38 Time February 28/March 7, 2022
harassment, and coercion and that led
to the disruption of business activities
and put the relationship between Sama-
source and its client [Facebook] at great
risk,” according to a termination letter
dated Aug. 20, 2019. (Sama was known
publicly as Samasource until early
2021, when it changed its name as part
of a transformation that also included
switching from a nonprofit organization
to a business.) Sama did not respond to
questions about its firing of Motaung,
but said in its statement that it had dis-
missed three employees who had “vio-
lated workplace rules.”
In the days before he was terminated,
Motaung was busy drafting documents
that would have formally established
the Alliance as a union under Kenyan
law. “I think they found out,” he says.
Motaung’s work permit was canceled,
leaving him three weeks to leave Kenya.
Under Kenyan labor law, workers are
protected from dismissal as a result of
“past, present, or anticipated trade union
membership,” and Kenya’s constitution
says every worker has the right to strike.
Before he left Kenya, Motaung says,
he gave the union incorporation pa-
pers to another employee in the move-
ment. But the resolve of the Alliance
had been broken, and the union never
materialized. “We were in shock, devas-
tated, broken,” one employee said. “And
then life continued. After that, nobody
dared to speak about it.”
For a time, though, a spark of re-
sistance remained. Jason White, a for-
mer Afrikaans- language quality ana-
lyst from South Africa, says Sama fired
him around a year later. He had been a
participant in the Alliance, and contin-
ued to ask questions even after most of
his colleagues had given up. He says he
regularly asked managers whether Sama
was deducting too much tax from em-
ployees’ pay, and why his girlfriend, also
a Sama employee at the time, was not
provided a work permit despite being
promised one.
In July 2020, White and a colleague
took their concerns to the South Afri-
can embassy in Nairobi. In emails, re-
viewed by TIME, and then at a meeting
in person, the pair informed South Afri-
can officials about the thwarted strike,
Motaung’s firing the previous year, and
how some of their colleagues believed
they had been hired under false pre-
tenses. The officials promised to inves-
tigate, he says, but never followed up.
The embassy did not respond to a re-
quest for comment.
After that, “there was a definite
change in behavior from [Sama’s] top
management,” White says. Soon after,
he says, a manager offered him a pay-
ment equivalent to two months’ salary
on the condition that he stop mention-
ing the pay and conditions at Sama to
anybody. He declined.
White says he was then called into a
disciplinary hearing, charged with hav-
ing unauthorized contact with a Face-
book employee, forbidden under his
employment contract. White says he
believes this was because of an email he
had sent to a Facebook staffer who had
previously visited the Nairobi office, in
which he had revealed his pay and asked
her whether she believed Sama was ex-
ploiting him and other employees. Al-
though he never received a reply, he
believes the employee told Facebook,
which informed Sama. “The company
saw that as a good opportunity to use
that against me,” he says. Sama did not
comment on White’s dismissal or the al-
leged payment offer extended to him. A
Facebook spokesperson said the email’s
recipient had followed protocol.Once every few mOnths, Facebook
employees travel from Dublin to
Nairobi to lead trainings, brief
content moderators on new policies,
and answer questions. Five content
moderators said that ahead of these
meetings, Sama managers instruct
workers not to discuss their pay
with Facebook staff. But satisfying
Facebook is at the center of the work
culture at Sama.
Moderators are expected to view
and take action on one piece of content
around every 50 seconds, regardless of
the complexity of the material, accord-
ing to interviews and documentationseen by TIME. (The target can range
from 36 to 70 seconds depending on
workload and staffing, employees say.)
Adding to the pressure they feel, they
are also expected to make the correct
call at least 84% of the time.
Facebook has put some features in
place to help protect moderators, like
the option to render videos in black and
white or add blurring. But one Sama em-
ployee says he doesn’t use these options
because of the pressure to meet quotas.
“How can you clearly see whether con-
tent is violating or not unless you can
see it clearly? If it’s black and white or
blurred, I cannot tell,” he says, add-
ing that he doesn’t use it “because if I
wrongly action that [content], I will be
marked down.”
Employees say they are expected to
work for up to nine hours per day in-
cluding breaks, and their screen time
is monitored. “I cannot blink,” one em-
ployee says. “They expect me to work
each and every second.” In a statement,
Sama said that it caps working hours for
content moderators at 37.4 hours per
week. However, TIME reviewed an em-
ployment contract from 2019 that said
workers can be expected to work up to
45 hours per week without additional
compensation. It is unclear whether
that includes breaks.
Employees say that on a typical
working day, they are expected to spend
around eight hours logged into Face-
book’s content- moderation program.
On such a day, a target of 50 seconds
per piece of content would equate to a
de facto daily quota of nearly 580 items.
This appears to contradict public
statements Facebook has made in the
past about expectations it places on its
contractors. “A common misconception
about content reviewers is that they’re
driven by quotas and pressured to make
hasty decisions,” Ellen Silver, Face-
book’s vice president of operations, said
in a 2018 blog post. “Let me be clear:
content reviewers aren’t required to
evaluate any set number of posts... We
encourage reviewers to take the time
they need.” A Meta spokesperson said
it asks contractors like Sama to encour-
age moderators to take as much time as
they need to make decisions.
One serving moderator said that
while Sama managers, not Facebook,