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| Tik Tok faces a lawsuit from a former content moderator |
A former content moderator at TikTok has sued him, saying his parent company ByteDance failed to provide sufficient safeguards to protect the moderator's safety from near-permanent attacks from painful images.
In a class action lawsuit filed in California District Court, Candy Fraser said she spends 12 hours a day coordinating videos uploaded via the platform to an outside contractor called Telus International.
Fraser noted that she suffered thousands of extreme and brutal violence during that time, including mass shootings, child rape, animal cruelty, cannibalism, mass murder, and genocide.
Fraser said that to handle the large amount of content uploaded to the platform every day, she and her moderators must watch three to ten videos at a time and upload new videos at least every 25 seconds.
The supervisor can take a 15-minute break during the first four hours of the shift, then another 15-minute break every two hours.
The lawsuit alleges that Bytedance closely monitors performance and imposes severe penalties for any time lost watching the videos.
The lawsuit alleges that TikTok and its partners failed to meet industry-recognized standards to mitigate the harm caused by content review.
This also includes giving the line manager more relaxation and psychological support. and technical guarantees such as power failure or reduced video resolution to be verified.
Tik Tok couldn't protect his mind
Fraser said she has experienced significant psychological trauma as a result of her work, including depression, anxiety-related symptoms, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
The lawsuit alleges that Fraser had difficulty falling asleep and had nightmares in his sleep.
She often wakes up at night trying to sleep and plays the video she saw in her head. She suffers from severe and debilitating panic attacks.
The statement in Fraser's lawsuit coincides with reports that content managers work for other big tech companies such as Facebook, YouTube and Google.
In recent years, the working conditions of these chiefs are increasingly at stake. However, reports like this Fraser report are emerging despite the extra interest. But the working conditions of the chiefs are still very difficult.
Fraser's lawsuit was filed by the California law firm of Joseph Saveri (Joseph Saveri). The company filed a similar complaint in 2018 to help brokers review content on Facebook.
This case led to Facebook paying $52 million in severance payments to content moderators.