itself. The case, which was already before the Barcelona court, was reported at the end of 2023, Feliu told ARA, and concerns a former employee who worked from Barcelona to moderate content published in Brazil that included live images of violence and even terrorism.

The decision on whether the court itself will take on the new complaint from 29 moderators could come before the August holiday period, according to Feliu's calculations. However, whether or not it will be admitted for processing could take longer, given that the complaint and the accompanying documentation submitted by the lawyer exceed a thousand pages. All those affected are former employees of CCC Barcelona Digital Services, which announced the closure of its headquarters in the Catalan capital in April and laid off virtually its entire staff at the end of May.

"Inhuman and indecent" conditions

In the complaint, Feliu also insists that, although the workers were formally employed by CCC Barcelona Digital Services, a subsidiary of the Telus International group, in practice "it was Meta who exercised real control over the work activity" and who determined the conditions under which those affected worked. The complaint describes these conditions as "absolutely inhumane and indecent," and always under a work pace "absolutely unbearable for any human being." Under these conditions, the affected moderators have had to review platform content, ranging from videos to violent comments. This situation, according to the complaint, has caused "the employee to be exposed to psychosocial risks," both due to the audiovisual content to be moderated and the working conditions.

Furthermore, they accuse the company of not informing them in advance about the type of material they would be required to review and of providing them with "opaque" information about the task they would be performing: "Before hiring them, they were not informed that they would be required to view extremely violent content, much less on a consistent basis." The company also took no measures, the document adds, to protect them from the psychological impact: "On the contrary, they demand more and more productivity, and treat the worker not as a person, but as an object to be replaced when they become ill or end up resigning."

The complaint also alleges that the workers were only allowed five minutes of visual rest per hour, which could not be accumulated, and that they could not be absent "under any circumstances from the chair in which they sat for 55 minutes at a time." That is, throughout their entire workday, they only had 35 minutes to stop viewing violent content.

800 contents per day

"The viewing load—for each moderator—started at 100 pieces of content per day," but "gradually increased to 800," the complaint states, and they had to decide on each piece of content in a maximum of 30 seconds. As a result of this work, according to the text, the moderators ended up suffering from various pathologies, such as anxiety, panic attacks, nightmares, tachycardia, dizziness with fainting, hopelessness, suicidal thoughts, insomnia, vomiting, irritability, and feelings of guilt, according to the complaint.

Prior to this complaint, each of these workers, who were employed by the company between 2018 and 2022, filed a complaint with the Labor Inspectorate regarding the working conditions, lack of rest, the type of content viewed, and the company's lack of preventive measures. The complaint adds that the company had violated occupational risk prevention regulations due to the psychological impact of their work.