TikTok content material moderator sues platform for psychological trauma

By Online Desk

A former content material moderator at TikTok has filed a lawsuit in opposition to the platform alleging that guardian firm ByteDance gives insufficient safeguards to guard moderators’ psychological well being in opposition to a near-constant onslaught of traumatic footage.

Candie Frazier proposed a class-action lawsuit filed within the California Central District Court, saying she spent 12 hours a day moderating movies uploaded to TikTok for a third-party contracting agency named Telus International and witnessed “thousands of acts of extreme and graphic violence,” together with mass shootings, youngster rape, animal mutilation, cannibalism, gang homicide, and genocide.

Frazier identified that the quantity of content material uploaded on TikTok was so excessive that the moderators needed to watch three to 10 movies concurrently, with a brand new video being uploaded each 25 seconds.

She pointed that moderators have been solely allowed to take one 15 minute break within the first 4 hours of their shift, after which extra 15-minute breaks each two hours afterward. ByteDance screens efficiency carefully and “heavily punishes any time taken away from watching graphic videos.”

The lawsuit remarks TikTok and its companions have failed to fulfill industry-recognized requirements supposed to mitigate the harms of content material moderation. Offering moderators extra frequent breaks, psychological assist, and technical safeguards like blurring or decreasing the decision of movies below overview may mitigate the harms of moderation.

Frazier says she has suffered “severe psychological trauma including depression and symptoms associated with anxiety and PTSD.” The lawsuit says Frazier has “trouble sleeping and when she does sleep, she has horrific nightmares. She often lays awake at night trying to go to sleep, replaying videos that she has seen in her mind. She has severe and debilitating panic attacks.”

The testimony in Frazier’s lawsuit matches reviews of content material moderators working for different massive tech firms like Facebook, YouTube, and Google. Reports like Frazier’s recommend that regardless of the additional consideration, moderators work below critically difficult work situations.