More Former Content Moderators Sues Facebook For Their Stress And Depression

A lawsuit against Facebook has seen another two of its former content moderators who say that they had psychological trauma as well as symptoms of stress disorder after trauma resulting from reviewing violent photos on the platform.

The lawsuit calling for class-action status accuses Facebook of failing to provide a safe workplace to thousands of content moderators, which violates California law. As stated in the lawsuit filing, the moderating staff had to expose themselves to suicides, murders, and beheadings livestreamed on its network.

Gabriel Ramos and Erin Elder, former content moderators at the company signed the lawsuit filed to a superior court in California on Friday. Initially, the lawsuit was filed by former moderator Selena Scola in September, who worked at Facebook as a content moderator between June 2017 and March 2018.

Representing the moderators, lawyer Steve Williams from the Joseph Saveri law firm said:

He also stressed that Facebook didn’t want to take responsibilities and mistreated these human beings, and that’s awful.

Facebook denied the accusations in a court filing back in November, claiming the court should dismiss the case.

Scola used to work at PRO Unlimited, a Florida-based staffing company that partnered with Facebook in monitoring contents. When the suit was first filed, it also accused PRO Unlimited but the amended filling dropped this firm.

Elder worked for the social network between March 2017 and December 2017 through this company and another staffing firm called Accenture. According to the lawsuit, she had several nightmares, fear to be around children, depression as well as the feeling of helplessness about working as a content moderator.

Meanwhile, the amended filing says that Ramos moderated content for Facebook between June 2017 and April 2018; he suffered from PTSD symptoms after reviewing videos and images of violence.

Facebook didn’t respond to a comment request immediately.