A job that pays up to €2,400 a month to watch a video might sound like a lot of money, but people in Barcelona who worked for Meta, which constantly monitors violent content on Facebook and Instagram, seem to regret taking the job, notes . Euronews. Now Mark Zuckerberg’s company is being sued because of the horrible things people are forced to see at work.

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One in five people who work at Meta to review 300 to 500 videos to see if they meet the social media platform’s requirements are on medical leave due to psychological trauma from watching the content.

What seemed like a dream job turned out to be a real nightmare for those who got a job at contract firm Meta in Barcelona.

For a salary that can reach 2,400 euros, candidates only had to know the language and their activities consisted only of watching videos uploaded by users on Facebook and Instagram.

More than 20% of staff at CCC Barcelona Digital Services, owned by Telsus, the company Meta hired for the review, went on sick leave after seeing gruesome content: live suicides, murders, rapes or dismemberments.

“In one of the videos, the father shows his child, who is allegedly one year old. They stick a knife in his chest, rip out his heart and eat it,” Francesc Feliu, the lawyer for more than 10 employees who decided to sue the company, told Euronews.

“Besides the absolutely inhumane content, there’s a lot of noise, screaming and blood,” Feliu added.

Criticism of employees

Employees have criticized the company’s working conditions for content moderators, which expose them to serious mental health issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression.

“We are talking about people who were healthy, but suddenly these mental disorders appear. Some of these workers tried to commit suicide,” the lawyer said.

The first trial in 2017

This is not the first incident involving Meta. In 2017, Chris Gray, an Irishman now in his 50s who worked as a content moderator for a company that works with Facebook, was the first person to file a lawsuit against the social network.

When he started working on Meta, video was only 20% of the content he had to analyze.

But the horrific images stayed with me, like images of migrants being tortured with red-hot metal rods or dogs being boiled alive.

“I didn’t realize how much it affected me. Only later did I realize that I was a disaster, I was very stressed. I could not sleep and became very aggressive. If anyone ever talked about my work, I would cry afterwards,” Gray told Euronews.

Complaints on the conveyor

When she realized that she couldn’t take it anymore, she tried to talk to the company’s psychologist. “I filled out the forms saying I felt overwhelmed at work. But it took forever to arrange a meeting with someone.”

Like Gray, another 35 people filed complaints at the High Court in Ireland, where Meta’s European headquarters are located.

Diane Treanor, a lawyer representing Gray, said she had clients from several European countries, such as Poland, Germany and Ireland, and most complained that they did not have access to psychological support, as was the case with staff in Barcelona.

Facebook says it supports employees who moderate video content

In addition, potential employees were not pre-screened for any prior mental health issues that might have made them unfit for the job.

Facebook told Euronews it is working with Telsus to resolve the issue urgently.

“We take the support of content reviewers seriously and require all companies we work with to provide 24/7 on-site expert support.”

Former employees are still undergoing treatment

They say that even though he has not worked as a content moderator for five years, he is still receiving treatment.

“Such content marks you for life. We are not machines or computers without feelings,” Feliu said.

Both lawyers argue that Meta’s policy of forcing employees to watch videos in their entirety to explain why content is being censored exacerbates the trauma experienced by those who work at the company.

Facebook claims that there are “technical solutions that limit access to explicit material as much as possible.”

Three years ago, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during a press conference that criticism of the company’s working conditions was “a bit excessive.”

“It’s not that most people see horrible things all day. But there are some really bad things that people have to deal with, and making sure that they have the right counseling and space and opportunity to take breaks and get the mental health support they need is really important,” Zuckerberg told employees.

But former employees say that’s not really happening. (photo source Dreamstime)