Ethiopian Threats Against Facebook Moderators Downplayed

The contractor hired by Facebook's parent company Meta dismissed threats to content moderators by Ethiopian rebels angered by their work, according to new evidence filed in a case challenging the dismissal of dozens of moderators in Kenya.

Last year 185 content moderators sued Meta and two contractors, saying they had lost their jobs with Sama, a Kenya-based firm contracted to moderate Facebook content, for trying to organize a union.

They said they were then blacklisted from applying for the same roles at another firm, Majorel, after Facebook changed contractors.

Moderators focusing on Ethiopia said they were targeted by members of the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) rebel group for removing their videos but their complaints were dismissed by Sama, according to court documents filed on 4 December by Foxglove, a British non-profit supporting the moderators' case.

The moderators said in the petition seen by Reuters that Sama had accused them "of creating a false account and manufacturing" the threatening messages, before eventually agreeing to an investigation and sending one of the moderators who was publicly identified by the rebels to a safehouse.

Sama told Reuters it was unable to comment on the allegations. Spokespeople for Meta and OLA did not respond to requests for comment.

One moderator said in his affidavit that he had received a message from OLA threatening "content moderators who were constantly pulling down their graphic Facebook Posts".

"They told us to stop removing their content from Facebook or else we would face dire consequences," he said, adding that his supervisor dismissed his concerns.

Another moderator said in his affidavit that he received a message from OLA listing his and his colleagues' names and addresses.

"Since I received that threatening message, I have lived in so much fear of even visiting my family members in Ethiopia," he said.

The government of Ethiopia's largest region, Oromiya, has accused OLA rebels of killing "many civilians" in attacks that followed the failure of peace talks in 2023 in Tanzania aimed at resolving a decades-old conflict.