Facebook settles moderator suit for $52M as hate speech on site increases

Enlarge / Content moderators work at a Facebook office in Austin, Texas. (credit: Ilana Panich-Linsman | The Washington Post | Getty Images)

Many jobs can cause employee burnout, but the effect of having to deal with the absolute worst cruelty humanity has to offer for 40 hours a week can go well beyond burnout and leave employees with serious mental health traumas. Facebook has now settled with a group of content moderators who sued the tech behemoth, alleging their jobs left them with severe post-traumatic stress disorder the company did nothing to mitigate or prevent.

The company will pay $52 million to settle the suit, first filed in 2018 by a content moderator named Selena Scola. Scola's suit alleged that she developed "debilitating" PTSD after having to watch "thousands of acts of extreme and graphic violence."

The conditions under which Facebook moderators often work have been extensively reported out by The Guardian, The Verge (more than once), The Washington Post, and BuzzFeed News, among others. Moderators, who mostly work for third-party contract firms, described to reporters hours spent looking at graphic murders, animal cruelty, sexual abuse, child abuse, and other horrifying footage, while being provided with little to no managerial or mental health support and hard-to-meet quotas under shifting guidelines.

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