A former content moderator for TikTok has filed a lawsuit against the company claiming that she is traumatized from watching the disturbin...
A former content moderator for TikTok has filed a lawsuit against the company claiming that she is traumatized from watching the disturbing videos.
Candie Frazier claims in her lawsuit against TikTok and their parent company ByteDance that she worked 12 hours a day monitoring the worst content on the platform.
Frazier says the content she was subjected to included videos of “freakish cannibalism, crushed heads, school shootings, suicides, and even a fatal fall from a building, complete with audio.”
The former mod says that now she “has trouble sleeping” and that “when she does sleep, she has horrific nightmares,” according to a report from Bloomberg.
“Due to the sheer volume of content, content moderators are permitted no more than 25 seconds per video, and simultaneously view three to ten videos at the same time,” the lawsuit alleges.
The suit also says that moderators are only allowed two 15-minute breaks and an hour for lunch to clear their heads after seeing the graphic footage.
In a statement responding to the lawsuit, obtained by RT, TikTok said that it seeks “to promote a caring working environment for our employees and contractors.”
“Our safety team partners with third party firms on the critical work of helping to protect the TikTok platform and community, and we continue to expand on a range of wellness services so that moderators feel supported mentally and emotionally,” the statement added.
The RT report adds that this is “not the first time a tech company has been sued for exposing content moderators to graphic content. In September, a former YouTube content moderator sued the Google-owned platform, alleging she had been left with symptoms of depression and PTSD after being made to watch videos of murder, suicide, bestiality, and torture. The moderator said ‘chronic understaffing’ meant she was forced to watch between 100 and 300 videos in just a four-hour period.”
Additionally, “in May, it was also reported that Facebook would be paying $52 million to moderators who allegedly developed PTSD from their work.”
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